The view from Monday morning

The uneasy quiet continued throughout the weekend, but Twitter and Instagram excitement bubbled anyway. Weeks ago, in a burst of frustration, I made a Twitter account called Antonofthealley, who declares that he “likes the quiet alley.” I tweeted once, asking Maggie, aka Paul’sSexKitten, to “turn down the nasty music.”

Then Wyatt and Daisy got involved and they made alley accounts—Ahmen (supposed to be Ahmed but Wyatt makes a lot of typos) and Aaron of the alley. Ahmen is a MAGA Paul McCartney superfan, while Aaron is a former alcoholic and also a McCartney fan. Ahman would love to be on Twitter all the time, trying to pick fights with Maggie, but we rein him in. He did get a like from an aspirational male porn actor and that was very exciting.

I looked at Wyatt’s new porn Twitter friend and was shocked! There were many photos of erect penises, all sticking out in many directions like cactuses.

I am not well steeped in Twitter and had no idea that photos of men with their penises sticking all different ways was acceptable! Of course, I now check Twitter a few times a day, not for news like I used to, but for Maggie’s two accounts, trying to see what she is thinking about. It’s a losing battle.

We had a nice quiet night yesterday, with a delicious spaghetti and meat sauce and a wild movie from 1949 called Kind Hearts and Coronets. All was calm in the house.

And then, at 11:00 PM, just as Calvin was coming up for bed and the kids and I were talking about the cat and whether she was afraid of the fireworks (she was), Maggie pulled up in her old car, the green one, parked facing the wrong way on our one-way street, and blasted music.

She had been tweeting energetically before that. We think she parks in this giant parking lot for Laguardia Airport overflow, and blasts music, smokes cigarette and drinks beer. From there she tweets. A winner from last night was a reference to Black Lives Matter with a video centered on the black plastic bags liquor stores give you, the ones with “Thank you for shopping with us” in gold cursive on the front. I imagined the blackness of the bags resonated, for Maggie, with Black Lives Matter. That is how her logic typically works.

But now she was here, music playing loud, headlines pointing up the street at the parked cars who were pointing toward her car. Maggie got out, wandered around in her yard, and the kids and I stared out of Daisy’s window. Calvin went downstairs and watched in the dark living room.

Maggie moved in slow motion, as she has for the last few days. I came downstairs and then called the cops. In the middle of a very long talk with 911, Maggie turned her car around, shut it off and went inside. We missed her. We went to bed and I don’t know if the cops ever showed up.

Saturday evening

We’ve been taking late afternoon/early evening strolls to Ditmars Avenue lately. Last week it was very Bourbon street, with drunken people reeling all over the place. This weekend it was nicer, more relaxed. Calvin and I got a slushy cocktail and the kids got soft serve from the truck (I hate that they do this but they love that gross stuff). Maggie had laid low all day, but when we walked past her house coming home, we saw a guy with tools going in.

He waved and smiled at us, which made Calvin and I pretty sure he knew he was in a weird place. So a few hours later, when I saw him leave Maggie’s house to get something from his van, I ran after him.

I am sporadically fearless socially but this felt bad from the getgo. I had a mask on and he did not. I basically jumped him and asked, “How is it in there?”

He wouldn’t tell me anything. He was very nice and said he was working for a client and couldn’t divulge anything. It’s a little embarrassing when someone tells you politely that you’re out of line. Calvin told me I should have said, “make sure you are paid in full,” because we have seen her resist paying other people, but I hadn’t thought of that.

Anyway, we’re still here. She’s still here. I’m going to post Calvin’s meat sauce recipe because it is a very, very good one and super easy.