Chapter 4 #2
I reluctantly checked my own messages—enough time had passed that things were slowly settling down about the video, but I was still wary of my phone.
There was a text, though, that didn’t relate to that at all.
I went quietly down the stairs, avoiding the ones that I knew would creak, and I closed the front door carefully behind myself.
No one heard me until I started the car and by that point, it was too late because I was already on the road to Shane’s house.
“I have to move. Can you help out with new apartments?” he had just asked and yes, I could. I drove quickly over to see him.
His place looked a lot the same, except worse.
We’d had a little thaw and the snow had melted and exposed the mud, sticks, and dead leaves that had been nicely hidden beneath it.
Then it had gotten cold again and everything had refrozen so it was locked into an ugly mess.
Since I’d been here before, one of the shutters had fallen off the front of his house.
It had stabbed into the ground and now it was frozen in that position, too.
At least his roommates didn’t appear to be home, because the street wasn’t littered with their cars and the driveway held only his truck. He was loading something into the bed of that and looking through his sunglasses into the sky when I pulled in behind him.
“Hello, Molly. I think it’s going to snow,” he said when I got out.
“Very likely. Is there anything in those boxes that you don’t want frozen or wet?”
“It’s everything that I own, so yeah, most of it.” He looked mad enough to swear but, having spent some time with him, I knew that he wouldn’t.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Why did you pack up all your stuff?”
“Because we’re getting evicted,” he told me. His deep voice had gotten even lower and it rumbled with what I guessed was anger. I had heard my dad’s shake when he screamed at us.
“Why are you getting evicted?” I wondered and followed him into the house as he answered.
He explained that one of his roommates, the short, mouthy one, had stopped paying rent a few months before.
The guy had managed to hide that from the rest of them, until Shane had reached out directly to the landlord about some leaking pipes and she had said he had a lot of nerve requesting repairs when they weren’t even paying what they owed.
“I’m going to have to give her the balance due because my other roommates are broke and if this goes into collections, it will affect my credit.
She’s proceeding with the eviction regardless of whether she gets the money because of all the lease violations they’ve incurred.
I’m fairly new in this house but they’ve been here long enough to really make her mad,” he stated. “Very, very mad.”
I was listening to him but I was also looking around, pretty much in horror. We were in the living room but it looked less like a place for human habitation and more like a place for rats to hang out—they would have been comfortable in the piles of trash, for sure.
“Shane,” I said. “This is a pit.”
“I know. I told you that.”
I hadn’t fully understood. Since our trip to Woodsmen stadium, he had come into the restaurant again and had another carbohydrate-free burger (with extra tomatoes) and fries with no salt.
He had also texted a few times, saying hello from different cities (Omaha, Fort Wayne, Madison) and sending a lot of pictures.
“I like to take them,” he had explained. “I have to keep getting phones with more storage because I like to look back at them a lot, too.”
I hadn’t thought that we’d progressed to a point where we would ask each other for help with moving, but I was game to pick up a few boxes for him and I did have trunk space available to help get him to the next place. Where was that going to be?
“I’ll go to a hotel for tonight,” he answered that question.
We had entered his room, which was as neat as his office in Woodsmen Stadium, but on the way we had passed the bathroom off the hall and that was abhorrently wretched.
I cleaned the public bathrooms at our restaurant so I felt like I had the background to accurately judge.
“I texted because you’d mentioned that you kept a list of available rentals, good ones. ”
“Yes,” I agreed. “I could have sent it to you.”
“I was going to ask you to do that but then you said that you were coming over.”
“Oh. I wanted to get out of my house anyway.” I had been right: we weren’t the kind of friends you would call for a move, and I had jumped the gun.
“Do you have the money to put down on a new place if you pay the arrears due to your landlord? Are you already on some kind of renter blacklist because she’s throwing you out? ”
“An eviction wouldn’t show up so soon.” But he was shaking his head.
“Heck, I don’t know. Maybe it will. I have savings from the last few years but I hate to spend money on this.
I don’t want to sign a lease today and make another mistake about my housing and I probably wouldn’t be able to move right in anyway. ”
“I like your idea of going to a hotel,” I said. “There’s a nice long-term place close to the airport. I can help you carry most of this stuff except they probably won’t want your bed in their room.” It was huge, much bigger than the twin bed I’d slept in since childhood.
“This is…” He hesitated, shaking his head again. “It’s a cluster. I’m supposed to be on the road right now to make it to Ohio by tonight.”
“I have time to help since I’m not working today.
” We were always closed on Sunday nights, because the original Walter had liked to spend time with his wife and kids.
Our current family unit had no desire to spend time with each other but the restaurant remained closed out of tradition.
“I can help you move. Maybe you’ll need to rent a storage place?
We had to do that three years ago when the restaurant flooded.
We put all the furniture we’d salvaged into a unit…
I bet I still have the number of the woman who managed it. She was great.”
While he continued to move his gear out of the house, I secured a storage unit large enough to hold his giant bed and dresser, and I also started to put a room on hold for him at the long-term hotel. “I just need your credit card,” I said when he came in.
“You’re amazingly efficient.” He handed me a thin piece of plastic and I used that to confirm everything.
In a few short minutes and after fighting with his big, dumb mattress, we were on the road.
He really didn’t have too much, which was lucky.
If my family ever had to move out of our house, there were layers upon layers to get through.
The garage was packed from top to bottom with the detritus of multiple generations, as was the attic, as was the basement.
“Did you leave a lot at your parents’ house in Arkansas?” I asked as we wrestled the mattress into the storage place. He was strong but it was so damn bendy!
“I guess I have childhood things there. My mom saved all my old school papers and baby stuff. She has the football from when I won my first high school game and all the awards from my playing days.” After he clicked shut his padlock on his new storage unit, he checked inside my car to confirm that it was empty.
All that was left now were personal things like clothes and toiletries, and he had stowed that in the back seat of his truck.
“Do you want to get something to eat before you head home?” he suggested.
“I thought you had to get on the road to Ohio.”
“I called my boss on the way here and said I would leave in the morning instead, due to personal problems. I didn’t explain that I had to flee from my home because I’d chosen to live with jackoffs,” he said.
“If it makes you feel better, I also live with them. My family.”
“At least you didn’t choose them,” he pointed out. “Let’s go eat. I’m starving.”
It was probably because he’d done most of the heavy lifting—ok, all of the heavy lifting.
Since I’d gotten tired just from looking around the Woodsmen football complex, I’d been forcing myself to go on walks around the neighborhood so I could get in better shape.
Apparently, I’d also have to start doing some arm workouts. And back, and probably abs, too.
“It’s not really dinner time yet. Let’s go to the hotel first so you can check in,” I said.
It was better to complete everything that you didn’t want to do.
That was why I’d finished our “group” project today, even though it was due on Wednesday.
“Then I have an idea for a restaurant where you’ll be able to order without a lot of adulterations. ”
We left my car at the hotel and went together to try out this new place, which was just opening for their dinner service as we arrived.
The menu was full of organic, non-fried, vegetable-protein items—so basically, it was the opposite of Walter’s and Shane did seem impressed.
“I can order something as-is,” he commented.
“I always make the staff hate me when I get picky.”
“Why are you so interested in nutrition? Was that part of your football life?”
“Yeah, but isn’t it a good idea for everyone to eat healthy?” he asked.
“No, because if they did, then I would lose my livelihood. What’s this?” I pointed to a word I didn’t recognize on the paper menu. They had real ones here, not just words painted on a cinderblock wall.
“That’s another way to say it’s made of soy. It’s pretty good,” he assured me. We talked over some other items and then, after we ordered, he had questions about the restaurant (my family’s place, not the one we were sitting in).
“Did you get so good at organizing by working at Walter’s?” he asked. “By the way, Walter’s…what? Diner? Eatery? It looks like part of your road sign is missing.”