Tiffany! Le Parte Deux

[Jim K.]

So, here's the current situation with the duplex I bought last Christmas. It's been a wild ride. I don't remember all of the name changes, so let me start over.

Initially Bob lived upstairs alone, as his wife had moved out. Tiffany and Susan lived downstairs.

Both Bob and Tiffany had idiotically-written leases inherited from the former owner that allowed them to have roommates of their own choosing. So Bob invited Tiffany's boyfriend Marcus to come and live with him. I frankly lost my s*** when I heard about it, but legally, I didn't feel on firm ground denying it.

So it became Bob and Marcus upstairs, Tiffany and Susan downstairs.

Tiffany, back in August, had a party with some 8-12 druggie cockroach BFFs, crushed up a black-market sleeping pill with fentanyl in it, and snorted it. Unfortunately, there was more fentanyl in the pill than advertised, she ODed and started to spasm. Marcus was present, also partaking. The cockroaches tried to put Tiffany in a cold bath to bring what they thought was her fever down. Susan arrived home, assessed the situation, called 911, and called me. Susan has turned out to be by far the most reliable person in the building.

Upon hearing that the cops were coming, Tiffany's bosom-buddy cockroaches vanished into the evening. Marcus was left behind, blubbering over the love of his life, When I got there, there were four cop cars and three ambulances outside. Narcan had been administered to Tiffany, and she was brought back from death's door. Tiffany was lying nude on her bed under a sheet in the back bedroom. Marcus was lying over the sheet, also nude, curled up and clinging to her neck and blubbering, itty-bitty furry privates visible for all the world to see.

Now I want you all to share the full farcical picture I encountered when I went over there on the night of the overdose: Tiffany is an extremely Reubenesque very pale woman of Anglo-Saxon ethnicity, about 400 pounds. Marcus is a skinny significantly-darker-complected man, maybe 150 lbs soaking wet. And...scene.

I was left to figure out who I needed to evict first.

I went with Marcus, also because he didn't pay me my rent. Marcus is now out. The last rent he paid, he had to bring his mommy with him to my door. The mommy physically held the cash (Marcus has no dealings with banks, as he is also a deadbeat dad). Marcus is in his late 40s, I should also mention. No judgment, just the facts. Undersized private parts and mommy has to hold his money.

Ah, but the Marcus story still goes on. because it turns out that he stored his crap in my basement and has been using Tiffany's place to take showers and sleep. Last night there was an altercation with a drug dealer that came to the door, according to Susan. Michael argued loudly with the dealer and then argued loudly with Tiffany, who threw him out. Why did the drug dealer come to the door? Tiffany has been selling some of her various subsidized prescriptions.

So, upstairs in the duplex, as Marcus is now out, Bob's wife Sharon has moved back in. Bob has understood the deep, deep error of his ways in having let Marcus live with him in the past. I am now working on Bon and Sharon's place, replacing some windows. I was upstairs on the balcony of Bob's place (yes, it is a nice large duplex with a balcony, not the D-class druggie crapshack these morons have tried to turn it into), when who should stroll up to Tiffany's door? Marcus.

I went downstairs as he waited by the front door, and told him he was persona non grata in my multifamily. He left. Tiffany came out and talked to me, insisted that she had a right to have anyone she wanted as a guest in her apartment. I explained that since Marcus is a thief (he owes me money and stole some stuff from Bob), I am not obligated to host known criminals with known substance abuse problems in my duplex. I'm responsible for the safety of the building. She continued to insist. I told her to go talk to her lawyer or to anyone who might in mistaken kindness be offering her legal help. I'm certainly talking to my own lawyer.

And then, yes, I said it: "If you don't like it, leave."

I inherited Tiffany as a tenant. The former landlord actually sold me the duplex rather than try to get rid of her from several states away. Tiffany has already been evicted once in the near past and the former landlord has now filed a judgment against her. Tiffany's next home, should I evict her, will be a cardboard box next to a dumpster, as she is wholly ineligible for public housing under local housing authority regulations and she couldn't pass either a credit or an eviction check if her life depended on it. Before all this, I planned on giving Tiffany her notice that I was ending our month-to-month agreement after she paid the rent this month. I doubt I will see a dime of that rent now. Tiffany, in our conversation, revealed that she mistakenly believed that she had every right to stay indefinitely as long as she paid the rent.  This is not the case where the duplex is located. We haven't descended into landlord-hating rabble-madness quite that far just yet in my municipality (the duplex is located just outside the legal boundaries of the City of Pittsburgh in an independent municipality). This woman is month-to-month. All I need to do is cancel the lease and she has thirty days to make her exit before I begin eviction proceedings.

I do not say this lightly, but these people have made their own beds. Tiffany gets her notice next week. I wish her the best of luck in her cardboard box. May the dumpster it leans against ever smell sweet and fruity. May the raccoons who frequent it be kind and continent.

And yes, it should be "La Parte Deux." It was supposed to be "Tiffany! Part Deux" in homage to Hot Shots!, but BP wouldn't let me post, so I changed it, and committed an unforgivable typo, and I can't change it now.

Really, it should be Tiffany, La Part maudite.