There are five Mikes on the Highlander Court. Jake is friends with two of them, Mike Briggs and Mike Lloyd. The other three are cyphers, whom no one really knows. Jake gives them last names that correspond with their house numbers, so there’s Mike1819, Mike1811, and Mike 1889.
Mike 1819 lives alone. Two cars out front in the driveway, underneath old parachute sheets. It’s not clear what one is, an old corvette, possibly, but the other is for certain an old French Citroen. It’s missing its rear wheels and is sitting on its back axle, while it’s front is jacked up, somehow. It’s big eye teardrop headlights and its old sweeping front end curves peer out from under the sheet when the Santa Anas whip up, and the thing looks like a dead, beached sea turtle surrounded by dry grass and tall weeds, with loose plastic bags blown under, tangled in the mid-carriage.
Mike 1819 is rarely seen, but it’s thought he’s a recluse alcoholic, and that one day we will all be unsurprised to find a paramedic and the sheriff out front, asking questions. No one will have answers, except to say that he was seen making his way up the street on foot from time to time, shirtless, returning from the AM/PM mid-afternoon with a cylindrical shaped brown paper bag. About a month ago someone spied a notice taped to his front door, and spread the word that foreclosure was imminent. But then Mike1811 chatted him up one day and Mike1819 claimed that people drove slowly by his house all the time. “It’s not for sale!” he said he often yelled at them, and then stated that he would never sell. Jake commented that he would never finish painting the place either, as it had two different tones on the trim, and if one had hiked in the field out back, one would notice a completely opposite beige on the rear wall of stucco.
Mike1811 was a totally different breed. Works for the city with all the promise of a public pension, health insurance, and regular work holidays. Jake resented it, but tried not to think about it. Mike1811 was an obviously insecure man.
