West Los Angeles could be a cool place to live. It wasn’t far from the Southern California coast or from the attractions of the city. Most of the time I really enjoyed it. The only tough part was my neighbors; it’s LA and most of the houses were built on top of each other. I eventually got used to being able to see into my neighbor’s kitchen and having them be able to see into mine but there were still times when I really wished we both had a little more privacy.
Tonight just happened to be one of those times. I was getting over a cold so instead of going out with my friends for the weekend, I’d just kind of hung around the house watching bad T.V. My sleeping schedule was off so there I was at one o’clock in the morning, wide awake and watching re-runs of Bewitched. During one of the commercials I decided I was hungry and got up to go scrounge in the kitchen for a snack.
That’s when the trouble started. I knew the guy next door had a new girlfriend and from a couple encounters I’d witnessed on his front porch I suspected they fought a lot. Tonight it seemed that suspicion was being confirmed. It was a summer evening and the windows were all open a crack. That made it really easy to hear the yelling from the kitchen next door. Though I couldn’t always hear what the guy said, I could certainly hear his girlfriend who was shouting at the top of her lungs. It seemed that she was accusing him of cheating on her and he seemed to be denying it.
Since the conversation next door was far more entertaining that anything I’d been watching on television, I sat down at the kitchen table with my carton of ice cream to listen. The more he denied her accusations, the angrier she would get and soon she was also blaming him for not making enough money and for wearing ugly clothes. It was getting a bit ridiculous. I was just getting a good chuckle out of her long-winded description of what really were a very ugly pair of shorts, (I’d seen him wearing them), when the argument suddenly turned violent. I could hear something shatter in their kitchen and alarmed, I jumped to my feet to look out the window. By the time I got there I could see that she’d gone outside into the very narrow side yard between our houses. She had something in her h ands but I couldn’t really tell what.
As it suddenly shattered the glass of the window beside me though, I was soon able to see it had been a DVD player.
“What the heck?” I shouted as I launched myself out the back door.
The girl had already stormed back inside but my neighbor was still st anding there by the fence.
“I may need to break up with her,” he stated bl andly as he stared at me.
“You think?” I replied sarcastically. “She just put your DVD player through my window.”
He shrugged. “Hope you have insurance,” he responded then turned and went back inside.
Like I said, most of the time West LA is a great place to live.
