Fucking Nick, the smallest of petty, small people. We got to see him today. Fucking yay.

Here’s the timeline. Exactly 21 days from moving from his shithole (OK, it was livable, but a spiritual shithole), we got the ridiculous letter. The one where not only was he keeping our security deposit, but he wanted $800 or so more bucks for his shitty, old carpet. We waited a week or so, just to be chill and all, and sent him our own letter stating directly and with legal references, “You got to be shitting us,” and asking for our security deposit back.

Again, for the chillness of it all, we gave him a couple of weeks to reply and send a goddamn check. Then, we filed our court paperwork and got a June date lined up for the hearing.

Alrighty, then, up until about then I was thinking I knew what was what and how this whole thing might roll. Win, lose or draw, we were just doing our paperwork and not lying down on Nick’s ridiculous cash grab.

We hadn’t heard anything, nary a peep, other than from the nice process servers, who said Nicky boy had been served.

Of course, though, Nick, my man, did not want to cough up some reasonable cash or otherwise make it easy, chill and non-litigious. Nope, instead he changed the court date from June (which I had picked) to early September because of an alleged summer sojourn in the ancient lands of his Grecian roots.

So, we knew two things — He got our papers, and he had the court date (and the hearing ID number from the paperwork we submitted).

What we didn’t know is he had his own dealio going on the whole time. Turns out Nick had wanted to sue our asses all along. Only thing is he’s so monumentally fucktarded, we never got notified until last week.

A couple of certified letters showed up whilst I was vacationing in Scotland. M. picked them up when I got back. Nick was, I thought, countersuing. But, he was just suing suing with his own case number, his own paperwork, his own set of dates, only he ain’t never told us.

So, we showed up in court today, a day earlier than the changed date we had been sent after Nick headed to Greece. Nope, that day, our date, was set for tomorrow. We showed up today, a day early, following the date on last week’s new letters.

The mandatory chat in the hallway to try to settle the stupidity was an exercise in futility. Not only was Nick’s idea of settling demanding we write a check for the full amount, he was just oozing to show us his pictures.

Apparently, Nick’s an Arlo Guthrie fan, because he came to court with a pile of “colored glossy pictures with circles and arrows on the back of each one to use as evidence against us.” Our judge was sighted, though. And, his photos were fucking crazy with notes like “urine” next to an arrow pointing to an obvious rust stain on the bolt holding the toilet together.

So we went back in and had a hearing.

A fair amount of our hearing was taken up by the commissioner just trying to get that procedural stuff straight and figure out the paper trail. She had combined the two cases and was especially hung up on the reality that M. and I got no where near the 10 days at least the court said we should get from notice to hearing. Better yet, I never actually signed that I got the paperwork (Nick didn’t bother putting an apartment number on my address and the PO let M. get my letter). Ergo, I was never officially served, and M.’s certified letter wasn’t dated, and she implied he was served half-assedly.

She asked if we wanted to “waive service” and go on with the deal or get more time. We went a long and waived. Who the fuck wants to keep going back over so stupid a situation?

We pretty much stuck to the game plan — Shut up, answer questions and stay calm and chill and hope for Nick to live as he assuredly, inevitably must. And, he stayed true to form. He harangued and lied and didn’t answer questions and made no sense. I think the judge noticed.

My bloodboilingest moments were when my feminist ire was baited. Part of his story was how he couldn’t complete the walk through when we left the apartment, because I was getting upset. The other moment of misogyny was while explaining the allegedly ruined carpet (what with it’s 18 spots of varying sizes and hues), professional shampooers told him the two, small, red ones would never come out. He didn’t know, but he thought the red ones were “a woman’s makeup or something, your honor.”

Not to mention that in the aforementioned hallway, ostensibly to discuss settling, he said that M. should decide what we should do, and he was waiting to hear.

(Comedian to the core, I did get my one laugh from the other folks waiting around the courtroom. I told the judge that I don’t wear makeup and “neither does my boyfriend.” In my favor, I think and hope, neither did she.)

At the end, after trying to get the stories straight and trying to figure out what the cash situation was and who might owe who what and for what, the commissioner asked if there wasn’t anything left to be said. Sho fucking ‘nuf, Nick had to get in his last words. He’s a last word getting in kind of OCD guy.

He said something like, “They never so much as touched a broom in two years, and that’s God’s truth.” He definitely ended his bald-faced lie with an invocation of God and truth.

(Of course, he didn’t actually notice that in his story, he complained about the cleaning supplies we used only to wrap up the whole deal by saying we never cleaned once. Um, continuity there Nick, you lying sonofabitch.)

Now we wait. Wait to see what the system of jurisprudence and all that kind of democratic fun stuff will or won’t offer us, and whether our story had that right ring of credibility and non-crazy rambling and Nick’s didn’t.