ecrounox: Good den, everyone, I come baring a chapter for you. It turned out longer than expected. Enjoy.
There is nothing more creative or witty to be said.
If figuring out the location of Kenny's alleged up-for-grabs apartment was a task, actually getting to it and taking a look around was brutal.
After wandering around, asking any sober hipster in sight for directions, we finally stumbled upon the three-story building. It looked like it had been through a lot, and from what I know about the location, it's probably been the sight of several hippie drug parties. This city is so full of surprises.
Shift looked up from the little piece of paper with our (hopefully) new address scribbled upon it. For about a minute or two, we just stood there, analyzing the apartment's grayish-yellow stone walls and tacky brown finish from the patio. The first floor seemed pretty damn dead, but there was at least some kind of light on in the second floor window from what I could tell.
"Looks like an old lady lives here." Shift scoffed, stomping his cigarette into the pavement. Glass from a broken beer bottle crunched underneath his boots.
"An old lady did live here."
"I bet she still does. In the form of a ghost, of course." he smirked. "A ghost that preys on young Canadian boys."
"Go fuck yourself," I shot back, "and go ring the third doorbell while you're at it."
He just shrugged. "Don't mind if I do." He then made a swift movement closer to the door, taking note of the decaying plants in the window.
It took him a while to figure out the multiple bell/buzzer system, and an even longer amount of time for someone to answer.
A middle-aged woman opened the door, looking expectantly between the two of us, trying to fix her hair up a bit and failing. Shift almost flinched just looking at her and her long frizzy locks and bugged out eyes. Total hippie.
"Yes?" she asked, saying nothing more.
"Uh, yeah, you're the landlady, right?" Shift took a step back.
"Oh, yep. Mhm." she smiled, looking almost birdlike. "You wouldn't happen to be those two boys who were looking to take Mrs. Tucker's apartment, are you?"
"Yes, that's us. We left you a voice-mail earlier." I moved forward, arm stretched out for a handshake. "My name is Ike, and this is Char-" he sent me a glare, "Ahem, Shift."
The landlady placed her hand on her hip, not giving it up for a formal greeting. "Isn't it weird?" she started saying. "It feels like that old coot was just knocking on my door yesterday, asking if she could borrow my husband's garden tools. Funny how people can just, poof! Disappear from your life just like that."
Shift and I exchanged glances. I'm pretty certain he was fighting the urge to say, "It's all a big conspiracy, man."
Screw creative writing; he should get a degree in sarcasm. Or theater, if they don't offer that.
He gave me a warning glare, telling me to reply to the woman so that he didn't have to.
"Yeah, I can understand your grief." I said.
"My grief? Are you kidding? I'm glad she's gone. She played nothing but old time jazz. Still, you two seem like interesting modern people. I'm sure that, in time, I can learn to like you." she grinned, acting all warm and welcoming.
Ha. Interesting modern people.
Shift made some kind of quiet chuckle, or scoff, or something similar to that. "So, are you going to show us around or what? I mean, we're a little desperate to get a place since school's starting in a few weeks and-"
"Oh, I can give you a tour. I can't really talk business with you, that's my husband's duty, but he'll be home soon for dinner." she smiled some more, staring off past the houses across the street. And, almost as though she'd just returned from a different continent, she asked, "Would you boys like some dinner, too? 'Course, I'm making one of my vegan dishes, you might not like it."
"Whatever is fine." Shift said, clearly impatient with the woman standing before us who had most likely done a bit of acid back in the day. Or maybe he really was hungry for anything. Chips and coffee don't make for a sufficient diet.
"I'm sorry, I forgot about my name. You can call me June." and with that, June led us inside of the musty smelling home.
Soon we had carefully inched our way through the entire first floor of the building. Up the staircase in the third floor hallway, June and her husband, Peter, lived their "humble" lives. If we ended up moving in, which seemed very realistic at this point, we were never to go upstairs without permission or onto the roof.
There were two other tenants who shared the second floor, the one above ours. I didn't think Shift would be too pleased if he ever had to deal with either of them.
Everyone seemed to use the front porch for smoking, or just to hang around and drink and yell at the little neighborhood kids.
Thankfully, though, the first story and basement would be ours.
Of course, the basement was still packed with the old lady's boxes, and probably a shit load of spiders. June wasn't sure when the family would come and collect her things, but until they did, the furniture was ours for the taking.
But who wants furniture that was owned by a deceased woman?
Surely it would cut down on our costs, but the century old bed was out. So was the couch. The dresser was filled with moth balls. And we couldn't appear remotely masculine with floral-print wallpaper and wood paneling.
Shift stood beside me as I made a mental checklist of things to throw out. He ran his fingers along the dusty bookshelves, leaving trails of clean wood behind them.
"We're keeping these books, just so you know." he said, pulling some 19th-century classics off the shelf. "They'd be good for my classes."
I only nodded, going back to checking the coffee table for stability.
"Which room do you think she died in? I'm calling dibs on it." he hovered over me, now kicking the ornate rugs and sending dust into the air.
"Were you planning on us sleeping in different rooms?"
He shrugged. "Whatever you want, babe."
I cringed, turning my head in the opposite direction so that he couldn't see the heat exploding on my face. "Dude, I get the creeps just being here and knowing that someone has died in this house. You know I hate the idea of ghosts."
"Who said there were going to be ghosts here?"
"I believe that was you. You would just love to see me being swooped away by a Canadian-loving ghoul, wouldn't you?" I heard him snickering, but when I looked him in the eyes his expression returned to its usual "get the hell away from me" look. "I'm being serious here, asshole."
"Fine. If you need me by your side every second of your unconscious hours, I'll be glad to endure your sleeping habits."
"You're one to talk. Sleep apnea, tossing and turning, reoccurring dreams..." I counted off on my fingers.
He rolled his eyes. "Whatever." He crossed his arms and went back to staring at the book collection. "Don't you think the landlords will think it's suspicious that two guys are moving in together? Let alone, in a one-bedroom place."
"You know, I thought of that earlier," I replied, slumping down onto the lumpy green couch, "and I've come to the conclusion that no one seems to care in San Francisco. I mean, we are, like, kind of a couple, aren't we? It shouldn't matter what the landlords think as long as they don't kick us out."
He shrugged and joined me on the sofa. "Good enough."
Dinner with the landlords went seemingly smoothly, and rather productively. I was right, Shift really didn't care what he was eating; he was stuffing his face full of organic greens and brown rice. The only disappointment of the meal was that the Baptiste family didn't own coffee, or a coffee maker, and so we drank an experimental blend of mint and citrus tea that June had made.
"Coffee maker" was added to our list of things to buy.
Their home looked almost identical to the one downstairs, give or take a few decorations. Because June was the one who worked at home, the apartment was decorated in her sunflower theme. Her husband didn't seem to mind losing his choice in the matter.
He also seemed eager to have someone take over Mrs. Tucker's apartment downstairs. "As long as you're a friend of a friend of a relative of Mrs. Tucker, and not a complete stranger, it's good enough for me." Because the distant relationship with an old lady neither of us had met was sufficient for him.
Fortunately for us, Granny Tucker had been renting her home, and so there weren't any legal ownership matters to attend to. The entire building was owned by the Baptistes. They merely rented out floors to "trustworthy" people.
No one was certain of how the elderly woman had died, it was probably due to elderly woman illnesses, but it turns out she'd passed away in her bedroom. I had a feeling I wasn't going to go in there for a while.
They were pretty nice about everything, though. Mr. Baptiste, or Peter, even offered to let us stay for free until we started getting a consistent income from whatever job we got. He accepted us so quickly because, unlike most other people, we were so desperate to find a place to stay (regardless of historical background).
And I'm completely okay with that.
As long as we have a roof over our heads.
After about a week of legal paperwork, documents, dumping all of our possessions into the front room, and multiple dinners of Chinese take-out, Shift and I were (un)officially moved into our new place. Now all that was left was... adjusting to the new environment.
It must have taken him at least three hours just to get me to settle down for the night.
The bedroom smelt of perfume and the dead skin cells of a woman in her late 70's. The floorboards were creaking underneath our neighbors above us. The street lights buzzed from outside of the window. Some kind of drunken bar fight was happening down the street. Shift played his favorite Sisters of Mercy album before we got in bed.
He kept telling me, "Just chill out, alright? Get some sleep."
But I had been staring at the ceiling in the dark with my hands crossed over my chest for twenty minutes.
And Shift was sound asleep beside me, arm flung over the side of the mattress as he snored loudly. Peaceful as could be.
Nothing like this could scare the shit out of him since he's lived in the darkness of the night for the past however many years.
I honestly felt like punching him awake, but that wouldn't do either of us any good. Like he said, we both needed sleep. Come tomorrow and we'd both be swamped with college work to do on top of finding jobs, putting together enough money for rent, electricity bills, gas bills, groceries, and coffee.
Thinking wasn't going to help my insomnia.
I decided to creep out of bed and into the kitchen, where a leftover container of barbecue pork sat waiting for me in the crusty old fridge.
Never mind my parents' twisted kosher rules, I was determined to eat that damned pig if it was the last thing I did. Anything other than City-Wok was to be savored.
With a spoonful of cold meat stuffed in my mouth and a florescent light hanging overhead, I wondered how many of our Jewish customs Kyle had broken as well. It was the best topic I could think of to quell my stress-related thoughts.
Come to think of it, Shift had mentioned Kyle calling my phone a few times. Shit, where have I been all of this time?
Screw it, I didn't care if it was 3 hours later in New York, I called him anyways.
The other line surprisingly picked up after I had redialed a third or fourth time, and an aggravated older brother hissed into the phone, "What!"
I figured he would take a first class plane trip over to shoot me in the foot if I told him that I couldn't sleep, so instead I replied, "I've been informed that you wanted to talk to me."
"Yes, I did, but not at 4-fucking-30 in the morning! I have work tomorrow, Ike!" he was whispering harsh, stinging words into the speaker of my cell phone. Another piece of pork entered my mouth via chopsticks as I waited for him to cool down. "Ugh, alright, just give me a second and I'll talk to you." he continued.
Moments later, the other line made shuffled noises and Kyle spoke, "F-fuck, I almost woke Stan up just now. What do you really want, Ike?"
"What, I can't talk to my own brother after months of not hearing from him? Shouldn't I be asking what you wanted from me in the first place?"
"Fine, let's talk then. I'm wide awake anyways." he sighed. "You guys in San Fran yet?"
"Yep, and it couldn't be any better. We spent all of our cash on motels, and now we're living in an elaborate setup of cardboard boxes in the most dangerous part of town."
"Aw, how cute, Shift's awful sarcasm has rubbed off on you." Kyle cooed, just asking for me to punch him in his gut. "So, I take it things are well?"
"You could say that." I said, cheeks filled with barbecue. I swallowed, muttering, "Well, we got this apartment. It's pretty nice, it has a great location since the university's close by, but it wreaks of death and feminine decor."
"It can't be worse than the townhouse that mom and dad got when we lived there for a while."
"Much, much worse."
"Oh, quit complaining. You'll get used to it."
"Kyle, a woman died in the bed that I was just trying to sleep in."
"Wait, you called me because you couldn't sleep, didn't you?"
Shit. He caught me.
"Well, how can you blame me? Shift has been snoring a lot more lately, plus he keeps telling me that the ghost of the lady who lived here is going to take me away because she has a fetish for Canadian boys."
"Wake him up, I need to talk to that arrogant little prick."
"No, Kyle, that really isn't necessary."
"Ike-" I put my hand over the speaker when I noticed an ominous shadow inching its way into the kitchen. I knew it was Shift, but I couldn't help but be more than cautious and took a step back. He got closer, looking up at me from underneath his black hair.
"What are you doing up?" he mumbled, reaching for the thrift store coffee maker he'd bought days before.
"I was talking with my brother." I replied, lifting my hand from the phone's speaker. "He says he wants to talk to you."
Shift grunted, pouring imaginary coffee into a mug in his daze, "What gave him the idea that I wanted to talk to him?"
Kyle was muttering things on the other line of the phone. I returned my attention to him, "Is there anything else you would like to say, dude?"
"I only have one important thing that I wanted to tell you originally. Now that you seem to be settled, I'm going to try and visit you." he said. There was a brief pause before he added, "Oh, and you might want to hide Shift for a while. Mom and dad might be visiting you, too."
"Thanks, now I have another thing to worry about."
Kyle quietly laughed to himself, finding great amusement in my current mental state. "One more thing," he said, "I really do need to say something to Shift."
"Alright, he seems to be too out of it to care at the moment. Good night." I replied, offering the phone to him. Shift took it from me, setting down his empty mug on the counter.
As I put the leftover Chinese food back into the fridge, I heard him asking Kyle, "You want me to what?" Then seconds later, "Okay, fine."
He immediately disconnected the line. I looked up at him as he smiled, very briefly, and arched his back. "What does he want you to do?" I asked.
"Nothing."
I raised my brow.
"Alright, I'll tell you if you can manage to get back in bed without wetting yourself."
I rolled my eyes before following him through the pitch black living room and back into the bedroom. He crawled back into his initial position under the blanket and waited for me as I, quite awkwardly, tried to do the same.
The springs in the old mattress creaked and instantly reminded me of Mrs. Tucker taking her final breaths on this very bed. Shift's reassuring hand, however, pulled me down so that my face was mashed against his black t-shirt.
No longer was the mental image of a decrepit woman's body in my mind, but instead the nostalgic memories of our high school ventures, where we laid exactly like this on the roof of Shift's car and stared silently at the night sky.
Muffled by his shirt, I asked him, "So, what did he tell you to do?"
"Help you fall asleep." he replied, arm resting on my shoulder.
"Have I mentioned that you don't have to take him seriously?"
He said nothing and let out an elongated exhale. I wanted to tell him that what we were doing was entirely gay, but he would say something along the lines of, "the pot calls the kettle black." So I gave in and fell asleep listening to his harsh breathing and my clairvoyant thoughts regarding the new school semester ahead.
Here is the place where we stick bumper stickers that read, "How's my driving?" R&R, please, feedback is appreciated :)