It was about eight am when I pulled into the apartment complex my brother has been calling home for the last few years. I found what looked like it could be a guest parking area and walked to the door with numbers next to it that matched the directions he had given me.
*knock knock*
*nothing*
*knock knock* a little louder.
*nothing*
A car was pulling in… real slow, maybe it was low enough to want to meander over the speed bumps. Or he was checking me out. *skeevs*.
*honk* - oh sweet jeezus I'm in the ghetto of Boise Idaho and I'm being honked at!
*is absolutely not turning around*
"Just go on in! I don't think he's awake yet." a man shouted from the car. Oh yeah. It's Boise Idaho. Chances are if you don't know someone yet ; someone you know, knows them. So I went on in. (hated that- it's just wrong.) Did the guy in the car really think I was going to wander around in this apartment opening doors and looking for my sleeping brother? And what the fuck was he doing sleeping? I decided to try knocking on the inside of the front door … thought maybe he would hear it and wake-up from THIS side of the door.
*knock knock* The door suddenly opened inward, into me.
"Oh!" The man from the car said. "Sorry!" He looked at me the way any normal person would when they realize they're answering the door from the outside of the apartment.
"Hey. Which room is my brothers?"
"Ummm… I think probably if you go upstairs he'll be in the one with the door shut." OH. So he didn't live here. Duh. Flop house. People coming and going anytime they want. Madness!
"Great. Thanks." I ventured up there and knocked rather loudly on my brother's door just as the man downstairs did me the favor of shouting "GUY! WAKE-UP!" in the scariest shouting voice ever heard. Guy's door flew open and he stood before me rubbing his eyes.
"Lance kept me up all night!" he explained hastily.
"REOW!" Lance confirmed that this was possible.
"I stink." Guy told me.
"Oh?"
"So I'm not going to hug you."
"Thank you?"
"The washer here is broken. This shirt's okay 'cause it's brand new but the pants almost ran away when I tried to put them on." Oh for gawds sake, this was going to be a long ride.
"Okay, don't worry about it. I'm going to go fold the seats down in the back of the car." I wandered back into the sunshine of a beautiful morning, breathing the fresh air gratefully. We made trips in and out, up and down the stairs loading things in the car. Then he handed me a box. A small box.
"Will you carry Lance? I'm going to get the tv"
"The cat is in this box?" It had a handle on top and was shaped in a way that made you think you might be about to eat chicken.
"RWEEEOOOOOWR!" Lance protested.
"Fuck! He's moving in there! I can't believe he can breathe let alone move! This is the carrier you were talking about?"
"Yeah. He's fine, you're just carrying him wrong."
"Well I've never tried to carry a cat in a box designed to hold KFC."
"What?" he laughed "It's an actual temporary carrier from the humane society, it says so right on the side."
"yeah, yeah. I can read."
Once we had everything loaded I was climbing in on the driver's side when Guy says. "Wait, your car is smoke-free, isn't it?"
"… yeah." The cigarettes I smoked on the trip there don't count because no one saw me do it and I aired the car with all windows down for nearly fifty miles every time.
"We should smoke before we go." I climbed back out. "Can I bum one off you?" he added.
"Oh for craps sake Guy! You're totally rock bottomed out, aren't ya?
"I told ya it was bad."
"We shouldn't have put the cat in until the last minute." I mused. "And I still can't believe you fit that cat in that box. How did you make it go in?"
"He's a push-over!"
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