6:30 Thursday: Aaron

Aaron was the first person to respond to my post, otherwise I might have ignored his mysterious and slow communication. As it stood, he had wanted to schedule an interview for a day earlier. But Wednesday is yoga night, so I declined. Best not to make business introductions when in the mind frame of reverse warrior. I digress.

Once 7:00 rolled around with no word from Aaron, I conceded my first scheduled interview was a wash. I ignored the signs of his wayward conviction, and for it I’d lost an hour. For the first time since I posted the ad, I began to wonder if finding a responsible tenant was going to be difficult. Subconsciously, I began to lower my expectations. Then…

7:30 Thursday: Linda

Linda showed up early, waving emphatically as she pulled into the reserved parking spot in front of the apartment. She strolled towards the apartment with the gait of a runway model. Each step Linda took held purpose, as if a glance down might reveal chalk-outline footprints intended to guide her route. If I was a stranger witnessing her strut, I’d have been easily convinced she was the property owner.

“Well, hello!” she beamed, disappearing briefly under the second floor balcony. Vocally, Linda was distinct. Her sunlit spirit echoed against the building’s walls, a cheerleader’s pep contradicted by the lioness growl of her Jersey accent.

She reappeared again as she ascended the winding exterior stairway leading to my place. Before I could get a look at her I was smiling. When her shadow graced my doorway, she reached out to shake my hand, simultaneously removing her stylish sunglasses with the other.

“Linda Mascherano,” she said.

Linda was beautiful. Her long, black hair pulled back to reveal the flattering contours of her seemingly always-smiling face. She had a kindness in her sienna eyes, a spirit starkly contrasted by the conviction of her posture, a taut, 5’7″ frame radiating with stiff know-how. I had to pause to remind myself she was here to rent my apartment.

“Let me show you around.”

Linda worked as a producer on the financial side of film and television projects, enforcing a measure of flexibility in her life that accommodated the whimsy of the industry. That flexibility had brought her here to me, searching for a spot to call home for a couple of months. Compounding her struggles to find a place was the fact that she’d just gotten a dog, a young terrier whom she had named—you guessed it—The Office Hobo.*

Sharing my first name with Linda’s dog wasn’t our only common ground. Linda and I spent twenty minutes on my front balcony, discussing our views on the entertainment industry, trading gripes about the disingenuous nature of requisite relationship development and waxing poetic about the artistry of the rare project free from the restrictive strings of profit motive. It was a pleasant interview.

Linda liked the place. So much so that she offered me the money up front, in cash. But I let her know I had other folks to interview and I would need until the weekend to be in touch with her. She accepted, noting that unless the unlikely occurred and she found another place just as wonderful who would accept her and The Office Hobo (the terrier Office Hobo), she would be delighted to rent the apartment.

It was a successful interview. And because of that success, I walked away with renewed optimism about the search for tenants, and I was genuinely curious to see what the other candidates had to offer. As I watched Linda leave, another thought crossed my mind: I had just discovered a genius way to meet women.

8:30 Thursday: Tre

When I saw my phone after meeting with Linda, a message from Tre was waiting for me. Something had come up at work and he would have to ask me for a rain check. After having been stood up by Aaron earlier that evening, my initial reaction was to blow him off. Linda’s interview had reignited my sense of confidence in finding the right fit for my apartment, and I wasn’t keen on making last-minute changes in plans for someone who couldn’t make good on an appointment. But instead of cede to my impulse, I put down the phone and decided to give my response a few minutes of thought.

Getting wrapped up in the emotion of a major life change is difficult to avoid. Since I’d initiated the sequence to move out of my place, I felt a spike in my energy that I could only attribute to the rising flow of adrenaline and cortisol. It was my body’s chemical reaction to the emotional interpretation of my decision to meet a logically-perceived need to move out of my home. Or something like that. I made a mental note to keep an eye on it.

I decided to email Tre back and try to set something up for the weekend. He had a strike against him now, but I believe in giving people a second chance (except for Aaron–total douche). He might end up being a good fit after all. As I was sending the message off, my next door neighbor, James, made his way into my doorway. He was curious to know how the interviews were going.

“Well,” I said, looking up from my phone. “Let me tell you about Linda.”

3:00 Friday: Yari & Jürgen

I left work a couple hours early on Friday afternoon in order to move forward with my interviews. (Note about the flexibility of the job—expand on this here.)

It was Yari who contacted me about the rental, looking for a one-month lease pretty early on in the process. She was emailing from Barcelona, asking about a room for her and her Austrian boyfriend. They were spending the month together in Los Angeles and were looking for a nice spot near the beach to call their base.

Yari wouldn’t be in America until the move-in day, so it was Jürgen who came by to check the place out. Jürgen arrived to my door with a warm smile, his frame filling the doorway with a atmospheric 6-4 frame. He had the prototypical Aryan presence one might expect from a dude named Jürgen. Blond hair. Severe features. Thick accent. It was very Hapsburg.

Despite this all, Jürgen carried himself with the nonchalance of a polished man of leisure. Immediately upon his arrival, he let his hands slink into his pockets and rested his shoulder on the frame of the front door. His casually unbuttoned linen shirt rounding out the scene nicely, suggesting strongly that he’d shown up for a session with the photographer rather than a meeting with the landlord.

Jürgen loved the apartment. He said he was willing to take it as soon as I could manage. He was in the music business, you see, and had arrived to Los Angeles a couple of weeks earlier to explore an opportunity to compose a commercial jingle for a client and wanted to try out living here for a while to see if LA was a viable long-term career option.

My only red flag was that he referred to Yari as a friend, something I didn’t press him on but noted carefully. Perhaps it was a translation issue (English was Jürgen’s third most comfortable language, after German and Spanish), but Yari had clearly referred to their relationship as an intimate one. I thought it strange to stay in such a small apartment with someone with whom you were only friends. Or worse, with someone who thought she and you were more than friends.

Other than that, Jürgen seemed like a fine candidate. I liked that this was a couple in their thirties, and his general poise comforted me. I told him I was meeting another potential renter shortly, and I’d be in touch with him by the end of the day on Saturday. He seemed to be genuinely interested in hearing back from me.

I now had two great options for renters, both with different time frames. Things were looking up.

4:30 Friday: Guiseppe & Dana

My second European couple was up next. Dana had contacted me a few days earlier, looking for a place for her and her Italian boyfriend to move while they transitioned to California living. Dana was raised in the area and had spent the past few years living with Guiseppe in Italy. They were returning here to enjoy the beach and, of course, work in the entertainment industry.

It was Guiseppe who showed up to do the business. Like a true Italian (I have license here, as my mother’s side of the family is full-blooded), Guiseppe dressed in sleek black loafers with cleanly pressed pants and a designer button-up shirt. He shook my hand firmly and made himself comfortable as he toured the apartment, leading much of the conversation with the ease of a senior financial officer. Guiseppe was in his early thirties.

I’ll cut this description short because there was little of note in our conversation. I kept it brief, having gotten a feel that the space was a little too small for he and his girlfriend. I believe he and Dana would have made fine renters, but after Linda and Jürgen, I felt an executive confidence to let this one go.

I decided to make myself an early dinner–tofu stirfry–and mull it over. I had met two viable candidates already, and was waiting to hear back from two more about appointments over the weekend. It seemed, then, I had the option to rent the place for one or two months. As I began to chop through my first bell pepper, it occurred to me in a very visceral way that I would be soon free from the chores of the kitchen, relieved of the meditative act of preparing a meal and cleaning up after it. The almost daily task of cooking my own dinner was about to become a luxury, a routine no longer viable without the extravagance of a kitchen counter and stovetop range. In the context of thoughts like these, one month or two sounded like a much more complicated debate.

I tasked myself with making a mental list of pros and cons as I finished preparing my meal. By sundown, I’d have made up my mind.

 

– TOH

* i.e. my first name, which I (obviously by now) cannot post publicly…