My apartment is now the way it was always meant to be. You can tell by the oscillating fan in my bedroom, the year's supply of toilet paper in the closet, the newly-expanded quantities of coffee, soup, and pasta…and most of all by Peter Gaffney, Vassar '08, sleeping in the room across the hall.
Peter showed up at 11:30, a tall, thin, but very well-built man with a fine pair of glasses: sharp, brown-rimmed, angular, but still fitting the contours of his face. We'd had three conversations over the phone, and I quickly learned the laid-back demeanor of his cellular presence equaled the friendliness of his being here in the flesh…and, like when Paul came to our first apartment in May 2007, or when I left Burbank for Big Pink, it was a great relief and comfort not to be alone anymore. In fact, I'm not alone in a double sense. It turns out Peter and I both have the one-time Oxford English Dictionary American-edition employee Abigail Zitin as our preceptor. Can't wait to meet her tomorrow…and everyone else!
Peter's mother helped him move in…a very attractive art teacher who has now sent three children off to college. She is NOT like my mother in that her whirlwind of energy never eases into a breeze. And yesterday was the sort of day you needed energy, and the senior Gaffney was lucky to have it, as well as the patience of a saint.
Peter also had a minivan, but only two large suitcases and two heavy coats. After these were dropped off (and both my new acquaintances viewed the apartment) and he signed the lease (half his keys don't work) we made tracks for Target at Marquette and 81st Street. WHOLE OTHER WORLD. Except for one megachurch, every building was careworn, and most very garish, and drivers cut across lanes and people ran through the streets with little regard. It was like being back on Western Avenue, only even more in-your-face. Then at Target, we were the only white people in the store…not that this mattered, but after the multicultural Targets of Los Angeles it was a bit unnerving being in the minority. Picked up lots of good stuff at great prices, including the fan.
After we both installed fans and he put sheets on the bed, late lunch at Potbelly, where you apparently have to ask for vegetables on your healthy Mushroom Melt. Then came Costco, and unfortunately our moving locations to 55th Street had the Garmin convinced that the best way to get there was on the freeway. At 4:00 on a Friday.
The alternate route we took after fifteen minutes idling along sent us through neighborhoods in Chicago I'd never seen before and will probably never see again, streets of Hispanic businesses and massive schools (including the Miles Davis Academy) and abandoned buildings with propped up mattresses instead of glass in the windows and forlorn industrial plants recalling Youngstown and Detroit…between that and the salsa stations we'd find as Peter scanned the radio, it was Los Angeles déjà vu.
And out of nowhere, a row of one big-box store after another. Costco (which I'd been to once before in Marina Del Rey but did not purchase anything from) is Sam's Club on an even more extravagant scale, with everything you could ever want apart from Ramen noodles. Turns out Peter loves to cook as much as I do, so we acquired eggs, chicken tenderloins, and the aforementioned other provisions as we pushed the cart through one aisle after another.
Unsurprisingly, the route home took us back in a much more direct manner not involving freeways. And I had time to unwind with a few drinks (only one non-alcoholic), a book about Trollope, the comforting news I can get into the first major Victorian course of the year AND read Vanity Fair again in the process, and a nice late-night chat, the first of what will probably be many, with Mr. Gaffney as we tried to force his keys to do what they were intended for but inclined against, got his e-mail worked up, and talked about the things we loved…including how happy we are to be here.
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