1 - April 24, 2008
COMPLAINT
Declaration: The owner rented an apartment to Mine "Kit" Teague about three months ago. Two weeks ago Mine showed she was losing her mental ability. She has threatened me two times. She makes noise late at night and throws things from her apartment onto the street. It is almost impossible to talk to her. She said she stopped taking her medicine. She has damaged the oven and sink in the apartment.
Received: Direccion General de Seguridad Publica, Transito y Policia Turistica, Cozumel, Q. Roo
2 - Sometime before the 24th
It is hard to describe my second meeting. It too was brief, but it seemed to me a lot happened in a very confined space in a short time.
She did not appear to be at home. I called as I approached the door, walking carefully across the terrace. I knew there was a dog. Closed doors in this climate usually signal no one at home. In hindsight, no one was.
Kit answered my knock by asking me from inside to open the door. I did and Uftie, her dog, shot out of the apartment without so much as a who-are-you and disappeared somewhere. I stepped inside onto a wet and greasy floor. Kit was sitting on the bed to my left. I told her I had her phone bill. I wanted to say here is a copy. You can pay it when you have time. I could not utter the words.
She dismissively said, "Give it to me. I will study it."
She asked me to sit down. I said I was just there to deliver the copy of the bill.
The apartment was dark and dank. But I was only dimly aware of this. Kit took command and asked me to sit down again. I reluctantly did, and she began talking I don't remember about what. It was all jumbled up. It was like stream of consciousness interspersed liberally with snippets of this and that to enhance her credibility or self worth or superiority. She asked me to put on my glasses. I saw nothing to read, and so I ignored this. Then she asked me to close the door. I sensed no danger from this woman in her fifties, who appeared much, much older. There we were both in the dark.
She opened a drawer and took out a broken pot pipe and asked me if I. I said no. She quickly said something about under a doctor's care in Hawaii and that she needed it to clam her nerves. I remember wondering what could she be nervous about, and why was the door closed in this heat? She put the pipe down after having made an attempt to light it. There was no flame from her lighter and no pot in the pipe to light.
My defenses began to arise from some depths, but I was not worried. Give the old lady my ear for a few minutes and disappear. In fact I was older.
Then she arose from the bed and began insisting and interrogating without waiting for answers.
"What is your education? Where did you go to school? Put on your glasses. You are too young to know anything about bookkeeping and accounting. When I was in New York, why I . . . for 91 people. I know the law. I went to law school. Would you like some [pointing to the empty pipe again]?"
Her voice and body became animated, excited, borderline hysterical.
"And look at this!"
She opened the oven door and the tempered glass, what was left of it, fell in pieces onto the wet floor around her feet.
I began watching. I suppose shock was setting in. She yelled at me again to put on my glasses. She danced on the broken glass on the floor. I just stared at the oven door. It seemed that there was more missing than the glass. I just stared at the glass on the wet floor. I then stared at her now walking on the glass saying that her father taught her about glass. He was in the glass business.
"See, it won't cut you."
She yelled now. "Look at me. Look at me. What are you, stupid?"
I finally came back from a kind of stupor and met her eyes. She was smiling as she insulted me. I asked how it happened. She said a rock hit it. Didn't make sense to me, but maybe somehow the dog, or?
She sat down again on the edge of the bed. I said I would be going. There is your bill. She said sit down. Want a cup of coffee? I said no thanks and began to leave. She held out her hand as if to shake mine. I decided not to, gave my own pregnant pause and left.
I saw no dog as I walked away.
3 - Just recently
I got a copy of an e-mail Kit had sent to someone on Cozumel. It said she would be visiting soon with her new husband, Chris Isak. I recall when disposing of her rancid belongings that there was a copy of a CD with his song, "Speak of the Devil," on it.
