‘It is apartment living. It sucks but that’s no reason to go postal. Come on, you can travel with me again, like old times.’
‘Why, are you going to tell me I’m destined for better things?’
He leans over her shoulder and out of the corner of her eye she sees him there older aged a lot from the last time she saw him, in his bowler hat with that curved curved nose looking like either a soul seeking crow or a vulture looking for dead meat, ‘People aren’t destined for better things. People take hold of their lives and make their own destinies into something better.’
It’s not the dream you have when you’re a kid wanting to be on your own away from the rules of your family that just seem strangling from a really early age. It’s not even the dream your parents had when they got married at a really early age living on the small pay wages your father was receiving working as a mechanic in the Air Force. It’s that place you find yourself living either on the way to something slash somewhere else or even stuck in a situation of circumstances beyond your control.
There is nothing wrong with living in an apartment. It’s not like you’re a higher class of person just because you live in a house, and someone living in an apartment might also be there completely by their choice. Some choose apartment living just to keep from mowing their grass on a daily basis but putting those thoughts aside you may have about living in an apartment there are the complaints: The knowing this isn’t really your home but owned by someone else but you can get that in renting a house also, or in my parents case, the bank owning the house through the many loans taken out to pay my hospital bills. Apartments are different from house renting also in how it makes you feel at times like you are just in a hotel room for a few days and comfort within the walls is just a delusional state.
The complaints about living in an apartment of course could run into a long list from someone being able to invade your living space with little notice. Harass you with threats of eviction, (yea, try to prove their doing it) and the oldie but goody of drunkymickdrunkbitchnextdoorneighborcrackhead banging against the walls to get someones attention.
At least if the neighbors are banging against the walls in a noise filled sexual release you could take up hands to doing so yourself to let go of some frustrations of apartment living.
If you would float you boat that sort of way.
Not that I would.
Not that I haven’t.
Outside Olivia Webb’s apartment door right now she can hear the construction crew working on the downstairs apartments. Last month they were gutting those apartments after discovering mold. They tried to blame her and her boyfriend for the mold downstairs because their hot water heater was leaking.
Because a hot water heater leaking is totally the fault of the people who have been complaining about the leak since they moved in. The ducktape delay method of repair never really works.
‘Remember that time in Solihull when he used ducktape to save everyone from those mutated Bedbugs?’
‘Yea, but even he knew enough that it wasn’t a final firm fix for anything,’ She put her head in her hands, ‘He always pulled out a roll whenever something happen. I wish I could tell him how stupid he was right now.’
‘I sorry I…’
‘You save the world, not goofballs with funny looking smiles.’
He turned his head, she looked over and his face had disappeared into a shadow.
‘I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said that.’
Her focus switches back to the noise downstairs.
When they gutted the downstairs apartments they didn’t let the tenants know this was going to happen and her boyfriend had to go to the hospital after his asthma kicked into a deadly stage. Happens when you are someone who one: has asthma, and two: has only one fully functional lung.
But the fifth owner of the complex in three years has arrived and this one is making wholesale changes everywhere and their idea of giving notice is telling people, “With all the construction going on you should have been prepared for this to happen.”
The way people react to the pain in the ass nature of apartment living really depends on the person. Some people just take everything in stride, while others let emotional anger and insanity build with each intrusion upon their living space.
The laws protection of the tenants’ rights boils down to basically they can’t kicks you out in one day and they can’t ask to come in the same hour they give notice. Otherwise its, they can kick you out for no reason just need to give notice and they can come in anytime they just needs to give 12 hours notice. So fuck you tenant if they give a notice on your door about coming in at 6pm and you don’t get home from work until 9pm.
If you haven’t guessed this story has a little paint brush of real life ranting to it also.
If you grew up living in a house apartment living can be quite a startle, especially the first few years you find yourself doing so. The banging against walls three nights in a row isn’t enough to call the police. The shutting off of water at times, you know it’s because they didn’t pay the bill, they say they are working on the pipes, funny how it hits usually near the end/beginning of a month.
‘He never forgave himself for talking me into staying here. He thought this reality would be a good place for us.’
Growing up you remember having a family room. In apartments you know the paint choice on the wall is against your choice, the carpet on the floor is against your choice, the appliances that seldom work are against your choice.
Right now she’s eating the last of the tuna that he loved so much and she is smiling at this through a hunger that the tuna did not, cold not chase away. She always laughed, sometimes pissing him off that he thought seafood was disgusting but somehow saw tuna as something Other Than Seafood?
‘He was the guy who double talked a two headed Ultiecel into thinking it shouldn’t trust its secondary head.’
‘sigh….he was sure full of his own bullshit.’
‘Came in useful more than a few times when we travelled together.’
Despite everything that can make apartment living a shit storm of complaints and bullcrap thrown, you can find a shape of Home there if you make the effort. Whether it’s a family making due in loving day to day life or a young couple enjoying having a place they can call their own. It’s not like your living in a shit stained cage, unless it’s a roach filled crime pack of an apartment it’s still a place to live.
But isn’t being able to complain the American Dream? That’s the whole nature of The Revolutionary War.
You thought it was more than that. Ok. Hell, I was taught in history classes that the Indians and white man got along like a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. So take what you want from how history is taught in this country.
Anyways part of writing is taking The Reality and imposing the course of yours upon it.
And all writing is fiction because all opinion is fictionalized and all fiction is lies.
Ok, that last bit was written by just down pain killers. Sue me.
But I move on because even though this will be a free blogger posted story I’m trying to trim down the rant fat.
Apartment complexes are not run by Mr. Roper and thinking they will go out of their way to help you in any way is crystal pie in the sky thinking. But thinking they would do things a little past what they have to do by law to treat the tenants like human beings instead of cargo stored in a storage bin is a little different.
Today is a day in a threefold event for her. One event is a personal; it’s the two month anniversary of the day of the death of her boyfriend when his car was struck by an oncoming taxi on the cosway.
Event number two has an old friend paying a visit to her.
Event three is her eviction from the apartment she shared with the man she loved, together for five years.
She had been out of work herself for about two years since being laid off at a local circuit board factory and her boyfriend was working construction wherever he could find the work to pay their bills. They were living check to check in every since of the saying and only had enough savings to pay one more months rent after his accident.
The letter of the law.
The letter of the law allowed the insurance companies to not pay off for the accident because it couldn’t be judged correctly to an infinite point that the accident was not his fault.
The letter of the law.
The letter of the law as to the apartment complex said they could evict her from the apartment after two weeks of her not being able to come up with the money to pay the rent.
The truth of the word.
The truth of the world is that neither of them had relatives in this reality, had friends with extra cash, or political clout to make any sort of headline grabbing stink.
The letter of the law.
The truth of the word.
She knows they have very little…. had very little that they shared. Only a few things on tables and shelfs but they all are connected to memories. Memories that would not go away losing them but losing them would still hurt.
And she was tired of hurting.
The letter of the law was bringing two people from the office complex to their door to further rip down thei…her life.
The truth of the word was placing her calm sitting on their couch found dumpster shopping six months ago.
The letter of the law may win but the truth of the word with scream out.
He was going to let any letter of any law or any truth of any action he was about to take keep him from helping a friend in pain, ‘Lets go get him.’
She twisted around on the couch, ‘But what about rules whe…’
‘Fuck it, its not like there is actually a rule book. When you die in The Wall Bound you either go to Hell or are displaced in time. I guess we have two more trip to take together my friend.’
©brian c. willaims
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