The Candy Man's Can

It was the only residential dwelling in the industrial district of the Big Easy. Since there was a lock on the gate the two room cottage could only be seen from the street. Curiously, there were almost 80 feet of wild grass leading from the curb to the doorstep �" the patch well over-gown but green from the frequent showers of high summer. “Shoot!”… I thought to myself, a little over an hour connected to an electric Sunbeam and a weed-eater might make this area look like a real yard. That would be a start. The structure itself looked as though it was designed by the Candy Man; all but the outhouse left standing, the rest victim to Katrina.

The landlord, Adrian he had mentioned over the Craig’s List phone number, said six o’clock PM and I was an hour early so I waited in the rain. It was New Orleans so the tempest was fierce, lasted about 20 minutes but it poured cats and uglier cats. Soaked and feeling like the inside of a can of chicken and rice soup I kept peering at the structure; the dryness of the car beckoned. I crept closer, my moist briefs finding it much easier to find the wrong part of the crotch so much I was reminded of the wedgies I had so indiscreetly and frequently succumbed to on the playground of grammar school as a premier class clown.

It was different now what with my next month of shelter and food in question �" I was never so sober. I desperately was in need of an interim residence so I could save some bucks and afford something more like a real abode. Maybe I’d find a shotgun apartment that New Orleans is famous for in real Cajun style property circles.

I counted $ 123.76 in my left pocket, had roughly four hundred in my checking account and was fighting off collection agencies as if they were no-see-ums. My manuscript had been accepted by a publisher and I was hedging on its success. The $ 100 per week price for the Candy Man latrine seemed too inviting. Unemployed in the Big Easy and my own mini dude ranch could be just what the chiropractor ordered. For a split second I saw myself riding a $ 5,000 mower cruising the swarder of what must have been a property worth at least $ 60,000. All smile.

Adrian roared up in a black Mercedes Benz going 60 in a 40. He smelled as if he had bathed in a select brew of Usher, his head closely shaven. His shoes looked like a cross between an expensive pair of flippers and white Florsheims with his big toe exposed to nature. He possessed a wide smile for a foreigner and eyes that I swear challenged the size of kiwis. As his handshake was very solid my fear of dealing with a limp-noodle-business-character quickly fizzled. After we both banged our heads on the frame of the meter reader we joked about the black eyes we might share the next day. At least this gave us something light to talk about.

Candy Man “house” sported new wooden floors made of varying cuts of plywood. I say new as the floor had been constructed recently. The plywood itself had been around awhile and looked as if it had been pilfered from the leftovers of refurbished industrial plants nearby. But then again not many can boast having all hardwood floors these days. I was enlightened.

The cockroaches weren’t a drawback. I knew they rather deplored the soft texture of human membrane and would not bite. No sweat. One simply wondered if one of the organisms might get a wild hair up his rear one night and make a wild dash toward one’s scrotum. Granted, that would not hurt. But it might make your body straighten out real fast, let alone leave you thinking how many wild hairs the fellow might have up his “sleeve” over the succeeding few hours.

There were two rooms: a kitchen/living/den/dining with a coffee maker and no hot plate, and a bedroom with a real, blue indoor/outdoor carpet spread on the hardwood floor that smelled a lot like a Doberman Pincher. The real jackpots were two window A/C units that worked. I was going to mention three jackpots but the Sunbeam electric mower burned up after two swatches of the lawn had been trimmed.

At 100 smackers per week I could not go wrong with his place. Besides, Adrian had no intention of running a background check so I was nearer nirvana than expected.

We agreed to meet the next afternoon to exchange autographs and to slip him 20 sleek bills of 20, each so new he had to lick his fingers to separate them on the count. His smile now rivaled that of a honeydew melon. We exchanged pleasantries again and both uttered that it would be nice to share black eyes after the succeeding meter reading. Eager to head out to Office Depot for some hard core Raid, I shuffled him out the door before he had the opportunity to instruct me on the technical side of the water heater. But, that did not really matter either as it was in the mid-nineties in New Orleans with the humidity hovering at about the same range. So, since frequent cold showers already formed part of my repertoire, I just added a couple more to my regimen.

After scoring three large cans of bug “stigmatizers” the first order of business was to rip the Doberman Pincher carpet from the bedroom and heave it into one of the two small storage sheds. The other contained the Sunbeam that now ponged of an electrical fire. After a pronto-grin at the all-hardwood-floors I hauled out all my camping tarps and spread them across the surface as if it were the bottom of a bird cage. On top of the tarps went seven different styles of rugs; one I had saved just for such an occasion after acquiring it in Kashmir during my Foreign Service days. It was the nicest so I covered it with my bedroll.

Since my “stuff” had yet to arrive, an older but sturdy four-legged collapsible ladder served as my closet and armoire. I thought it was so cool that its color matched the hardwood floors to a T. The added bonus was that my briefs could be hung by placing those college level thumb tacks on the ladder legs. Paper towels adorned the top step. My LG Optimus almost climaxed when it got its opportunity to shoot a few i-phone snapshots. I sent them to my whole family: my two sisters in Grand Prairie and Lakewood, respectively.

The camping table looked very sharp in the kitchen/living/den/dining but the love nest turned out to be my pride and joy. A former girlfriend had advised how unhealthy it is to sleep with one’s head (specifically mouth) near electrical outlets. Ignorant of that fact for decades, my inner ear, adenoids and pharynx now, I am afraid, are about due for some sort of space launch. In order to avoid what happens to those unlucky few who enter the stratosphere and forget their space masks, I had opted to recreate Ali Baba’s den, replete with elongated silk pillows and tasseled tips, pastel colored satin sheets, light cotton comforters with camels tie-died on both sides (this is mainly for aesthetics) and screens made of balsa wood and unused butcher paper - all at least four feet eight inches from any wall outlet or ceiling lamp. For light and atmosphere, I found a decent deal on scented candles at one of your better discount stores. I have only been here a short while but, all in all, my sleeping experience, even with a full face sleep apnea mask and generator connected to my face, has been nothing short of not bad at all.

As I settled into the Candy Man house another squall started working its way from the domed stadium toward the manufacturing district. I grabbed my drawings and carefully placed them in the Ali Baba Doberman Pincher Love Nest. From my perspective the easel added an aura of masculinity to the setting. I can hear the words now… “Would you like to see my etchings”? Then the patter on the roof took on much more than a Ringo Starr soliloquy. It was then that I took closer notice that Candy Man house had been coated with corrugated aluminum to seal out the precipitation. The exterior walls and roof resembled sardine cans without the writing. While the shininess of the place was no problem it was the thumping of what sounded like one pound rain drops shot out of a Gatling gun onto metal that made my ears and head feel like the most enormous (yet nicely made) cymbals ever imagined. But no problem there either. I torqued the boom box to nine, wetted some napkins I had picked up with my Rally fries the night before and stuffed them into my ears. To my pleasant surprise all I could hear was Cat Stevens’ voice chirrup Tuesday’s Dead.

I finally settled into an appropriate routine. I would write all night on week nights, sleep from seven to noon, prepare a banana, mustard and onion sandwich for lunch, drink plenty of water, work out, and explore the French Quarter in the evening.

One night I got lucky. I met a flower child from Modesto hanging around the Zydeco stage and asked her to dance. The step is a piece of cake if one has ever danced the Vallenato and since I spent many years in Colombia, I was a whiz and it showed. The flower child was enamored by the way I could cut a rug (and my Eddie Murphy smile) so she tugged at my cargo shorts. After two Harvey Wall Bangers apiece she followed me to my place in her Vespa. We parked across the street where she could gain a portrait view of my property before inviting her in. After describing my theory that the house was the remnant of a home designed by the Candy Man, and that I suspected that it was actually the privy, she broke into controlled merriment.

“And it shines”… she said. “It looks like a can”. Well it was, of a sort. She crossed the threshold, passed the larger room and moved toward the Ali Baba Nest. I brought us a couple of cold ones and we clanked them together in toast as we settled on the silken giraffes.