I saw a cricket in my Palm Springs apartment the other day. At least I thought it was a cricket. It could’ve been something else like a cockroach. God, please don’t let it be a cockroach. Whatever it was, I smashed it with my fist and wrapped it in a napkin before I threw it away.

It reminded me of my apartment in Hollywood from four years ago. I moved out of there during COVID. It was a month after the George Floyd riots, and Hollywood was bleeding slowly. I had to get out of there.

I remember this one night, I had a neighbor who was an actor in Hollywood. Go figure. He used to stay up late at night and rehearse his lines all by himself. I could hear him through the wall.

But one night, he brought someone over, someone with a British accent, and they yelled at each other. My neighbor was yelling, not the British guy. The British guy was calm and collected. It was my neighbor who was panicking.

”You crazy f**k, how could you do this?”

”Oh, you’re being completely ridiculous.”

”You’re sick. She didn’t do anything to you.”

”Now calm down. You don’t want to cause a scene.”

”What do we do with her? We can’t just leave her like this.”

Now, I was lying in bed during the altercation. I thought about calling the police. But what would I say? I knew my neighbor. We would talk to each other when we met in the hallway. He was a nice guy, but not that night. He was screaming from the top of his lungs at this British character. Or maybe there was no British character. Maybe my neighbor was rehearsing a scene, and he was going back and forth between the British character and himself. I was hoping for that.

”We have to do something before the cops come. We can’t just leave here like this, you sick f**k.”

”I said quit being ridiculous. We have it well under control.”

It felt like the yelling went on all night. I let it pass and fell asleep at some point after drinking enough beer.

The next time I saw my neighbor, it was a few days later, and he was singing a different tune. He smiled at me in the hallway. Not only was he smiling, he was glowing in a manic sort of way.

”What’s up?” I said.

”Hello, Ben. Guess who I found the other night.”

Uh, I was thinking a woman’s body, but I played dumb.

”I don’t know. Who?”

”Jesus. I found Jesus.”

”Oh, okay.”

”And he told me to pass the message along to you.”

”What message?” I asked.

”The word of God. God loves you.”

In the few years that I’d known him, he’d never once brought up God or Jesus. He was a party animal actor, a womanizer. Now, he’d flipped into a born again Christian overnight it seemed, ever since that fight with the British guy.

He gave me a copy of the Old Testament. It was smaller than my passport. His smile never left his lips.

”I want you to read this and come to my church.”

He was starting to scare me, so I began to close the door on him.

”Thanks,” I said. “I’ll read this and tell you what I think.”

I kept the Old Testament in my bathroom where I kept a lot of books: on top of my toilet.

One morning, I read it, and I’d never read the material before. I was sitting on the toilet with it, and my mind began to drift. Needless to say, the Old Testament was boring me. There were too many names to follow, too much exposition. It wasn’t getting to the point, so I stopped reading it and left it on my toilet.

Another morning, the Testament slipped off my stack of books and fell into the water. I panicked because my neighbor might’ve wanted the book back after I’d read it—-which would never happen. I quickly fished it out and tried to dry it as best as I could, but the pages were already soggy. When they dried out, the pages were stiff, and they weren’t flat anymore.

My neighbor came knocking. I guessed he wanted the book back, but I wasn’t going to tell him what had happened. It might’ve devastated him, angered him, whatever…

”Did you read it?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

”And what did you think?”

”A lot of names to follow. I really like the part about Noah.”

”I want to invite you to a reading.”

I really didn’t have time for a reading, but how could I disappoint him?

He never found out about the toilet incident, and I never went to one of his readings. But I respected his quest to find Jesus and tried to keep what happened between him and the British guy private.

Out of deep curiosity, though, I asked him about it.

”You got into a fight one night with what sounded like a British guy. Who was it?”

”Oh. It was nothing big.”

I guessed it was sort of none of my business.

I still have the Old Testament somewhere and tried reading it again, but again, my mind drifted, and I couldn’t concentrate.

My neighbor moved away soon after that to Glendale. He gave up his acting pursuit to go on a mission to talk others into finding Jesus, and I believed he said he was going into real estate, too. We hugged before he left.

”Keep Jesus in your heart,” he said.

Those were his last words.

We’re still on Facebook. Every month or so, he’ll post something about Jesus and the importance of Donald Trump. I always read those posts. They’re short and to the point, unlike the Old Testament.