Author's note: No promises as to the quality of this work, or how often it'll be updated, but I had some random thoughts floating in my head that I thought I should get out. After all, not every moment in life fits into a neat narrative (not that I've ever mastered neat narratives to begin with).
So, I hope somebody enjoys this.
Move In Day
The sun beaming in, Charlie reached up and adjusted the visor of his Explorer, straining to see the stoplight ahead. To his left stood a drab, 4-floor apartment with tinfoil over the windows, courtesy of the paranoid meth cooks who favored that building. To his right stood EZ Pawn, with the flickering neon sign shaped like a diamond.
.
He'd always liked that sign as a kid. By adult standards, it was garish reminder of the neighborhood's suffering, but at six, that huge flashing diamond was a sight to behold; the rich cakeeaters over in Edina might have had circular driveways and swimming pools designed to look like tiny lakes, but his neighborhood had the EZ Pawn sign. Even from a couple of buildings down, he could see it from his bedroom window, giving him a welcoming nightlight as he drifted off to sleep in his favorite old North Stars T-shirt and flannel pajama pants, the sound of Casey scrubbing dishes and pouring herself a well deserved glass of wine in the next room.
Besides, EZ Pawn was a nice place. That was where people with good stuff went.
.
KwiK Pawn was where your mother went with a broken toaster in one arm and an outgrown pair of rollerblades in the other, trying to make enough money buy a loaf of bread and maybe a gallon of gas so that she wouldn't have to walk the two miles to work the next day.
KwiK Pawn was genuinely sad. EZ Pawn really was glamorous…for a place where men down the street cooked meth in crumbling apartments and rich suburbanites drove around in shiny Lexuses and BMWs, looking for drugs.
.
He didn't have to drive through the old neighborhood, of course. A person could stay on the interstate the entire way from Coon Rapids to Edina, never seeing a bit of the city, except at 70 miles an hour from a highway overpass.
That wasn't Charlie's way, though. He liked to be reminded of his days as a kid, planting purses filled with dog poop on the side of the road and playing hockey on the pond with old copies of The Minneapolis Tribune repurposed into padding.
.
In many ways, life was easier now—he went to a good school in an affluent suburb. His stepdad had finally had a new job; one with union benefits and a large enough paycheck to finance a modest midecentury ranch over in Coon Rapids. His neighbors now were people with minivans and above ground pools, nary a pawn shop in sight. There were no entitled pricks in Mercedes sedans driving too fast through his neighborhood, headed back to Edina and Eden Prairie with passengers doing lines of coke in the back.
Still, it had been a happy childhood, and in contrast to Eden Hall's whitewashed perfection, he had a soft spot for it.
The light turning green, he made his way through that intersection and the next, turning left onto Hennepin Avenue. There, the neighborhood changed; all at once, boarded up buildings and check cashing places gave way to 11,000 sq. foot colonials and detached five car garages, a mile and several million dollars dividing the two worlds.
.
He'd long thought it a strange irony that the richest and poorest of the city lived within two minutes of one another, while the families with Tauruses and mortgages lived as far away from the poverty as possible, eager to put half an hour and fifteen interstate exits between themselves and the reminders of what could happen if someone got sick, or an equity firm decided to restructure lower management.
In one of their darker moments, Fulton had once speculated that the rich lived where they did just so they could watch the suffering from their third floor sitting rooms, laughing as middle school boys shot one another over $6.42.
Of course, they all agreed, that probably would seem funnier from the safety of a mahogany paneled library, a nice glass of scotch in hand.
There were probably lots of things in life that were pretty funny from that vantage point.
.
Past the curved, cobblestone driveways and four acre yards with gently rolling hills, Charlie turned again, this time onto Eden Road. There, the houses once again started to shrink, this time giving way not to graffiti and decrepit bodegas, but to ranches and split levels. Houses not that unlike his back in Coon Rapids, except that the people in these ranches and split levels worked at banks, or over at the university, rather than behind the wheels of forklifts and 18-wheelers. As he went by a familiar grey split level with a blue and yellow Breck Mustangs yard flag, he mustered all of the self-control he had not to roll down the window and yell "Suck my dick" at the strawberry blonde mowing the front lawn.
After all, he didn't care what anyone else said. Larson was a prick.
.
Turning past the imposing wrought iron gates, and driving beneath the canopy of leafy old oaks, he finally arrived at Hetheridge Hall, the three-story limestone dormitory that he'd be calling home for the next nine months. Already parked in the unloading circle he saw a white Range Rover with Texas plates, a trim blonde in bedazzled jeans lifting Rubbermaid containers out the back.
"Heh, who would have thought Dwayne was the real cakeeater of the bunch?" Charlie laughed, shaking his head at the irony of the fact that Travis Robertson was in his third year of law school at SMU, while the other cakeeater's brother sold coke by the KwiK Pawn.
And does that mean Dwayne IS their Scott…?
"Howdy, roommate!" Dwayne greeted a moment later, the top of his cowboy hat peeking out from over the tower of boxes he was unloading from the back of his mother's SUV.
"Hey Cowboy! Ready for another year of the preppies?"
Charlie smiled, still trying to suppress his laughter at the incongruity of Dwayne's Wranglers and boots next to the immaculate British SUV and the heavily Botoxed Tammy Robertson.
Pretty sure those boobs are new.
Before long, the boys were making small talk and catching up on one another's summer adventures as they headed towards the dorm, each loaded down with duffel bags and plastic bins. Ahead, they could see two Hispanic movers struggling to carry a mattress up the narrow steps, both men cursing the rich gringos in Spanish as the one in back narrowly avoided falling to his death after the first one started to stumble.
What kind of spoiled cakeeater decides they're too good for the dorm's mattresses? Charlie grumbled to himself, unable to quite shake his resentment at the affluence of his classmates and their country club memberships. Of his classmates with their pressed polos, and the casual ease that came with knowing that they lived in a world designed just for them.
Reaching the top of the stairs, his arms burned from the weight of the Rubbermaid bins; all of those pounds of books and VHS tapes no longer seeming like the great idea they had been two days earlier. As he passed the second door on his right, his fingers threatening to give way any moment, he found finally his answer to the mystery of the Hispanic movers.
Heh, I should have guessed.
Setting his storage bins on the ground, he looked his old friend up and down.
Even in a school full of privileged blue bloods, Adam had once again managed to take the cake.
As all of the other blonde, WASPy boys lugged their L.L Bean duffels up flight after flight of stairs, their faces red and their T-shirts drenched, Adam just stood there in his khakis and a crisp white button down, directing movers on where everything should go.
"Seriously?" Charlie cracked, lifting an amused eyebrow.
Who does he think he is? The Grand Emperor of Assholeville.
"What? I have a bad back. I need a comfortable bed."
"Uh huh. And that explains the rug and life-sized knight, too?" Charlie asked, casting a sideways glance towards the set of knight's armor and Persian carpet that the movers were adjusting a few feet away.
Adam shrugged, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
"The room wouldn't be the same without Suge Knight."
"That part is true." Charlie agreed, his face softening. "Without him, someone might think this room belongs to someone normal."
"Hey now! I am normal."
"Notice how all these other people are carrying their own expensive preppy shit up the stairs?" Charlie pointed out, gesturing over towards Trevor Forbes and Patrick Ellington trying to fit a 50-inch TV through their doorway. "Even here, you're a freak."
"Well yeah, but how am I supposed to carry a 200 lb. knight up the stairs? He's really awkward to carry—I cut my hand open just stumbling into him last week."
"This is what girls fawn over?" Charlie thought to himself, shaking his head.
No wonder I spend so much time single.
"Yeah man. Not really helping your case here."
"Whatever. You know you're just jealous."
I mean, kind of. Yeah.
"Yup. Dying."
Picking back up his Rubbermaid bin, he made his trek down towards the other end of the hallway, suddenly very thankful for Dwayne's relative normalcy.
He could tolerate Garth Brooks and TCU football. Even the giant Texas flag hanging above Dwayne's bed and the cow skull on the bookshelf were forgivable, though the cow skull had freaked him out the first few nights the year before.
That was all far preferable to a roommate who considered Persian rugs, knight's armor, and custom mattresses to be standard dorm room items.
He'll probably have poor Guy eating caviar and talking about the bull market by the end of the week.
"Of course," He realized, staring at the plastic covered mattress on his own bed, "I'll probably also have to hear about the bull market, but at least THAT bull market has actual bulls."