Borat, where have you gone?

My neighbor is a Russian home builder, and I’m pretty sure he has defaulted on his mortgage and is living secretly in his home while no longer making payments. I came back from a trip to New England to get out of town for the holidays, and when I returned, the four cars that he and his family use every day were gone. Not leaving early and returning late, but GONE.

Victor lives with his wife, whom I have spoken to once and is only seen outdoors smoking on the back stoop. Victor also has two sons. The oldest is in his early 20's and reminds me of one of my cousins, who works for the railroad and in turn bears an uncanny resemblance to a shorter version of my late father. I have no idea what his name is, but guess it’s something Russian-sounding. I know that this son jogs occasionally, drives a Scion coupe, and overall seems to be the most normal member of his family. I say this last part, "seems like the most normal member," not based on his relationship to his immigrant parents, but because of his younger brother, Alex.

If you’ve ever seen Sasha Baron Cohen’s movie Borat, you’ve got a pretty good start on painting a mental picture of Alex. At 22, he looks 16. He wears thick plastic rimmed glasses which darken in the sun, and a struggling wiry mustache that would be right at home on a junior high school dance floor. A thick carpet of black hair is swept straight back, but sits very high on his narrow head, giving him the impression of a slightly tall 4th grader who has dressed as John Travolta’s disco playboy character from Saturday Night Fever.

My most vivid memory of Alex is watching him methodically throw grape-sized pieces of gravel at his bedroom window screen in order to entertain the family housecat.

CLACK. CLACK. CLACK.

"Alex, what are you DOING?", I ask.

"Throwing rocks at my CAT," he responds.

He expels the words, as if each sentence is started after exhaling 60% of the air from his lungs.  He talks like Napoleon Dynamite, if Napoleon had a really thick Russian accent and spoke while holding his nostrils shut with the hand not holding gravel. "Throwing rocks at my CAT! GOSH!" CLACK. CLACK. CLACK.

My second clearest memory, though far from the most bizarre, is of Alex backing his lime green Civic directly into the corner of his house. After slowing down to 10 miles per hour and jamming the transmission into reverse (his signal to the neighborhood that he’d returned from his usher shift at the movie theater), he revved the engine to a high whine and lost control of the steering wheel. It was good that Victor was a builder, at least on that particular day.

Besides these things, I’ve watched Alex swear at a uniformed female police officer while attending the neighborhood block party, and consequently be sworn at by the Japanese lady that lives at the end of my street. I’ve watched him corner the garbage man for 10-15 minutes while asking about possible career opportunities.  He regularly appears next to my driveway, pretending to examine the gas meter while waiting for an opportunity to ask what I know about community colleges in the area.  At random times, I see him standing on a ladder and swearing into his gutters, or just walking around the yard swearing at nothing.  There is seldom an normal or dull moment around him.

When the siding needed to be repaired, it was convenient that Victor was a home builder. But this is where his luck stops.

Upon moving into the house in 2007, Victor told me that he’d be in the house “three months, six tops,” because they intended to rehab and then flip it, in real estate terms. Four years and a dried up home construction market later, I saw his little SUV last night for the first time since the beginning of the new year. He had hidden it behind the house, secretly parking it there for a few hours so that no one could see it.  To my best guess, he was sneaking back inside the house which his bank had foreclosed upon, after an increase in property taxes made meeting the already thin payment schedule an impossibility to continue.

I have no idea into what house Alex, his nameless brother, and immigrant parents picked up and disappeared. I just hope that wherever it is, the window screens are strong, the driveway is wide, and the mortgage payments are within their reach.