It was a lonely Friday night.
After packing my belongings for the hike, I retired to my air mattress. Instead of a restful sleep, I spent hours fidgeting about in a half-awake reminiscence over times less austere. I imagined Shani, my ex-girlfriend, my most enigmatic and troubled love, emerging out of the shadows to propose reconciliation, to offer me a respite from my self-imposed solitude. Not that I wanted help; I didn’t know what I wanted. But I liked the idea of her tenderly presenting an olive branch. Shani haunted me periodically, her memory still so alarmingly vivid, even after the passing of these seven months. Tonight, she haunted my foresleep, leaving me with waking nightmares of wounds reopened. Sleep was had only in fits and starts.
I was very much looking forward to getting away.
When I woke up the next morning, I felt the false renewal of a man tasked with a tight schedule. So I made haste to the apartment and began preparations for Rob’s arrival. It was 7:00. He was scheduled to arrive at 11:30.
I rushed to clean up the mess left by Jürgen. As explained here, Jürgen’s facility in the art of home cleanliness wasn’t going to win him any awards. My work was cut out for me. Once again, I got to work on the Easter Egg Hunt search for pennies and gum wrappers, and restored the apartment back to its original condition. I noted that the only belongings I could determine to have been damaged or missing were consumables; for one, Jürgen seemed to have drained my rum supply and relieved me of my drink mixers. Fair enough, I thought, and noted to myself not to leave such “valuables” out in the open for risk of inviting uninvited use.
By 9:45, the place was ready for Rob. So I rewarded myself by washing my car looking forward to finishing early and showering and, if I was lucky, sneaking a short nap in before he showed up. But as I was washing the truck, Rob rolled up in his early model Lexus SUV.
“Hey man, are we good to go? And is it cool if I park here?”
It was shortly after 10:00am. I looked around nervously, as if a mythical third-party would materialize and offer a bemused, “Well, you’re here early!” Alas, I was on my own. So I compromised.
“Hey Rob,” I said. “Give me about an hour and I’ll have it all ready for you. Then you can park in this spot. Is that cool?”
“Sure man, do your thing,” he replied. “I was gonna grab some food anyway.”
When Rob returned, I had a clean car, a clean me, and a clean apartment. And the pride of having accomplished it all on a narrow timeline. I walked him through the apartment once more, making sure to cover every little detail I could imagine. I even pointed out Griffin, one of my more volatile neighbors who I was pretty sure was a drug-dealer.
“Avoid that guy,” I warned, handing him the sublease paper to sign. “He’s got a strange energy, but he’s harmless if you don’t engage him. Oh, and I put ‘Rogers’ as your last name, but I wasn’t sure if that was right.”
Rob’s eyebrows caved into one another as he scanned the paper, following the lines with his finger as he read.
“This looks cool,” he said, ignoring my surname comment. “As long as you’re telling me everything, I think I’m happy with the place.”
I paused for a moment. Was it not clear that Rob and I had already made a gentleman’s agreement? His tone suggested he had arrived today short of a final decision. And his words implied that I might be concealing some egregious fault, and as a result his side of the agreement was subject to potential loopholes to be named later. My stomach dropped, suddenly aware that the fate of my apartment, the belongings inside of it, and the $700 in cash now in my hands, could be vulnerable to the whim of a litigation-happy scam artist. Or, at best, that Rob was someone who viewed our relationship as potentially confrontational.
But instead of let that anxiety govern me, I tried the opposite approach. As much as I wanted to head north, I stayed with Rob for as long as possible. I answered questions about the general area, writing a list of nearby restaurants and bars I recommended and giving him tips on traffic and neighborhood parking. We talked about our backgrounds. Rob was secretive about details, but alluded to time spent in China as a bodyguard and Northern California as a part-owner of a bar. We shared travel stories for twenty minutes, the morning breeze our only interruption. Aside from wanting more time to gauge his intentions, I wanted to bond with Rob as much as possible before we parted ways. I wanted to shift the balance of our relationship to a more casual, respectful tone.
It was nearly noon when we parted ways, shaking hands and promising one another that we’d check out some Hollywood dive bar together in the coming weeks. I felt much better about our agreement when I backed out of my spot and headed for the highway. But I was still haunted by his words, the ever-foreboding “as long as you’re telling me everything.” They stuck with me for the entire 4 hour drive to the mountains.
Two-thirds of the way into that drive, my car’s overdrive light began to flash–something I’d heard was a precursor to transmission problems in vehicles of my make and year.
Month Two had kicked off with a bang.
– TOH
