Jamie Brodie 02 - Hoarded to Death

up with all my spending."
    Rare books . I was intrigued. "Did Lucille give you any specifics about what might be in the boxes?"
    "No . And you know how it is, I meant to go through them as soon as we moved them into the apartment, but I just never got around to it..." Her voice trailed off for a minute, then she looked back at me. "I don't know anyone that knows anything about rare books, at least no one that I really trust. And I figured that the best person to ask might be you. Maybe you could look at what's in the boxes as we clean stuff out, and see what I should try to sell and what I should just donate to a library."
    "Sure. I'm not an expert on rare books, but I might be able to tell you enough for at least sorting purposes."
    "Oh, that would be great." Jennifer brightened considerably. "I appreciate that so much."
    We chatted a bit more. I could tell Pete was trying to probe a little, to see if Jennifer was really up to the big clean. She said all the right things, though, and her emotional state seemed to match.
    Maybe this would work.

October
    The taping of the show was scheduled for three weeks after we saw Jennifer. One evening the week before taping, I drove over to Studio City and the psychologist on the show, Dr. Lena Hayman, interviewed me on camera. She asked me a lot of questions about how I felt about Jennifer, what my prior experiences with her had been like, what my impressions were. We talked for over an hour. I had no idea how much of it they’d use, but my guess was about 45 seconds.
    We were scheduled to begin the clean the following weekend . That Friday evening, my sister-in-law Valerie drove up from Oceanside to join us. Pete let her in and they hugged, then she gave me a bigger hug. I said, "I still can't believe you agreed to do this."
    "Me either." Val dropped onto the sofa and accepted the bottle of water Pete brought to her. "And ne ither can Jeff. Actually, what we can't believe more is that Kevin went for this."
    "I know. I figured, when I got the message about the show, that I didn't have to worry about saying yes because Kev would never agree to it. But then he did."
    Val shook her head. "What did he say to you?"
    "Something along the lines of, 'she's sick and if this makes her better it will be good for society.'" I shrugged. "He had time to change his mind, but he didn't."
    Val took a swig of water. "I have to say, now I'm curious to see the place."
    "Yeah, me too. Did you see it when Kev moved out?"
    "No , but Jeff came up here to help him move. You were there, right, Pete?"
    "Yeah. It was bad, but it didn't smell or anything. But I don't know if that was because of Kevin or because she wasn't letting garbage pile up yet."
    I winced. "You think she's letting garbage pile up now?"
    "God. I hope not."
    Val said, "It coul d be a fire hazard, if the place is so cluttered you can't walk through it."
    "True." I leaned forward on the love seat. "Well, we'll find out in the morning. Do you want to go get settled in the guest room?"
    "Sure." We stood up, and I picked up Val's bag. We walked upstairs, and I deposited the bag on the guest bed. Val turned and looked at me, and patted my cheek. "You look good, kiddo. I think living with Pete agrees with you."
    I laughed. "Yeah, it does."
    She leaned forward and whispered. “Have you decided yet whether you’re going to stay?”
    “Not for certain. But I’m definitely leaning toward staying.” Probably. Maybe.
    "Good. That’s good." She smiled and started to unpack her things.
    In the morning w e got up and headed for Culver City at about 5:00 so we could stop for muffins at a bakery on the way and get to the apartment by 5:30. I was familiar with this part of town to some extent, but hadn't been on Jennifer's street before. Her building was one of the old apartment complexes that was grand in its heyday, but was now just old and crumbling. The pool was in pretty good shape, but the chairs around it were beat up. We went up the outer stairs to the second floor. Jennifer's apartment was right on the end, next to the street. We knocked on the door, and it was opened by Raven.
    "Hi. Let me come out there." She stepped outside and closed the door. "I don't want you all to see inside until we do it with the cameras, so we get your authentic first reactions."
    "How bad is it?" Val asked.
    Raven shrugged. "I've seen worse. But it's pretty bad." She lit a cigarette, and blew the stream of smoke away from us. I stepped back, and Raven looked