The Apple of My Eye

Everything in Its Right Place

It was going to be her first weekend since Star got back in town-and since all hell broke loose for us (well, for her much more than for me, really) in terms of dwelling arrangements-so she and I set out to do the only thing left for a couple of drifters to do: we were to spend the next two days in pursuit of a place to call home. It would be a lot more productive if she went one way and I went another, as we'd be able to go to twice as many addresses and I would still get to keep Victoria close to me all weekend. Admittedly, we weren't too sanguine about our prospects. After all, the specificity of the place we'd have to find made the mission virtually impossible: we needed a low-cost place that we could afford, preferably not too far from where we worked, and not too far from the apartment where I had been living for nearly a year-but not too close either, for safety's sake. We had to find a landlord that did not ask for a deposit and did not demand a co-signer. Let us not forget I was out of options in that department now that my parents had closed that door on me. As to Star, not only did she not own a damn thing to her name, but she couldn't offer much in terms of a guarantee, either. Not when her income was less than half the amount of money being asked everywhere. Besides all that, there was the fact that we did not own the furniture we'd be needing. What little furniture I did have would demand transportation, and I couldn't book a hauling service until I knew when we'd be able to do it and where we'd be taking the stuff. In addition to that, these things take time. You don't call them in the morning expecting them to be at your door in the afternoon so you'll be done moving all your shit in the evening. In other words, Star and I were in quite the predicament-and all odds were against us.

No sooner had Saturday night fallen than I found myself feeling more disheartened than I had been before I started my quest. With Victoria in the backseat asking me all sorts of questions and making very little sense overall, I had spent the day driving to several of the houses and apartments Star and I had found in the classified ads. Sadly, they all turned out to be abysmal, some giving off a sort of trailer park vibe like I had never thought possible-short of moving to a trailer park or the slums. We're talking open sewers here. We're talking unpaved portions of streets. We're talking rotten food and garbage, bonfires, moats between street and sidewalk, and random holes all around. Some areas were so scary in broad daylight I could only wonder what they'd feel like when Star and I arrived home at eleven every night. After a succession of disappointments, I didn't even bother to pull over in some of the places anymore, especially with my daughter now sleeping in the backseat.

It was then that I harked back to Star and assumed that her mission could be yielding pretty much the same dismal results as mine, only Star was a young girl, she was all alone, she had been taking the bus all day, going places that could be even worse than the ones I'd seen for all I knew. That was not only a terrible thing for her to have to go through, it was positively dangerous, is what it was.

I called to see how she was doing. She hadn't had much luck, but hadn't been to any perilous parts of town either, so that was a relief. She had seen this one place, she said, this hotel of sorts-the kind of place you pay by the hour-where the proprietor had these little two-room apartments in the back. About two dozen in all, mostly ground floor, some on the second. They looked like singles in a housing project, and he rented them out fully furnished, she told me. He didn't demand a co-signer and didn't run a credit check. All he asked for was a one-month advance plus a one-month deposit, which, all things considered, wasn't unmanageable. It wasn't too far from where we worked and, though it wasn't located in a top-notch part of town, it wasn't situated in the inferior neighborhoods I had spent the day in and out of, either. Yet I was reluctant.

"Star, just think about what kind of business the man conducts in his hotel, you know?" I told her.

"It's a regular hotel, Stanley. You could pay to stay there like in any other hotel," she explained.