The continuing shamble toward the end....

In all the confusion about whether or not they had to be out, the next door neighbor finally took the direct approach.  When Josh was pulling in to the driveway on Sunday last week, Barb called him over and asked him directly what was going on, since she'd been hearing rumors.

"We gotta be out 'cause my mom won't pay the fucking rent.  Bitch.  Doesn't do a damn thing for her grandkids."

So you're out.  Where will you go?

"Yeah, I don't know.  We're gonna talk to my dad, see if we can move in with him out in Gates.  Haven't talked to him yet.  I don't have a job right now - we all got fired for some reason.  So who knows."

After Josh went back over to his house, she smiled.  "And that's how you find out what's going on."

Monday I saw the last person I expected to see in all this...Wendy.

She was throwing all the lawn furniture into the back of a truck as I was walking up the hill from walking Dante.  "All I still have in there is a pair of shelves, and if I had a screwdriver I'd take them down right now."

I offered her use of a screwgun, but she declined.  "I need to get out of there anyway.  I'm gonna have to strangle somebody over there if I stay too long.  They're a bunch of crazy people.  She's a bitch.  I don't know how I'm going to deal with them - and you know I'm one of the most reasonable people around."

"Anyway, I told Kevin to write them an eviction notice and get them out.  We're done."

I was at work all week, developing curriculum, so I wasn't home during the day.  I got a message from Kevin on Tuesday morning, "So, are they out?"

"No idea - I'm at work.  Wendy said she was going to touch base with you about it all."

"Well - keep me posted.  I'm having car issues, so I've been staying with friends in Batavia the past couple of months so I can get to the gig at Settler's."

So I'm stuck on my own here.  Oh boy.

Tuesday night I'm walking Dante up the path, and a pleasant older woman (late 50s/early 60s) standing in the driveway asks me if I'm Josh.  I tell her no, I'm not.

"Where might I find him?"

He lives in the downstairs apartment, I tell her.

She knocks on the door while I'm walking up the stairs.  You can smell the pot pouring out of the apartment as Josh opens the door.  There is a mumbled conversation, and they head out to her van after she tells him, "It's raining, we can't do this outside."

I assumed at that point he was getting served his eviction notice, and hid upstairs.  It's been a crazy week for a variety of other reasons (work, etc), so I haven't been home all that much.  (Which of late, I honestly prefer.)

The entire weekend passes with no sign of them.  The neighbors told me he was making some sort of noise about squatters rights, and how he was going to fight the whole thing, but they also had a trailer in Chili that was being rented for them by Dan's ex-wife (the second child's grandmother - only rationale I can see for it).
Wendy came over on Sunday to ask me if I would pick up her mail, and also to show me the apartment so I could look at it and verify that it did NOT look like that when she lived there last.

Dear Lord, it turned my stomach.  Piles of rotten food.  Trash everywhere.  Holes in the walls.  Dirty clothes everywhere.  And the STINK.  Oh wow.

I told Wendy I would happily pick up her mail for her.  And I assured my neighbor that come Wednesday morning, if they're not around, I'll do a little breaking and entering to at least get the three festering bags of trash out to the curb in time for pickup.

Wendy said she's going to cut off the power on Wednesday.  So we'll see.  But at this point, I think they are actually really gone.