2 Grand Delusion Read Free

movie you don't want to write (like, say, an action-adventure about Uzi-toting Micronesian terrorists scheming to set loose a thousand cloned grizzly bears in New York City), you can just lean back, smile, and say fuck you.
    That felt great because, truth to tell, I wasn't really into writing these days. At the age of forty, after years of agonizing over every syllable, I was taking a well-deserved sabbatical from fictional characters, plot twists, and other writerly cares. I played handball and chess, taught Creative Writing at the local state prison to satisfy my do-gooder urges, and fell asleep peacefully at night instead of lying awake wondering how the mortgage was going to get paid.
    Andrea was enjoying these halcyon days, too. Liberated from the long-suffering-spouse-of-a-starving-artist role, she had actually gone months (instead of hours) without having to reassure me that I was a truly great writer who would one day be discovered.
    Yes, even a cynic like myself had to admit: life on Elm Street was good.
    Except for those dagnab neighbors.
    It was absurd. It was outrageous. I'm an American, by God. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—" doesn't that include the right to a good night's sleep?
    So when I left Dave's backyard that morning, I didn't just go home and sulk. I did the Jimmy Stewart thing and marched off to fight City Hall.
    Having lived in big cities most of my life, I expected to face thick layers of municipal bureaucracy. But as it turned out, all I had to face was one red-cheeked, gray-haired lady in the city clerk's office. As a West Sider herself (I recognized her from the S.O.S. meetings), she was more than happy to help me. She found the file for Elm Street in record time. Obviously she was the person who actually ran the city, while the East Side politicians shook hands and took each other out to lunch.
    I quickly located the zoning status document for 107 Elm, the offending house. "Excellent," I said out loud as I read it. The house was supposed to be a one-family—not a three-family, the way Pop had been renting it out for years. I'd always suspected Pop was skating on thin legal ice, and now I had proof.
    "Find something good?" the gray-haired lady asked.
    "You bet," I said, and explained my plan. "I'll get Pop cited for zoning violations. Then he'll be forced to tear down the cardboard walls that split the place into three peanut-sized apartments. And once that house goes back to being a moderate-sized one-family, like it should be, we'll have good people"—jeez, I was talking like a native—"moving in, instead of crack dealers."
    Grayhair got up and stepped over to a file cabinet. "This is 107 Elm you're talking about? Are you going to the hearing tonight?"
    I stared at her. "What hearing?"
    She handed me an official notice. "The zoning hearing. Pop is selling the house, and he applied to get it officially rezoned as a three-family so he can get more money for it."
    My jaw dropped. "Shit—excuse my language. If they rezone it so it's permanently three-family, I'll be stuck with scumbag neighbors forever!"
    "I'm surprised you didn't know. The Zoning Board is supposed to notify all neighbors in a hundred-yard radius."
    "I didn't get notification, and neither did anyone else on the block. They'd have told me."
    She gave a tight, ironic smile. "Maybe the post office lost it."
    "Yeah, sure. I guess Pop has connections on the Zoning Board."
    "How about you?" Grayhair asked. "Got any connections?"
    Connections.
    Well, all right, I'd make some darn connections.
    Back in my teens, I was a political activist of sorts. We played hookey from high school to protest the Vietnam War, beat up any kids we caught eating non-union grapes in the cafeteria, and even made the local news once marching against a nuclear bomb test up in the Aleutian Islands somewhere.
    So I went home and wrote up an angry petition on my computer, featuring buzzwords like "Late-night noise . . . drugs . . . doesn't fit in