Since neither of the apartments on either side of mine at Charleston Plaza is occupied now and I never have visitors, I was surprised a week ago when Debbie, the housekeeper, knocked on my door first thing in the morning.

“Did you hear anything last night?” she said anxiously, her eyes cast upward directly into mine. She is a short woman of maybe 40 years with tremendous energy.  She wears very tight jeans while working and is in constant motion. Her red hair is short but neat.

“I heard glass being broken … at about three.” I took another sip of the previous morning’s reheated coffee.

“That was my window … they … they think I broke it.”

“Who … what … why?” My coffee hadn’t kicked in yet.

“It was a man … a man upstairs.  He broke it.  I know where he lives … he lives upstairs.” She took a breath: “Now they want me to leave.  They think I did it. Did you see anything last night?”

“I heard the glass break and then someone said bitch.”

That didn’t seem to be what she wanted to hear. She shook her head, breathed:  “Oh … ” Then she turned and abruptly walked away.

She and her boyfriend, a young man in his twenties, tended to have rather raucous and public arguments. That’s all but nonexistent at Charleston Plaza. I don’t remember any loud altercations at all except one night my previous neighbor, a single woman, had a rather ardent suitor at five in the morning. He was drunk and demanding that she let him in. He finally just left after she told him that she was going to call the cops.

Julie, the property manager, frowns on that type of behavior, especially from staff.  The one time I complained about that same female neighbor playing her music too loud, she asked to be transferred to another apartment and was gone within a matter of hours.No hard feelings, though.  She always greets me with a smile and hearty hello.  And I do the same to her.

But Debbie and her boyfriend I considered friends, so the one time I complained about a noisy event during the very early morning hours that may or may not have included the tiny redhead, I asked that Julie keep it on the down low.  I didn’t want to make trouble for the housekeeper because she appeared to be such a hard worker who always kept things in apple-pie order.

Then things heated up between them. First time I heard screams during the middle of the day, I stepped outside my door to see Debbie standing beside her open door yelling like a wounded animal.

The next thing I knew, the boyfriend slinked out with pupils dilated, shirtless, and seemed to be in a fog. Debbie was screaming, “He got mad just because I didn’t want this necklace. He tore it off my neck. See! See!”

I didn’t know what to make of it, so I just stood there, not sure whether to get involved or not. Next thing I knew another young man emerged from the apartment looking rather forlorn.

“Look at you!” shouted Debbie “Your pants are still unzipped.”

I quickly phoned Julie, who quieted everything down. From that day forward, they seemed to quarrel every Monday for various reasons. One time it was because he had thrown water on her back.  I never even knew his name.

The young man never seem to do anything to Debbie; she would just shatter the silence with her screams once a week. He’d stand there until she demand that he pack and leave. He would pack and leave only to return in a day or so.

The only time the boyfriend and I ever spoke directly was the day after Michael Jackson’s death. He was standing outside of the apartment with another young man.

“Too bad about Michael Jackson,” he said. “I’m a Puerto Rican. I grew up in New York City … in the neighborhood.  Michael was hot back in the day.  Too bad.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

He was muscular, in his twenties, with a well-developed six pack. I guess he just wanted to talk … to reach out to a neighbor who had witnessed more than one very public altercation between he and his older lady.

But the broken window brought about a new dynamic into what had been just a loud but relatively normal domestic drama.

The maintenance guy was cleaning out her place yesterday after boarding up the broken window.

“Debbie is gone?” I asked.

He said, “That’s a good thing.”

“How long had she worked here?”

“She was here when I got here, and I’ve been here a year.”

Walking out of the parking lot, I could see Rasheed sitting on the lawn of the Walgreen on the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Charleston, just across the street. Rasheed is a tall, middle-aged, scarecrow-like man of the neighborhood. Sometimes he’s lucid, but mostly he rambles on, waving copies of newspapers around as he segues into his panhandling spiel.
“My man … ” he says with hand extended. “Did you know … ”

“Not today, Rasheed.” Making my getaway, I notice the neighborhood hot dog vendor setting up his stand across the street.  He’s a man of average height wearing a broad brim brightly colored fedora.

Waddling on the other corner is the neighborhood bag lady. Dirty and unkempt, she stoops in front of the free periodical racks, mostly advertising local escort services. Extracting a publication from one of them, she reaches awkwardly over her shoulder to rub the back of her neck with it. The irony of this massive black woman wiping her huge sweaty neck with pictures of nubile young Caucasian girls in suggestive poses is not lost on me. After wiping, she drops the paper on the street, pull out another and repeats the process over and over. God does have a sense of humor.

Making my way into the Walgreens drug store to pick up a gallon of water, I pass an openly annoyed female clerk shouting at the back of a departing Asian male: “What did you say to me? I heard that racial slur! You come back and say that to my face!” He hurriedly got into his car. Must be the heat.

After getting my water, I walked back across the street. Rasheed was gone.  The hot dog vendor was sitting beneath his umbrella, talking to a customer, and the fat lady continued to wipe her neck.

Passing Debbie’s old apartment, I’m met by a young lady exiting the empty apartment. The girl had lived with her boyfriend at the apartment between Debbie and mine until they requested a move upstairs because of the noise. That was about a month ago.

15″Are you moving back down stairs?” I asked.

“No. I’m just helping out since she moved.” She left the door open as she walked past me.

“Did she move to another apartment here at the Plaza?”

“No, ” she said softly. “She isn’t allowed on the property.”

Oh well. Looks like another hot one. Downtown Vegas … no place like it.