Chapter 6 Some Hard Nos
Some Hard Nos
Morgan stared at her ad. Her headache pounded and seemed likely to turn it into a full-on migraine. Surely the ad was explicit enough? But so far, all the applicants were exactly what she didn’t want.
She’d turned down a teenage college student desperate to move out of her parents’ basement. Would Morgan be okay buying her liquor?
Not in this lifetime.
The mid-thirties accountant had seemed promising.
She was friendly but polite and had described herself as an introverted neat freak lesbian who liked to binge-watch TV series using headphones.
Morgan had been about to offer her the room when the perfect roommate mentioned her girlfriend would also be moving in once her lease was up next month, along with her two ragdoll cats.
Uh, no.
But the real low point had been five minutes ago.
For starters, Lawden wasn’t female. He was a cisgender male with a Jesus Saves tattoo, and his MAGA cap told Morgan everything she needed to know about his likely personality and views on queer people.
She kept him on the doorstep as she lied—politely, through gritted teeth—that the room had most likely gone to the last person to see it only fifteen minutes ago.
He tipped his cap back, offered her fifty bucks a month more, then looked her up and down and said he presumed she could cook.
She shut the door in his face and leaned against it, breathing hard. Three busts out of three.
She considered the ad and started to type. Absolutely no males. No MAGA Republicans, no one under thirty. No parties allowed. Queer only. She hit submit with a thump.
~ ~ ~
Heidi pushed open the door of the Fly Inn, grimacing when she saw the dirty glasses and plates still on the tables, the ring marks on the bar, and Robert sitting at the counter staring at the TV.
“You’re late.” He didn’t look away from the Denver Broncos game.
“By two minutes.” Heidi made several trips, collecting dirty glasses and plates and putting them on the bar, then returned to wipe.
It was a job, she reminded herself. And despite the vibe she got from Robert that he would fire her the second someone better came along, she was still there after two weeks.
Still being paid at the end of every week.
She was getting regular evening shifts now, and the tips were much improved.
The new cook, Arnie, lived close to the hostel and often gave her a ride home.
Lula had quit in dramatic fashion at the end of the first week, when Robert yelled at her for being too slow.
“The fuck I’m slow.” Lula had ripped off her apron and threw it on the bar. “You need a fucking cook as well as a server. I quit. Find some other sucker to work for you, you lazy bastard.”
Lula had walked into a job as a server at a new sports bar on the southern edge of the LoDo district.
She said it was good and that the second a position opened up, she’d let Heidi know.
Lula had also moved into a rambling old house near Cheeseman Park with one of the other servers and her housemates.
It was Friday—payday. That was the good thing. The not-so-good thing was that the hostel had a limit on how long people could stay. And Heidi would reach it in two days.
She acknowledged one of the regulars’ tilt of his empty glass, poured him another Fat Tire, and passed on his cheeseburger order to the cook. She poured cheap vodka, opened bottles of Corona, and made a decent gin and tonic for a young couple who had obviously strayed into the wrong bar.
Robert left for the evening, saying he’d be back to lock up, and Heidi breathed a sigh of relief. No more nitpicking—at least for this shift.
Arnie slipped her a burger and a few burned fries, which she ate at the far end of the bar out of sight of the CCTV. She had a job. She had some money. Now she needed somewhere to live.
The roommate site seemed to have a few promising ads, but she quickly found many of them weren’t for her.
She’d prefer only one or two roommates and, if possible, her own bathroom.
She added a filter for LGBT+ friendly, and the potential list shrank even more.
She flagged the possibles and went back to work.
~ ~ ~
Hi potential roomie,
I’m Heidi, 32, a pansexual cisgender woman.
I’m Australian, been in the US for a couple of months, new to Denver.
I like it here, looking forward to exploring the city and the mountains.
I’m working bar five or six days each week.
Your place looks great, and I’d love to come over and see if we’re a fit.
Heidi threw the cell phone down on her bed. The dorm was empty apart from two new blokes who presumably thought themselves alone as they debated which beds were more likely to be those of “hot girls,” going by the possessions and neatness.
She rolled her eyes, and, without drawing back the privacy curtain, shouted that all the women here were hot and that all were more discerning than to want to talk to someone like them.
“Who said anything about talking?” one replied, and they both sniggered.
Heidi waited until they’d left, then stomped over to the manager’s office to report them.
“There’s always a few like that,” the manager said. “Think a mixed dorm is one big orgy. You’re stuck with them tonight, but I’ll move them to a male dorm tomorrow.”
Heidi thanked him. There, right there, was yet another reason she needed to find somewhere else to live.
Her phone pinged with a reply to her email.
Hi Heidi, you sound great, and I’d love to meet you.
Do you have your own furniture? The room isn’t furnished.
One of my other roomies is moving out tomorrow, so it will just be the five of us until we find someone else.
Oh, and the price in the ad doesn’t include power, Internet, and the weekly kitty for shared food, which together adds another $420 to the price per month. Hope that’s okay.
She flicked back to the ad. Nothing about six roomies, everything about only two bathrooms. And the extra costs pushed the room out of her budget. No way, José.
She went to the kitchen and poured a cup of the free coffee. It tasted like dirt, but she wasn’t knocking back free. The two jerks from earlier were there, heads together, obviously rating the women in the room.
Heidi ignored them and sat to check her other replies.
So far, she’d been to see three rooms. The first was an older couple whose adult son was finally moving out of their basement.
The basement was roomy but stank of frat boy, and the ventilation was poor.
Still, she’d been prepared to give it a go as the rent was cheap and there were always scented candles and air fresheners.
But then they told her that although the son had moved out, he still came around every evening to play video games on the faster Internet, so he’d be in the basement studio from around nine at night until the early hours. That was a big, hard no.
The second had been sharing with two girls, one of whom owned the condo.
Or, rather, her daddy did. The rent was cheap, utilities included, and it was in a great part of town.
They had been pleasant, if a bit nervous, in her company.
But then one said she could have the room on the condition that she accompanied them to church for three hours every Sunday, and maybe one evening a week.
She mentioned the name of the church, and Heidi knew it as a big, fat anti-gay church rumored to still be doing conversion therapy.
“Your ad says LGBT+ friendly,” she’d said. “That doesn’t sound very friendly to me.”
The tallest, palest girl hadn’t smiled. “We are LGBT friendly,” she’d said. “We’re helping people like you get back on the right path.”
Heidi had clenched her teeth to stop the angry words, and, instead, turned and left.
And now this. The expensive share house with too many roommates. She might as well continue living in a hostel.
She continued scrolling down the roommate ads.
She was nearly at the bottom, listings that had been there for three or more weeks, when she saw one for a room in West Washington Park.
Sharing with one woman who wanted one female roommate.
The rent was within her budget—just—and the photo of the room looked great.
There had to be a catch, or else the ad simply hadn’t been removed when the room was taken.
She opened the ad. There, right there, was the catch.
The list of attributes for a potential roomie was longer than the ad itself.
Heidi read through. Neat, clean, quiet. She could be all of those—if she worked at it.
Female, queer. Those were a definite tick.
No kids or MAGA. She was starting to like this woman.
The ad had been edited three times. The woman was obviously picky.
Picky was okay. Picky she could live with.
And West Wash Park was an area she’d love to live but had thought she couldn’t afford.
She and Lula had gone there on one of their days off.
They’d walked around the lake, had coffee at a cute coffee shop, and dropped their résumés off at a couple of small bars located in what were basically back streets.
She opened a message window and started a reply.