6. Theresa
Aloud, obnoxious, unfamiliar noise jolted Theresa awake the next morning. The sound came from the living room. Music. One glance at her clock confirmed that whoever played music at that volume at 7:05 on a Saturday morning needed to learn some manners. Quickly.
She stumbled into the living room, pressing her ear against the wall separating her apartment from the one next door. The throbbing base and overly energetic vocals came from that wall. And it didn’t stop after she pounded the wall with her fist.
Building management was going to get a strongly worded email from her later that day about the new neighbor, who clearly didn’t belong there.
In under a minute, Theresa stood in the hallway, wrapped in a warm, fuzzy pink bathrobe with coordinating slippers, knocking on his door.
Derek appeared almost immediately, opening the door with a wide, mocking grin and a cup of coffee in his hand. “Good morning.”
“Turn down your music.”
“Didn’t expect to see your face at my door so early.”
“I’m going to call management and file a complaint.”
“I thought you’d call the police.”
“Haven’t ruled that out.”
“Glad to see you made it home safely last night.”
Theresa growled. Last night was a complete waste of her time. She had no idea how he guessed that she was going to the neighborhood surrounding the soup kitchen, but she’d barely exited the bus downtown when she realized that wandering that section of the city, alone and on foot in the dark, was one of her worst ideas.
Another bus showed up within a few minutes, and she rode that, not caring where it would take her as long as it was somewhere safer. By the time she got off that bus, she was 45 minutes from her apartment and no closer to finding her sister. A rideshare car picked her up and took her back home. She learned an expensive lesson. One that might have cost her more than money. Every night that her sister and mother remained out on the streets, drunk or high or hungry, was another night that she failed to help them. Failed to take care of the only family she had.
But Derek didn’t need to know that he was right about wandering the streets alone at night.
She pushed her way past him into his apartment, which wasn’t hard because he had the door wide open and hadn’t expected her to barge in uninvited. The speaker sat on a small table in his living room, pressed up against the wall that his living room shared with her living room. Before he could stop her, she unplugged the speaker on the counter and held it tight.
She marched past him again and didn’t stop until she got back to her apartment, the door firmly locked behind her.
Theresa’s firstcoffee-shop date of the morning was a fifty-seven-year-old man who smelled like a chimney pipe, even though he insisted that he never smoked. He drank three cups of coffee during the first twenty minutes of their date, talking faster and faster as the caffeine flowed through his system. Her second date of the morning said he was sixty, but he looked like he was at least eighty years old. Her third and final date of the morning stood her up.
At this rate, she’d never find someone rich who she’d be willing to marry. She returned to her apartment to see an unsigned note on her door notifying her that her electricity had been turned off. There was only one explanation for that. She tore the paper off her door and walked to Derek’s door.
“What’s this?” She held up the paper within two inches of his face as soon as he opened the door.
“Looks like your electricity is out.”
“But yours isn’t.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I told the building manager about the noise and that you weren’t in your apartment. I followed her down to the electric panels and she showed me where the electricity was to your apartment. I promised her I would turn it back on if I saw you to save the manager some time.”
“Turn it back on.”
“Give me back my speaker.”
Theresa leveled a glare at him, trying her best to remain angry. There was no denying it. He won that round. She’d turned up the opera music for her plants before leaving her apartment, sure that the music would seep into Derek’s apartment through their shared wall.
“You’ll get the speaker when my electricity is back on.”
Derek waited a beat before barely nodding his head and stepping out into the hallway. He closed his door, but didn’t lock it. Within moments, Theresa was left alone in the hallway while he went to whatever part of the apartment building held the switch for her unit’s electricity.
She stepped back into her apartment, locked the door behind her, and waited until her light turned on. Just to spite him, she turned on another opera song and cranked up the volume, waiting patiently until a loud bang sounded on her door.
“I know you’re in there. Give me my speaker.”
“Hold on.” She unplugged the power cord from the speaker, then opened the door barely wide enough to fit the speaker through the opening. Before he could realize that a crucial part of the speaker was missing, she slammed the door shut and locked it again.
Within seconds, heavy banging resumed on her door. “You kept the power cord!”
Peering into the peephole to see the look on his face, she replied with a smirk. “That was never part of our deal.”
“It was implied.”
“Oops.” She walked into her living room, turned on the tv, and turned the volume all the way up before heading to take a shower and clean off all the bad memories from this morning’s dates.
The chirping noisefrom her phone sounded over the noise of the television, an unusual sound in the afternoon. No one ever called her phone except her friend Emily, and they spoke the other night. No one else regularly called or texted, except work when they needed to ask her to cover an extra nursing shift at the hospital. She put down her nail polish and shuffled on her heels so she wouldn’t mess up the freshly applied polish on her toes as she crossed the living room and found her phone.
The soup kitchen’s supervisor, Cherie, greeted her.
“Bad news, I have to reduce the hours of the soup kitchen. We’re only going to be open on Friday and Saturday nights from now on.”
“What?”
“At least you’ll have your Tuesday and Thursday evenings free.”
It took a minute for the words to sink in. There was nothing to do on Tuesday and Thursday nights other than sit at home alone. They were the worst nights of the week for first dates. But even worse, two fewer days at the soup kitchen meant two fewer chances of getting news about her sister.
“There has to be a way to keep the soup kitchen open on more nights.”
“I tried, Theresa. I really did. And I know how dedicated you are to working there. But I can’t get enough donations and funding is lower than ever. There’s no possible way to stay open during the week.”
“Well, try harder.” Her voice came out harsher than she meant, but she silently refused to apologize or back down. “There has to be a way.”
“I’ve spent hours and hours calling places. Grocery stores, restaurants, and different businesses around town. I can’t get much help.”
Theresa looked down and bit her lip. The nail polish on her right toes were smudged. Everything was going wrong today.
“I’ll help.”
Cherie sighed on the other end of the line. “I doubt there’s anything you can do, but I appreciate your offer.”
“No, I mean it. I’m going to get more donations. Will you reopen the soup kitchen during the week if I do that?”
“It’s going to take a lot of donations to keep us open that often again. We’ll need long-term commitments, and lots of businesses aren’t able to do that right now.” The hesitation in Cherie’s voice spoke louder than her words.
“I’ll make them.”
As soon as Theresa hung up the phone with Cherie, she capped the open bottle of nail polish, returned it to the other bottles in her collection before putting on thick socks and winter boots. Her pedicure was already ruined at this point, so there was no need to wait.
“I can do this,” she mumbled to her reflection as she took one last glance in her mirror before leaving her apartment.
Without a trace of hesitation, she stopped in front of Derek’s door and banged loudly. He answered within a minute.
“Are you busy?”
“No.” His eyes were hazy, and his hair was ruffled like he’d just woken up from a nap.
“My car’s still in the shop. I need you to drive me around for the next few hours.”
“Why would I do that?”
She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the power cord for his speaker. “You’ll only get this back if you help me.”
He crossed his arms expectantly but didn’t say anything.
Theresa swallowed hard. “Please.”
“Fine.” He reached out to snag the cord but Theresa was faster. She shoved it in her pocket, out of his reach.
“You’ll get this back when we’re done.”
Three hours, seven restaurants, and two grocery stores later, Theresa glanced at the list she’d assembled while Derek drove her around town.
Only a few of the places agreed to make any type of donation. It wasn’t enough.