No. She. Didn’t.

No. She. Didn’t.

“Oh, yes she did,” I replied emphatically and with my best Monte Durham intonation. Ten minutes into a daylong shopping excursion, Mrs. Yikes dropped the bombshell that she was married to a mobster. I was relaying this fact --one of many in a rapid series of Yikes stories-- to my sister, who lives 1,100 miles away.  “I don’t even know what to say to that,” she said.

If there is one thing the Yikes’s can do and do well, it is rendering one speechless. Over sharing, bombshell dropping, and otherwise catching you off guard is their specialty. Like the day, seemingly apropos to nothing, Mr. Yikes asked if I was gay or straight. Scrambling to figure out how we went from talking about the weather to my sexual orientation, I resorted to the truth.  And then stood silently waiting for an explanation. None came.  “Now, back to the weather.”

The Yikes’s are the owners of the riverside cottage I inhabit  – 600 sq ft of a tired and decrepit edifice clinging to an exquisite location. I am paying way too much for it, but only for three months. And after yesterday’s announcement, am I gonna complain? Hell no. (Monte, with a flourish of the index finger)

I hesitate to call them landlords, because that term usually indicates some sort of control or responsibility over a property. I can’t really call them slumlords, because they are quite visibly present on the property, as in 30 feet behind me in the main house.  I’m trapped between them, and the river. They are not mean, nor malicious, but there is an air of instability about them that is unsettling. Crazy, whacky, so many words to describe them, yet none quite fit. Except--yikes.

The first time I met them, in the dark, in their driveway, they did a brain dump on me like I was the first person they had seen in days.  Both speaking at once, I learned of the 17 hour drive, Mrs. Yike’s bad knee, the fact she was on Vicidan, that Mr. Yikes was on anti-depressants and just couldn’t wait to get here so he drove all night, even though she said not to, with both a cat and a dog and one hell of a load of stuff in a wagon Mercedes. They had just been at a football party at friends they had in the area, wait til you meet them, you'll like them, but they were so tired from the drive they had to come home early, how did I like the cottage, and…when I turned and walked away from that five-minute chance encounter, head reeling, I said to myself, “Yikes.”

Despite their craziness, the daylong – and I do mean eight full hours here people –- shopping spree was actually quite fun. Aging mobster wife or not, this chick knows how to shop. Not sure I’d add shopping tastefully to her skill set, but she can squirrel out a bargain in a warehouse full of junk. We went to six thrift stores – three under one roof --- 42,000 sq ft of other people’s cast offs—and a lawn sale, a froyo shop, a discount store, and a farmer’s market.  It was truly educational in many ways, and I scored a great computer chair for $17, and some delicious fresh arugula at the farmer's market, so I was very happy.

Over the course of the day, Mrs. Yikes told me I should buy all wicker furniture for my new place (I hate wicker); I should add more highlights to my hair (I pride myself on NOT adding much color to my hair); the flowered print love seat I liked was too busy (I love flower print sofas) and outside an antique store, she shoved free plastic flowers in my hands because they were “FREE! and they are good for adding a spot of color to a room.” (I hate plastic flowers).

Needless to say, perhaps, but my cottage living room is now sporting a festive bouquet of white plastic hyacinths and is filled with wicker furniture (that she bought).

But, you know, the Yikes’s are growing on me. Do I think Mr. Yikes is really a mobster? No. A businessman who operates just outside the law? Absolutely.  Do I really believe that they met when she was 13 and he was 16 and have been together for 48 years? Maybe. Since Mr. Yikes told me that he thought she was about 20 because she had “boobs out to here” when he asked her out, it’s possible that she snuck out her bedroom window as they claim and that their relationship started way back then.  Do I think he really went to MIT, dropped out and attended Wentworth instead, was president of the college Playboy Bunny club and has a degree in engineering? I don’t know.

What I do know is that having them as landlords is unnerving, but exciting and hilarious and interesting at the same time. As a kid, I used to love looking through my red plastic View-Master at film reels featuring foreign lands. The Yikes’s are my present day View-Master into a world I would never have encountered without them.  Maybe on HBO, but not in real life.

Oh, and yesterday, on our "American Pickers meets  I Married the Mob" adventure, Mrs. Yikes’s exact words were: “My parents were strict Baptists and they wanted me to marry a minister, and instead I married a mob guy – they weren’t too happy with me.”

I bet not, Mrs. Yikes. I bet not.