Occupied!

I am occupied.

No, not in any “keep busy, for the Devil finds work for idle hands” sense. (The Devil, believes me, tosses plenty of bad behavior balls my way. I catch as many of them as I can, but I have a short attention span and often wander off, even on him.)

I am occupied, as in occupied military zone. The invading force? The people who bought my house. They keep coming over and trotting around as if they OWN the place.

Okay, so--- they do own the place. But I didn't think they were going to be all up in my face so quickly. I'm thinking that I'd better put 911 on my speed dial, because if it escalates, there might be an INCIDENT.

The agreement was that I was staying in the house til the end of the year. That was part of the offer. They asked if, pretty please, we could close early. They’re doing a 1031 Tax-Deferred Exchange, whereby clever real estate investors like myself get to deprive the IRS out of a whole lot of money. But there are time limits and restrictions, and to comply with theirs, they had to close before Thanksgiving.

I’m an easy-goin’ gal. I said, “Sure. Why not?”

I’ll tell you why not. Because as soon as the papers were signed, they started breathing down my neck. The day after closing, Cupcake comes trotting happily down the stairs to let the dogs out the backdoor. She is wild-haired, half-asleep, and wearing (THANK GOD!) a ridiculous set of PJs that she got for Christmas last year—sky-blue satin boxers and top. She releases the dogs to the great outdoors to perform their ablutions, and then discovers that the new Owner (husband) is standing next to her. Where did he come from? Why, the basement.

It’s a bit jolting to find a virtual stranger that close to her when she’s wearing PJs. Usually, when Cupcake awakens to find a stranger next to her, she’s in her birthday suit.

Just kidding. Those days are gone. (Ah, the 80s. You kids don’t know what you missed.)

But Cupcake had been known, occasionally, to trot down those stairs wearing a thong and t-shirt. Or just a t-shirt. Or even just a thong. Those days, too, are gone.

Apparently, the basement is a veritable Aladdin’s Cave of treasure and mystery. At least, so it appears by the interest the new owners show in it. They keep coming over and hanging around in it. In the two plus years Cupcake lived in this house, she used the basement for three things: 1.) Storage; 2.) Laundry; 3.) Cavorting with the delightful rabbit-in-residence.

The basement also served, briefly, as rehearsal space for The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, a play Cupcake produced and starred in. (With the help of a heck of a lot of makeup to make her look older, she adds hastily, for the benefit of anyone who’s read the 1971 Pulitzer Winning play by Paul Zindel.) The play is the reason that Cupcake acquired the delightful rabbit-in-residence, but nothing, nothing, nothing could persuade her to part with that rabbit, whose charms Cupcake was quite unprepared for. Cupcake is smitten. She admits it. She’s in bunny-love. And highly recommends rabbits as pets. Cupcake herself never thought it would be all that interesting to own a rabbit. She asserts emphatically that it is.

The basement, you must understand, has for the past nine months been the domain of Miss Clover Bunny. Last year, while Cupcake was on a long trip to Vermont, a previous roommate staged a coup on behalf of Clover, liberating her from her hutch and giving her free reign of the basement. (Perhaps “rein” is the appropriate spelling, but from Clover’s point of view, it’s “reign.”)

UNTIL NOW.

Last week, on the afternoon of the sky-blue satin pajama incident, Cupcake was accosted again on the back stairs by the new Owner (wife). While she seems well intentioned, no one has ever accused this woman of concerned with tact.

New Owner (wife): Oh, Cupcake—about the basement. I’ll just arrange to have all your things down there thrown away, shall I?

Cupcake: What?

New Owner (wife): I’m assuming that you don’t want any of that old stuff. Don’t worry about a thing—We’ll be having a dumpster come, so we’ll just pitch it for you.

Note to reader: the stuff in basement consists of boxes of old documents like tax returns, etc (approx 6 of those), suitcases containing Cupcake’s summer clothes, two chairs and a futon Cupcake isn’t using at the moment, and various stage props, laid out on a table: a plaster skull (Hamlet), the skeleton of a dead cat (Marigolds), an old rotary telephone, a piggy bank, etc. And power tools such as befit being in a basement. Not an overflowing basements full of crap that would take a huge amount of work to deal with, or anything indicating that Cupcake confuses basements with garbage dumps. Largely, it was a vast terrain of emptiness, suitable for a happy bunny to hop through.

Cupcake: Um…what are you talking about? I’ll go through it before I move out. But thank you for the offer. But I have plenty of time because I am staying til the end of the year, as was agreed. In the contract. The end of the year.

N. O. (w): Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. We said you could stay IN THE APARTMENT for the rest of the year. The basement isn’t part of that.

Cupcake: Actually, the agreement was that I could “stay” til the end of the year. And as I USE the basement every day, and my rabbit lives there, I took that to mean the basement, too.

N.O. (w): I made it very clear to everyone that I would need to get into the basement as soon as we closed.

Cupcake: Well, um… this is the first I’m hearing of it.

N. O. (w): As I said, don’t worry about a thing. I’ll just have someone come next week and throw all your things away for you. Don’t trouble yourself over it. Although you’re PERFECTLY WELCOME to continue doing your laundry until you move out.

Cupcake: And if I give you the Sudentenland, do you promise we’ll have Peace In Our Time?

N.O. (w): What?

Cupcake: Nothing. Just…I need to think about this.

N.O. (w): Well, I have an exterminator coming next week. Just in case there’s some sort of vermin crawling around. You know, with the rabbit down there and everything, heaven knows what’s crawled in. The exterminator will be spraying the basement quite thoroughly. Just so you know. Spraying the basement. Thoroughly. The rabbit—well, just so you know.


I went upstairs and called my lawyer, who heaved a heavy sigh and looked at the contract and told me that “stay” was not defined, and it was the first he’d heard that I had to vacate the basement, too. Called the realtor. Ditto.

But she kept calling about it. And coming over with no notice. Twice she's brought her mother, who only speaks Arabic and who walks through my apartment pointing at things and shaking her head, clearly telling her daughter in loud, shrill Arabic that the place is a dump. (Yes, the floors need to be re-done. That's one of the reasons I'm moving. And I hate the layout of the kitchen, too.)

The new Owner (husband)keeps showing up and "fixing things." Twice now, he's "fixed" the back door so that it won't open at all. And once he "fixed" the front door so that it wouldn't open, either. Mercifully, he never fixed them at the same time, so one or the other has been usable. It's just a matter of time til they lock me in or out completely. Accidentally, of course.

I swear to God there was an Al Quaeda meeting in my basement on Sunday. There was a large group of Arabic people in my basement for five hours. With my rabbit, no less.

I bolted, coward that I am. I abandoned my rabbit and dogs and fled to the café. When I came back, they were still there. FIVE hours later. When the back door slammed behind them, I ventured down the stairs to de-brief Clover about the experience.

Al Quaeda had pulled all the ceiling tiles down. The rabbit was sitting in a pile of ceiling tile rubbish, washing her face.

I’m not even French, but I surrendered. I called a friend and we brought all my boxes, power tools, summer clothes, and stage props upstairs. And I brought Clover upstairs, too. And now she’s in a hutch. And she looks very very sad.

I can’t let her run around upstairs because of the dogs. (She calls them “the predators.”) So she’s in a different room with a closed door, surrounded by boxes and in her hutch. (She calls it “prison.”)


When rabbits are very scared and upset, they pant. You never want to hear a bunny pant. It’s like having a child with a high fever. There’s nothing you can do. And it’s agonizing. Clover was panting last night.

I took her down the basement for a while, and she seemed okay. But I can’t let her play down there, once the exterminator comes. I’m afraid she’ll step on poison and then lick it off her paws. Rabbits are very clean, like cats.

Vermin, indeed.

The original sales agreement gave me the option to rent my apartment for a couple of months. The new house will not be vacant til mid to late January. So there’s a months gap.

But I am not staying at my old house. It would end in bloodshed. I might go to Vermont, but my roommate and I were talking last night about maybe subletting a place in the City for a few weeks, because it would be fun.

What have we learned, Reader? We have learned (again) that clean breaks are the best. That as it would be foolish to, for example, divorce someone and then remain living with them, it is also foolish to sell your house and then remain living in it. Blurry lines = no good.

So I am occupied. I wish there were street signs to change. I dream of putting tiny, invisible pin pricks in the plastic pump of the washing machine innards, the day before I leave. (But I won’t.) I think of Penn and Teller bringing a box of cockroaches onto the David Letterman set, and I wonder where they got them.

Vive la Resistance!

I hope you never have to hear a rabbit pant. It’s a sad, sad sound.