Summer in the City

Chapter 8 - 10:15 On A Saturday Night

Anna

After a few weeks of working their behinds off. Ruth singing to the point of her slightly losing her voice and Anna getting a second job cleaning up after hours in a movie theater, they were finally able to look at a one bedroom apartment. 

After climbing a flight of stairs and finally making it to their destination with the owner of the building beside them. He was trying to make them agree that the place wasn't as bad as people seemed to say it was.

Ruth was the one that had seen the ad posted outside of the bricked building complex after a gig two nights ago. She took the ad off of the building that read, "For Rent" and brought it to the motel to show Anna. They immediately called and contacted the owner, as they had saved a few hundred over the time being.

The owner of the building was a short guy with brassy hair. He introduced himself as Flaco, even though his actual size begged to differ. He showed them around the place and when they made it to the door of the room. He was able to unlock it with no problem with a key. He creaked the door open to show a one room space with one lightbulb dangling from the ceiling in the middle of the room.

"Go on in girls." He said, and Ruth and Anna slowly walked in as they looked around the place. Ruth seemed unbothered by it all but Anna looked at it all with disgust. The floors were wooden but dusty and dirty and there were strange brown stains on the walls.

"Is that blood?" Asked Anna, staring at the dark spot on the wall beside a window. Flaco immediately walked in and looked.

"Naw, must be old food or something, maybe oil."

Anna only nodded. Flaco began to back away from the room towards the door.

"Listen, I gotta check up with another tenant downstairs. I'll be back in 5 minutes. I'll let you ladies look around." He left the room leaving Ruth and Anna to look around.

"Well. It's definitely a room." Said Anna, "A room within our small budget."

"Hey, this isn't so bad," said Ruth as she ambled over to a separate door in the same room, she shoved it open, "And it's got a bathroom." Said Ruth lightly.

"Yeah, maybe this isn't so bad, we can fix it up. We'll clean the floors, and the weird stains. Get a bed and a couple of blankets. We'll have running water and a place to ourselves." Said Anna as she came around to the idea of the place.

It was starting to have potential in her mind. She was so used to seeing her suroundings as already being clean or tidy, now she would have to work on that herself. Anna jumped as they suddenly heard a bang from the wall next door. And they both turned around to face each other. Ruth threw her hands up in the air with genuine excitement and grinned from ear to ear.

"And we have loud neighbors. This is great, we'll have life surrounding us." Anna could only laugh at Ruth's reaction and then wait there until the owner came back up, and when he did they made a deal.

They signed the papers and placed down the first month of rent. When Ruth was signing her name, she did a strange scribble but Anna could still read what was at the end of her first name.

'Davis'

Anna didn't realize until that moment that she had been living with Ruth for a couple weeks and she didn't even know her last name until that moment. 'Ruth Davis' she repeated in her thoughts, thinking about how civilized it sounded.

They began their cleaning process immediately and Anna went out and bought some cleaning supplies like a mop and some stain removal spray. She knew they would have to buy a fan soon too because it was getting hotter and hotter by the night.