The neighbour upstairs, her boyfriend disappeared last week. A mental health episode, Friday, he slipped in the Soup Kitchen, told the people downstairs in the thrift shop, didn't get the required commiseration. He was telling me, his girlfriend, and somehow for some reason some little switch in him flipped and he hopped into his car and disappeared.
He was - to all appearances, the chillest guy.
Not been heard from for a week, missed his birthday, not responded to any of the hundreds of "Urgent" texts sent to him by his girlfriend, other neighbors.
This is worrisome.
***
And the other neighbour, the one on my floor, "Kramer", she's in a tizzy, set up a new "business", trying to get her commission from it, apparently she needs to maintain a minimum balance in her account and so she's hitting me up for $400 so she can raise her bank balance and withdraw the commission. "It's only for 10 minutes" she promises me. I'm pretty skeptical, for good reason, her "business" seems to be mostly scrolling her phone, and she's trying to explain to me she's selling stuff for Crypto and there's American conversions and all sorts of other nonsense that I can't be bothered to understand. Send her the E-Transfer.
Things go predictably, but not for her...
The next day she's apologizing profusely, she needs another $200, and so I just send it. This is followed by profuse thanks and gratitude, but she's doubling down on the hole she's dug for herself...
She's beginning to suspect that maybe there aren't jobs that pay you for scrolling your phone...
Now, I suspect she's fucked. She's trying to set up terms of repayment, what was 10 minutes, now becomes a day, now becomes a week, and she's trying to figure out the scam but clearly she doesn't have the intellectual resources, if it wasn't this it would be her trying to help a Nigerian Prince get his money out of the country, I've seen these things before, they take in otherwise bright people (not a description I'd apply in this instance), and I'm going to be the one paying the price...
Well, with that I'm away and I'm pretty sure she'll keep up on watering the chilis...
I should have told her she was being scammed but - well, some people, like in the long-ago restaurant with the luxury cars, once people pin their hopes it takes a lot to dissuade them, only time and the harshest of reality checks...