Moving Day

Moving Day
“Get off at the York Avenue exit?” Rick asked Lucas.
“Yep, get off there, and make a left.”
The Utica skyline loomed ahead as Rick drove the U-Haul over the Key City Bridge over the river and into an open cut running underneath downtown Utica. A few minutes later, they got off at the York Avenue exit. Less than a half mile later, they passed Lucas’ new apartment building on the other side of Vranken Avenue.
“Girls! Your new housemate’s here!” the superintendent yelled as he banged on the door a little while later, after Lucas had handed over the check for the first month’s rent and the security deposit. He keyed the door open and revealed an empty apartment. “Guess they’re at work.”
Rick, Lucas and their friend Josey, who’d also come along for the ride down from Londonderry, began carrying boxes of books and clothing and various personal effects out of the van and upstairs into the three bedroom apartment.
“Stay in touch, don’t be a stranger,” Rick said later that afternoon.
“Yeah, we wanna know how you’re doing,” Josey said as she hugged Lucas.
“Have a great time.”
And with that, two of his best friends were gone, out the door and back on the road for a three-hour drive back up to Londonderry.
“So you’re back,” one of Lucas’ new roommates said as he keyed the door open.
“I’m back; you girls didn’t scare me off a few days ago.” Lucas had come down on the bus several days earlier to look at the apartment. He liked the size of it, particularly the size of his room, although Madison and Zoë, its occupants and now his housemates, had seemed… different from the people he knew back at Londonderry University, a little strange, even.
“Dinner?” Zoë asked him holding a donut in her hand.
“No thanks, we went to Friendly’s.”
Strange, indeed.
“You want the last one?” Zoë turned to Madison.
“Oh, I dunno.”
“Cherry filling. Nice and sugary on top. You know you want this sweet goodness.”
“You wicked temptress.” Madison ate the donut and washed it down with some milk. “I just can’t believe that some people don’t appreciate donuts for dinner.”
“Yeah, some people.”
“Oh yes, I just finished setting up the last of my things a little while ago, I’m just hanging out and seeing what’s on TV,” Lucas said to his mom over the phone a little while later.
“Oh, they’re nice, I guess. I haven’t gotten to say a whole lot to them yet, because I’ve been unpacking and taking care of errands before Josey and Rick left. Names? Hang on a minute.”
“What’s your name again?” He asked Madison, who was watching TV with one leg draped over the armrest of the sofa.
“Madison. Is that mom?”
“Yeah.”
“Hi mom.” Madison turned back to the TV.
“Madison and Zoë. No, Madison’s not a guy; it’s spelled like the avenue. M-A-D-I-S-O-N.”
Madison sniggered from her awkward looking, yet comfortable position, half sitting and half lying on the sofa.
“Mom, I’m not cohabiting, I’ve got my own room. You wouldn’t believe some of the rents and landlords around here!”
“Aw, don’t worry about it. She just doesn’t want you cohabiting,” Madison said a few minutes later, after Lucas got off the phone. “Hey, when you signed that dotted line saying you’d live with two girls for a year, it was a package deal, bubs.”
After nearly five decades of losing businesses, jobs, and population to the suburbs and to other metropolitan areas, the city of Utica was reversing its decline, and currently experiencing a rebound and growth all over town, on both sides of the Schuyler River. It was good for the city, but bad for people moving into town, who faced higher rents in August of 2004 than they would have at any other time in the past.
“Yeah, I guess so.” Lucas sat down on the couch. “Where’d Zoë go?”
“Y’know, that’s a good question. Hang on and we’ll go find her when the commercials come on.” A moment later, Madison muted an ad for cherry flavored laxatives, and lifted herself off the couch. “Darnit Zoë, you’d better be around here somewhere. It’s gonna take me forever to back into that zone of comfort.”
She walked down the hallway, peered into the kitchen and the bathroom before knocking on Zoë’s bedroom door. “Zo-o-ë, are you here?” She turned to Lucas and shrugged. “Guess not.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t worry, Zoë always comes back.” Madison flopped back on the couch and turned on the volume again. “Just in time. Thank you Lucas for distracting me, you saved me from five minutes of commercial torment.”
Lucas had no idea what he’d signed up for when he’d signed the lease a couple of days ago. Part of what had swayed him to move in with the girls was that they were also Christians, and part of it was that he was only paying $300 a month for his share of the rent in a pretty spacious apartment, electric and hot water included. He didn’t know what he’d been getting into, but he hoped that they’d all become friends, or at least get along.
Madison jumped awake when the door slammed. “Holy crap!”
Zoë looked at her hands and pants. “Nope, not crap. Still just me.”
“Where’d you go?” Lucas asked.
“Off to do my part to make sure that the streets of Utica are safe for a five-foot-six girl tonight.”
“And?”
“I’m back in one piece.” She didn’t show it, but Zoë was pretty amused. In four years at the Genovia University-Ossining campus, no one had ever asked where she went when she went out for a walk. Maybe they just did things different up north. “So did I miss anything?”
“Eh. Who Me? only had a rerun tonight, and oh, Lucas had to tell his mom that he isn’t cohabiting,” Madison said.
It was going to be a fun year. “That’s a good thing, young Lucas. Cohabitation is a baaaaaad thing to get involved in.”
“Could be worse.”
“Worse than cohabiting? Please tell.”
“Are you sure?”
“We have ways of making you talk, young Lucas.”
“Guys! Your new roommate’s heah!” the super yelled as he banged on the door. A moment later, he keyed the door open and led the way. “Jeezum crow, do you guys know the basic definition of housecleaning?”
A hand stuck out from underneath a pile of pizza boxes.
“Hey, is he dead?” Josey asked from behind Lucas and Rick.
The super lightly kicked the hand, producing a groan from somewhere underneath the pizza boxes. “Nope, just unconscious. Lemme show you your room.” He stepped up a mountain of newspapers, and gingerly over a sleeping cat as he made a way down the hall.
“Here you are, the master suite,” he said as he opened the door with a grand gesture. Spiderwebs adorned the walls, and an inch-thick layer of dust coated the floor and the only piece of furniture in the room, a battered dresser that had seen better days during World War II. A naked light fixture was attached to one wall.
“Yeeeewwww,” Madison shuddered.
“I think it sounds artistic,” Zoë offered.
“Chai tea?” Madison offered a few minutes later. “Zoë and I usually hang out for a little while and shoot the uh, you know, for a little while before bed. Join us?”
“The guys might’ve made you moon random passers-by or streak through downtown for their initiation rite. We believe in God and we believe in tea, but we don’t believe in initiation,” Zoë deadpanned.
“Sign me up,” Lucas said, taking a seat at the kitchen table.
“Zoë, do you remember which mug you used last night?” Madison asked, holding up two dirty mugs from the kitchen sink.
“The one with bunnies on it. I remember ‘cause I made that insensitive joke about the bunny’s heritage, remember?”
“Oh yes, the bunny’s heritage!”
“What about the bunny’s heritage?” Lucas asked.
“Not for new ears to hear. Ask us again in December, we’ll tell ya before you go home for Christmas.”
“December?”
“Hey. Push it, and it’ll be December of ’05,” Zoë warned.
“So what did you do today?” Madison asked, a moment later.
“Made my rounds about town again; SuperTemps on South New Holland, Precise Temp Service on Hartsdale Ave, and then I knocked off for the day. Three agencies in one day are enough, don’t you think?”
“Um-hm. I worked my coffee magic as always, and I got to tell my Santa Claus story to this adorable kid this morning.”
“Santa Claus story?” Lucas inquired.
“Slow it down Rudolph! We’re flying in Carthage now, and we must observe the speed limit!” Santa Claus called out to his lead reindeer as his sleigh slowed down to approach the top of an apartment building. Snow gently fell upon the sleeping city and the twinkling lights of a passing El train could be seen in the distance.
The sleigh touched down on the roof of the apartment building, and Santa climbed down with a sack of gifts and began to look for a way inside. This had gotten a lot tougher to do in one night ever since people started living in these newfangled apartment buildings. It was so much easier back when everybody had their own cozy cottage.
Santa spied a door leading downstairs to the building, and had begun to work the knob back and forth in his hand when a pair of cops stepped away from behind the shed that housed the stairs.
“Claus, drop the sack and put your hands on your head,” one cop said. He kept his gun trained on Santa while his partner went through the sack to inspect its contents.
“Claus, where did you get all this merchandise? For Jolly Saint Nick’s sake, you’d better have enough sales receipts to fill a Brinks truck,” the partner said.
After many hours of waiting in a holding cell and many phone calls, the matter was resolved and Santa was free to go.
“Sorry about all of that, we had to make sure you were legit, not dropping contraband, bombs or stolen merchandise down people’s chimneys,” a detective said.
“Well you’ve ruined Christmas, you have!” Santa retorted. “It’s Christmas morn, and thanks to the Carthage Police Department, millions of good little boys and girls woke up with no toys today!”
“Actually Mister Claus, Jesus was born today. God came to earth in the flesh to show us how to live and to die for our sins. Christmas wasn’t ruined! Besides, millions of moms and dads have spent hours on end in the stores for the past month. I’ve got two kids, I know!”
“Bah humbug! I’m stickin’ to the suburbs next year!”
“That was great!” Lucas laughed. “I like the evangelistic message you slipped in there, very slick of you.”
“Thank you, thank you. I wish I could take the credit for it, but alas, I can’t. My Uncle Steve’s a detective down in the city, and he got bored at the precinct one Christmas when he had to work. He’s a bit of a writer, too.”
“Hey Maddie,” Mr. Morganthaler, one of Madison’s regular customers at Midtown Mocha, where she worked mornings as a barista, greeted her the next morning. “May I have one of those frappy things?”
“Frappacino?” she inquired.
“Yes, that’s it. A frappacino!” he said with a smile. “Medium, of course. Coffee just goes right through me these days, ya know.”
“Coming right up.” Way, way too much information, she thought. Well, at least he tips.
“How is your job searching?” He asked in a low, conspiratorial voice when her boss was out of earshot.
“Still searching. Genovia One-Stop labor office, classifieds, and whatsuch.”
“Oh, I’m sure with an ingenuitive mind like yours, you could get something virtually anywhere.” Mr. Morganthaler worked at the Utica office of an investment firm a few blocks away on Chenango Street.
“I hope so.” Suddenly, Madison saw a blue and green striped city bus groan past Midtown Mocha. She leaned over the counter to see the number on the last window; 517. “I’ll be right back!” she called to Doris, her boss, as she vaulted over the counter and sprinted out of the shop, after the bus.
“This had better be good,” Doris said as she rang up Mr. Morganthaler’s frappacino.
Madison sprinted down to the next block of South Provincial Avenue before the bus stopped, and she could get on. She walked down the aisle of the less than half-full bus and scanned her eyes over the green seats for her camera and flashbulb.
“Thanks. You found my camera,” she said as she snatched it out of a boy’s hands.
“Hey!” he said in a sad voice, as Madison pulled the stop request cord.
“Sorry,” she said as she walked back into Midtown Mocha with her prize. “I forgot my camera on that bus this morning.”
Doris clucked in understanding. “Maddie, you gotta be more careful, you’re lucky your camera was still riding around on that bus.”
“Tell me about it; it was already riding in a kid’s hands when I found it.” She sighed with relief. She would’ve been terrified if she had lost it. Three hundred dollars down the drain, left behind on an anonymous blue and green bus.
Is that Madison? Zoë thought as she looked out the window of a city bus clattering up South Provincial Avenue that morning. She saw a girl in a Midtown Mocha uniform, who looked like her dashing out of the show and running hell for leather after a bus. Always time to exercise, she thought as the bus pulled over in front of a squat office building to drop off some guys in suits. She was on her way to the SuperTemps office on South New Holland after getting called about an assignment. Stacy from SuperTemps hadn’t been very clear about what the assignment was, but she said that Zoë would have an advantage because she has “a clear and precise voice.” Okay.
“The assignment? You’d be making voice recordings for the different Central Genovia RTA bus routes, you know the number of the route, each stop, and things like that,” Stacy explained a little while later.
Zoë sat and waited for Stacy to continue.
“It pays twelve-fifty an hour, and they’ll make sure you have plenty of water. Full-time, of course.”
Zoë pursed her lips in thought. “Okay. My days haven’t been blossoming with activity lately.”
“That’s the SuperTemps spirit! Now we just have to get your paperwork filled out, and you’re ready to go,” Stacy replied, walking Zoë over to a file cabinet and handing her an inch-and-a-half thick stack of paperwork.
“All this paperwork just to tell people where they’re going,” Zoë reflected a few minutes later, once she was alone at a table, filling everything out. “I already filled out this form about where to send my paychecks. Oh, it’s another one.” She shook her head and kept writing. Praise God that she had a job, though.
“Get out there and do a super job!” Stacey said a while later after Zoë was finished filling out all the assorted forms in the stack.
“I’ll do that,” she replied before heading to the bus stop.
Lucas gulped down a mouthful of Cheerios and pulled a pillow over his lap when he heard a key turn in the lock.
“Hello,” Zoë said as she walked in, catching him watching noontime television. “Please tell me you’ve got some underwear on.”
“Oh yeah, yeah, yeah; just watching a little TV.” Lucas smiled apologetically, and nervously rubbed some sleep out of one of his eyes.
“Nice pillow you’ve got there.” A small smile crept at the edges of Zoë’s lips. She was weirded out, yet amused at the same time.
Lucas blushed and went back to his Cheerios. He’d been caught watching TV in his underwear, and had no idea what to say. He wished more anything that Zoë would go so that he could scamper back to his room and put some pants on.
“Oh, I heard about this one. This is the one about the guys who get those notices demanding child support from total strangers,” she said.
“And then the womens’ husbands get pissed because they won’t pay.”
The studio audience chanted “Bin-ky! Bin-ky! Bin-ky!” as two of the men began brawling and several stage bouncers rushed in to break it up. The Binky Show, produced in Martinsburg, a metropolis two days’ drive south, was the rowdiest, trashiest TV talk show on the entire continent, and hosted by Binky, six-foot-tall pink bunny rabbit who had switched from hosting a Saturday morning children’s show to a syndicated TV talk show under less than mentionable circumstances.
“I can’t believe you watch this.”
Lucas looked up at Zoë. Darn it, won’t she leave already so that he could get some pants on?! “It’s a secret vice, one of very few,” he replied with an innocent look on his face.
Zoë went into the kitchen to fix some lunch.
Good enough! Lucas thought. He dashed past the kitchen and down the hall to his room, keeping the pillow in front of himself. That was the one and only downside to rooming with girls. If he’d roomed with guys, he wouldn’t have to worry about stuff like this. But he couldn’t find any guys to room with, so here he was. He hoped Zoë didn’t hate him now.
“Nice pants,” Zoë said flatly, a little while later. “Do you always wait until lunchtime to get dressed?”
“Well, I don’t really have anything to do today, so why not?”
Zoë smiled and nodded while munching a slice of pizza on a paper towel. She left the paper towel on the table and walked away.
A little while after The Binky Show went off, Lucas went out for the afternoon, first to buy a monthly bus pass, and then to explore the city.
He walked up Vranken Avenue to the South Provincial Avenue main bus stop and watched the provincial capital bustle around him; couriers, delivery trucks, the mayor and his cronies roaring up Vranken Avenue from a three-martini lunch, and people waiting for buses, taking cigarette breaks outside office buildings, and going about their business.
He arrived at the bus station just as a shift of buses was pulling out, and was surprised to hear someone calling his name from one of them.
“Hey Lucas! How’s it goin’!” Madison called through an open window.
“I’m out and about for the day! What are you doing?”
“Taking pictures!” Madison shouted as the bus pulled away.
Madison was on her way to the east side of town to take some pictures of street scenes and of some of the older buildings over there for a project that she was starting. She was working on a large photographic map of the city, using photographs of different streets, and hadn’t done anything with the east side yet. She only worked mornings, so this was as good a way as any to occupy her afternoons.
The 7W-West Chenango Street bus groaned over the Thruway 115 underpass, the dividing line between downtown and the west side, and Madison kept her eyes peeled for a good place to start snapping pictures. A few minutes later, the bus stopped in front of a convenience store with an old, weather-beaten sign, and she saw the perfect beginning. She pressed the yellow door-release tape on the rear doors, stepped off the bus, and reached for her camera to take a shot- only to come up with an empty hand, just as the light on West Chenango Street turned green and the bus groaned away towards White Mills.
“CRAP!!!” Frustrated and afraid of losing her camera or sure this time, she checked the posted bus schedule and began to ponder and pray. Thank God that the next bus was in twenty minutes; she had an idea.
Lucas handed over thirty-five dollars for a September bus pass, and pondered where to go first. He hadn’t seen the south end yet, and had only been to the north side once. Well, there was always riverfront a few blocks away, or the Mall at Southbury Crossing, just outside the city in Southbury. The north side of the city could wait for another day, the day he was going to go up to Schuyler County Community College and buy his textbooks.
The outbound 7W bus that Madison had boarded in order to catch up to the bus where she’d left her camera met it on its way back downtown a few minutes earlier than she’d expected, and she frantically dashed up to the driver and asked him to signal it so that she could get her camera.
“We usually don’t do that, miss.”
“But it’s an emergency of life and death proportions, if I can’t get that bus, I may never see it again,” she pleaded. She prayed on the inside that God would change his mind. She couldn’t believe that she’d forgotten her camera twice in one day. What the heck was going on?
“Alright, this one time. Next time, you’re on your own.” The driver opened his window and waved at the inbound bus. “Yo! Hold up, I’ve got a passenger who forgot her camera on your bus!” he yelled, flashing his left side blinkers twice.
Madison dashed off the bus, across the road and onto the first bus.
“Thank you!” she said.
“This your camera? I found it while I was laying over in White Mills. It’s a good thing I found it when I did, or someone might’ve swiped it,” the driver said, taking it out from its hiding place on the sloping dashboard.
“Well, I have a new assignment,” Zoë said over tea later that night.
“Doing what?” Madison asked.
“If you ever get on a bus and hear somebody announcing the stop and the route, that’s me.”
“Our own celebrity!”
“Unfortunately, the car slaves in this town still won’t know who I am.”
“It’s your first stepping stone to bigger and better things. From here, you can become an El conductor down in the city.”
“Thanks. That’s just my aspiration, to tell people to stand clear of the doors for eight hours a day.”
“So where were you going today, Lucas?”
“I bought my first bus pass today, and I struck up a conversation with one of the kiosk girls over at the mall today. I was walking around, chilling out and she looked bored as could be, so I walked over and made her acquaintance.”
“Way to go, you’ll have to have her over for Binky and cereal sometime,” Zoë deadpanned.
“Binky and cereal?” Madison asked.
“Uh…” Lucas said nervously. “um, uh…”
“I caught him in his underwear watching The Binky Show around lunchtime,” Zoë said helpfully. “He hid behind a pillow and a bowl of Cheerios,” she added. She didn’t mean to come across as malicious, but she’d never seen a sight like that before. Rooming with a guy was going to take a lot of getting used to.
Madison didn’t quite know what to say either, so she took a sip of tea and changed the topic.
“I lost my camera twice on the bus today; twice!”
“Is that why I saw you running out of Midtown Mocha for that bus today?” Zoë asked.
“Yes, that was me; I had to snatch it out of a kid’s hands, too.”
“Keep running like that and you might qualify for the Olympics one day. But you might have to brush up a bit on your people skills.”
“Where were you going this afternoon?” Lucas asked.
“I was going to the east side to take some pictures, and that’s how I forgot it the second time. I got off the 7W bus at Sherwood Avenue to start snapping pictures, and then I realized I’d forgotten my camera! I had to get the next bus and ride half way to White Mills to catch the bus I’d forgotten my camera on.”
“You should be careful, your camera has a tendency to escape,” Zoë said.
“My boss said something like that just this morning.”
“Is everything cool?” Lucas asked Madison, once Zoë had gotten up to find the TV remote. “You know, about the Binky thing.”
“Yeah, I’m cool, but you shouldn’t sit around in your underwear, since you’re rooming with girls. Just remember those pants, and everything’s cool as a cucumber!”
“What about Zoë?”
“You’ve just gotta give her a little time to warm up to you. A little time to get used to you, and she’ll come around.”
“Around and around and around,” Zoë said, holding the gray cable remote and flipping through the channels. “Oh look, my paper towel from this afternoon’s still here.”
“I hope so,” Lucas replied. If she didn’t, it was going to be a very long year.
To be continued…