The Easy Way Out

5

"Make this next right," Blake said.

"Where?" Rachel slowed her car, then turned her head, eyes angled up at the sharp rise twisting into a neighborhood where houses perched on the hillside like a steep staircase. "Right here?"

"Yeah." He pointed.

She made the turn tentatively. Blake learned to drive in Pittsburgh and yet after all these years, he was occasionally intimidated by the side streets that were nothing more than paved trails squeezing their way up and down the faces of shale and limestone elevations.

"The steepest city street in the whole country is about a quarter-mile from here," he said. "Canton Avenue."

She gave him a quick glance indicating, "Never heard of it" then shifted her eyes back to the road. The chassis dipped and the car rocked.

"Thirty-seven percent grade." He indicated the slope with his hand.

"Steeper than this?" she said, following the bumpy road, up, up, up.

"Crazy steep," he said. "Way steeper than any street you'll find in San Francisco."

Climbing the hills in this part of town, drivers couldn't see over their hoods. They drove with blind faith, a belief that there was asphalt beneath their wheels as they reached the summit and their vehicles finally leveled out. It took years of getting used to.

Once winter weather blew in, the homegrowns knew which streets to avoid. Only idiots and drunk drivers would risk life and limb attempting to scale or descend narrow, slippery cobblestone and brick streets. Once they realized they'd made a terrible mistake and regrettably their automobiles had lost the battle to ice and gravity, they'd leave behind loud collateral damage in the form of sideswiped parked cars, and occasionally their overheated vehicles would end up in some pissed-off homeowner's front yard. Fortunately, mild autumn weather decided to stick around a little longer this year.

"Take this next left," he said.

Rachel's Honda stopped at the curb in front of a modest brick home. A cracked cement walkway bisected the small, weedy front yard. The building sat between two charming brick single-family homes with fenced, well-tended yards. She popped the trunk then got out of the car. Blake grabbed two buckets of joint compound and set them on the sidewalk. "Can you get that box?"

She removed the box of drywall tape and slammed the trunk. She glanced across the street at a withered jack-o-lantern sagging on a neighbor's porch, looking at them with sunken, droopy eyes.

"Sorry about using your car," he said.

"No worries."

"My car's making some new noises. None of them good." He glanced at rolls of bundled carpeting on the curb and sighed. "I thought the trash collectors would take these." He groaned, lifting the heavy buckets.

At the end of the walkway, he found his keys and opened the front door. Rachel followed him inside. The house was clearly a work in progress, with exposed floors and unfinished walls.

She did a slow turn, taking it all in. "It's not as bad as I thought."

"I'm gonna tile the kitchen floor this weekend, and maybe..." He looked around at several uncompleted projects.

"You doing this all by yourself?"

"We did multiple trips with Damon's truck, lumber, and drywall. But he pretty much drinks beer and bullshits while he watches me work."

"Why am I not surprised?"

"But seriously," Blake said. "In a couple weeks I could probably list it."

"Yeah, I could see that. If you clone yourself, never sleep, eat, or go to the bathroom."