Chat

She's as hard-headed as I am, so when she asked me to help last month with the issues at her apartment complex by demanding I do nothing, I had to rely on the communication style one can only read decades in.

"I don't want to talk to a journalist."

Babe, what the fuck do you think you're doing right now?

The original issue was her water being about to be turned off in her apartment complex, and while she is my ex-wife, I can't just let her go without water.

After contacting two news outlets in her city counter to her explicit request, the water stayed on. No stories were published that I'm aware of.

Well, the situation has worsened, and the woman I fell in love with is back to her shenanigans. She's sleeping out on the porch tonight because of the German roach infestation that had been solved a few months back, but pest control does unit-by-unit spraying, thus sending the unwanted roaches into someone else's unit.

She does not have hot water after the maintenance guy broke her water pipes "fixing" a leak. As such, her grandson can't stay with her, as is customary for a weekend.

If you think pissing off a mother is bad, it's worse when it's Oma.

When we were together, years ago, and an emergency happened, we could handle it with blinding speed. Basically, triage, and we'll figure it out later. Just without the time in the waiting room.

Things have further deteriorated (roaches were not an improvement), and she has an appointment with her lawyer (via the EAP) at 2 p.m. today. At 4 p.m., the Herald reporter will be showing up. Meanwhile, she went so far up the flagpole that two of the complex's owners flew down from New York and will be there from 2 to 5 p.m.

This is not by accident.

It is, however, a reminder of why her independence and grit was such an attractive force. I mean, her manic-pixie look got my foot in the door, but when I realized she was just as manipulative as I am, I think the deal was sealed. We'd already agreed to lie to her brother the night before I met her, so this has a rich and storied tradition.

Some 15 years later, she has the city investigating multiple violations like not having smoke detectors or fire extinguishers in units. My initial work on her behalf last month meant this was a folo, not a random story for the Herald.

So, now it was time to plan the whole interaction. She smartly told the reporter to meet her at the leasing office instead of her unit. If they bring a photog along, that's not particularly useful, but she's now happy to let them in.

She has been amassing fellow residents beyond pissed to participate in this mutiny. The complex is 80% occupied by military, unsurprising given that Killeen essentially exists only because of Fort Hood. The military pays for off-base housing in certain situations (not my wheelhouse) and has decided the complex no longer meets their standards.

So, we've got the lawyer coming, the press coming, the owners coming and base commanders coming -- all at the same time. It almost sounds like a porn.

And, in a way, it is: competence porn.

Over the course of a two-hour call, I managed to steer her in the directions I thought would be most useful. First off, they have a community grill, so I asked if she had hot dogs and buns. The fastest way to a journalist's heart is through their stomach (she's assuming the reporter will be male, which exposes her latent bias, but I'm not going to gender ahead of time).

And if she's got at least six residents along with everyone else, it's always good to break bread in order to break the ice.

I also told her what part of the story to lead with. There are several concurrent problems here, and she was doing the whole manic thing of "oh, my god, the roaches!" Well, there are multiple lease violations, including forcing fees not listed in the lease.

"If you want to bring them down, babe, lead with the lease violations. Sure, being unable to bathe and the roaches is human interest, but that's not near as strong of a story as 'hundreds of people have been paying junk fees for months.' Make it a widespread issue."

The Herald only publishes a print edition on Sundays (I looked it up, trying to figure out what timeline to expect). So Saturday at 4 p.m. is about the sweetest spot you can hit. They may hang out for an hour or two, but if they're headed back to the office by 6, there's plenty of time for this to become Saturday for Sunday (newsroom jargon).

She assumed that meant it would have to wait a week. Well, I mean, they publish online daily, but a print edition still carries weight, and why the hell she thought a story couldn't go through the sausage machine in five hours is beyond me. I mean, I was married to the woman for years, and she still finds journalism to be a black box. To a certain extent, this isn't all that surprising since she doesn't care how a newsroom works.

Just that she can pull the strings.

Sound like anyone else you know?