[a couple more pics to be uploaded when my internet gets its panties untwisted]

February 24-25, 2007

I looked in the mirror while I waited for the shower to warm up. My nose and cheekbones were darker, and when I peered closer I saw tiny little freckles. I used to just brown, when my skin was a little younger.

I'd worn 30 spf sunscreen every day since my arrival, but even in winter, the sun in LA is not to be bested.

Steam started creeping around the fish-patterned shower curtain, so I got in gingerly and fiddled with the knob for a while before committing to getting fully under the stream.

I washed the salt off of my face that had accumulated while we walked to the Chinese New Year parade, about 2 1/2 miles each way. The route I'd planned through Elysian Park had proved unfindable, but after clambering up a couple steep, crumbly hills, we'd finally given up on hiking paths, and wound our way around Dodger Stadium on main roads.

China Town seemed to be made up, primarily, of little import shops, rather than restaurants, like in Chicago or New York. I resisted buying lovely blue cherry-blossomed ceramic bowls that I knew I didn't need while I had my roommates' bowls to use, and while I had no income, and while I didn't especially want to carry them back with me. And I prefer to buy used, anyway.

I thought about the bowls while I shampooed my hair, and comforted myself with the idea that I could go back and buy them, later. Abstract delayed-gratification retail therapy. Not as satisfying as you might think.

I got out of the shower and dried off as quickly as I could -- the charming little house has no heat -- and at night, it drops into the 50's. I put on the one semi-dressy outfit I'd packed, put on some make-up for the first time in maybe a month, put my hair up, and decided I was presentable to the public.

"You ready to go, the girl?" Mark asked.

"Yeah, just about," I said, putting on my one pair of dressier shoes. "Do these go?"

"Uhhh, I think you have too much bare skin showing on your feet. It's not balanced," Mark said.

"Um, okay, well, it's these or Tevas," I said, irritated that Mark didn't automatically know that I was just looking for approval.

"Well, I mean, they're fine, I don't think anyone will be staring at your feet anyway," he said to comfort me. Also not as satisfying as you might think.

"Do I look alright?" I tried greater directness.

"Yeah, you look fine," he said, distractedly.

Sigh. He must be uncomfortable too, I thought. It was Tom's birthday party, after all, Tom being Mark's only friend out here.

"Okay, let's go, then," I said. We suited up with helmets and bright jackets and blinking lights, and rolled down down down our hill and along the minimally-hilled path we'd charted for ourselves using Google Maps Pedometer.

We found the house without too much ado, locked our bikes to a railing, took off our helmets, did a hair check, and headed in.

"Girl's sporting the pimp look now, huh?" Mark said as I was about to open the front door.

"Huh? Oh," I said, and bent over to unroll my pant leg.

We walked in and were half-greeted by some very loud frat-guy types who were sitting at the kitchen table. They gave us directions to a bedroom to drop off our stuff, and then Mark ran out with Tom to pick up some party supplies. I tried not to trail after Tom's girlfriend, Katherine, like a lost puppy, but the house was still mostly empty, brightly lit, and sober.

She and I liberally poured ourselves some of the vodka I'd brought, and added a bunch of Rose's lime juice to make it drinkable. The apartment was enormous, with a huge porch big enough for a ping-pong table, a café table, 4 chairs, and a bunch of empty space. The living room had a television set as big as a twin bed, which was displaying Empire Records on mute. A couple people were standing around making conversation about the movie, but I'd never seen it. I drank some more vodka.

People started trickling in, Tom and Mark came back with a fancy multi-colored disco light contraption, and I refilled my drink.

I went out to the porch, wandered slowly around, looking at the ping-pong table, the lattice work overhead, the view, and listening to the conversations around me.

"Aw, man, then the producer decided he wanted to reshoot the whole damn thing, at like five o'clock," an actor-looking, very industry-standard attractive guy standing near me said to his friend. They were standing at right angles to one another, invitingly.

"You're kidding," his less clean-cut, more California-looking friend said. I positioned myself in front of them, looking out at the hills, at a large, well-lit building perched atop one, in the distance.

"Yeah, my shoulder was killing," the first guy said. Their conversation lulled to quiet for a moment. I turned my body toward them a bit.

"Do you know what that lit up building up there in the hills is?" I asked them, gesturing at it with my drink.

"Uh, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the Griffith Park observatory. You mean that one?" the clean-cut one said, and took a step closer.

"Yeah, with all the white lights," I said.

"Yeah, that's the observatory. It's pretty cool."

"Ah, okay, I hiked up near that the other day, but I didn't go in. You've been?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's really nice. They spent a bunch of cash to redo it, recently."

"Cool. I'm Maddy, by the way," I said, sticking my hand out.

"Hey Maddy, I'm Mike," he said, and shook my hand.

"I'm Dan," his friend said.

"Hey, Dan, I'm Maddy," I said, shaking his hand, too. "So where are you guys from?"

"Wisconsin," Mike said.

"Michigan, but I've been out here for 8 years," Dan said.

"Midwesterners! I'm from Chicago. What do you guys do?" I said.

"I do IT stuff for production companies," Dan said.

"And I'm a camera man and a writer," Mike said.

Dan was standing a foot further from me, and seemed a little shy. Normally that might have motivated me to talk him up, get him more comfortable, but, well Mike was a writer.

"Oh cool!" I said. "I'm a writer, too."

"Well, I mean, I haven't sold anything yet, just sending scripts out, so I guess I can't really call myself a writer yet."

"Well, do you write?" I asked

"Yeah, yeah, but--"

"Then you're a writer!" I encouraged.

He explained that he had a writing partner, and a bunch of contacts that were interested in his stuff, that he'd submitted a script that wasn't quite what someone had wanted, but they'd asked him to write something else because they liked his style. I tried to balance curiosity, a desire to network, friendliness, and my vodka, with decent success, I thought.

"How do you recommend getting started and connected out here," I asked him.

"Just meet people, you know, like you're doing right now, at parties like this," he said. I nodded.

Right then another guy came out onto the porch and turned to Mike, his back partly to me, separating me from the two guys.

"Have you seen Jared around, man?" I heard him say.

Mike started to reply, and I used the opportunity to slip off of the porch. I wanted to network, but I didn't feel comfortable asking for some sort of connection when I had none to offer. But then how was I going to get anywhere? As I wandered through the party, I berated myself a little for not being slightly more forward, and later overcompensated with a woman I was talking to, asking her if I could give her some of my massage therapy business cards, to give to her friends.

"Oh, uh, um--" she stumbled. Damn.

"Or I mean if you don't have any use for them," I started to backpedal.

"No, I could take like half a dozen, sure, yeah," she said.

"Cool, right on," I said, counting them out and handing them over. I made a mental note to talk to her at least once more, about something else, that evening. I really did like her, and I didn't want her to feel used or... uncomfortable, or... like she didn't like me anymore, said my vodka.

I wandered around again, looking for Mark, the only person there with any real sense of context for me. He was pretty drunk, too.

"Hey baby!" he said, and put an arm around me. I tuned out and let myself just be his arm candy for a little while, while he talked energetically with some musicians.

The night continued like that -- in spurts of social effort and retreats to under Mark's arm, with more vodka, with some great music from Tom's 12 hour iTunes playlist, and then some dancing, and some more retreating, and then more dancing again.

At around 2:00, we agreed we were sated, and that we should start sobering up for the ride home. But at 2:15, Tom pulled me back out to the dance floor, and I danced out the last of my anxiety, every lingering jumpy twitchy ansty feeling coming out easy in 4/4 time.

And by the time I got back to Mark, he was working on another beer.

"I thought we were sobering up," I said.

"I thought we were leaving," he said.

"We are, we are, I just was dancing a little bit. I thought we were going to hang out until we were a little less drunk."

Mark looked exhausted by the idea of continuing the line of logic.

"Okay, okay, let's go," I said.

"Okay," he said, and put the half-drunk beer down.

We gathered our stuff and gave Tom and Katherine hugs.

"Hey, uh, he's kinda swaying there, Maddy," Tom said, tilting his chin at Mark.

"Yeah, I know. We're going to walk for a while."

"Good, good," he said.

We said goodbye to anyone whom we happened to pass, on our way to the door, helmets and jackets on, fully bike-geeked out.

We unlocked our bikes and I glanced over at Mark. He was swayingly attempting to mount his ride.

"Hey, baby, can we just walk for a bit?" I asked. "I think I'm a little too drunk to ride, right now."

"Okay," he said, refocusing his energy toward walking with his bike.

We walked down the street in the chilly night air, my shoes click-clacking on the sidewalk, and I didn't much mind the cold, or my uncomfortable shoes, or much of anything.

"That was a great scene," I said.

"Yeah, totally. That was awesome."

"It seemed like everyone there was from the Midwest. I met this girl who I actually might've gone to acquatics camp with, in Evanston."

"Really."

"Yeah, we both looked familiar to each other," I said, and thought vaguely about "both" vs. "each."

"I could really go for some tacos right now," Mark said.

"Yeah, good idea. We can stop if we see somewhere open."

"Can we bike now?"

I looked at Mark's only moderately improved gait, and then looked down the long, steep hill in front of us.

"Can we get to the bottom of this hill, first?"

"Yeah, okay," he said grumpily.

The streets were almost entirely empty, and the sidewalks were wide, so we got on our bikes and pedaled down the sidewalk until we got to a taco place that was brightly lit and full of other drunk people. They didn't have anything vegetarian listed, but they more or less seemed to understand that we didn't want meat on our tacos and burrito. (Mark isn't vegetarian, but he stopped eating non-organic meat & dairy after seeing The Corporation.)

I could feel people looking at our bright jackets and our helmets as we chowed down, and I felt both uncomfortable and proud.

The next day I was hung over, and paranoid that I'd made a fool of myself; that I'd given the wrong impression by getting so drunk; that as a massage therapist, a healer, I was supposed to be a model of health; that I'd overstepped social bounds and been too much, too crazy with my dancing, too forward, too blah blah blah.

I tried try to tell myself that I only worried because I know these people have no context for me, and that it was a party, that I had certainly been fine, and probably even charming. But nonetheless, the next couple days were uncomfortable and even mildly depressive. I called my parents, signed on to my instant messaging program, and tried to tug my Chicago self out to LA.

Molly: how's the left side?

Me: oh mollers
so happy to see you
the left side is feelin pretty weird right now

Molly: uh oh

Me: im like wiat a minute wait a minute who am i???

Molly: ah

Me: there is just no one here to define me except mark, which is huge, but my god
and the weather is all unreal

Molly: i've been toying with the idea that rooting yourself has something more to do with defining yourself by activities and interests than people originally
the people will follow

Me: ...yeah, that makes sense
i was having trouble doing activities today

Molly: probably cuz you've been Action Maddy

Me: yeah... but i also felt like i didnt know what i was supposed to do
and i've been wearing the same jeans for a month

Molly: with your free time?

Me: yeah

Molly: did you try the usually maddy grabbers?
like writing, scrap booking your trip, yoga, making healthy food

And she started to list the things she knows make me feel better, and just the fact that she knew the list by heart made me feel better. So I went to my closet and changed into the tee shirt we'd made together, a few days before I'd left. One of the few articles of clothings I'd packed with me. And I snuggled under Mark's arm, and tried to let Molly and Mark hold on to who I am, for a couple hours.

February 16, 2007

I scoured our laminated fold-out map, the LA bike map pdf, and google maps, comparing back and forth, trying to choose our route carefully.

Mark glanced at it, said "Let's just take Rampart to 8th and take it all the way west," and seemed satisfied.

I took another five minutes or so to decide that, yeah, okay, that was probably fine. But I came up with a couple alternate routes, before Mark finally badgered me into puting on my helmet and shoes and reattaching the pedals to our bikes (they have to be taken off to ship them with Amtrak).

We rolled our bikes out the front door of our charming little house on a hill, carried them down the few steps, and then learned that we were going to go through brake pads a lot faster here, as we squeezed the brakes all the way down, down, down the windy road, down from our hill.

Sunset Boulevard, which we live right off of, has a bike lane, so it was a gentle start.

We pedaled with no drama, up and down the little bits of hill, in the sunshine. We looked for Rampart, and looked and looked, and finally I yelled to Mark "Hey! Can we stop a minute?"

"What?" he asked, irritated.

"Well I think we might've passed it."

"I don't think so," he said, in the same tone he'd used to badger me into putting on my shoes and helmet.

"Well let me just take a sec to look," I said, pulling out the map and trying to get myself oriented. I could feel which way the water was, but I so badly wanted that to be east. I told myself No, the water is west, Maddy; West. That means that, over there, that's North." But as soon as I was done telling myself that, my sub-brain flipped right back to Water=East.

"Okay," I said to Mark, "look, we passed it by quite a bit. It's back here," I pointed. "And we're here," I pointed again.

"Oh, I see. Yeah, okay, it's only on one side of the street," he said, calming down now that I was delaying us to save us time.

So we turned around, and we found it pretty easily. It was a steep climb, but doable, and when we got to the top, WHEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! all the way down!

Adrenalin, lactic acid, and endorphins, oh my!

We rerouted to get across the expressway, and found our way without drama to 8th Street. 8th Street then dead-ended at a neighborhood that was rich enough, apparently, to block off street access to riff-raff like us. A rent-a-cop car drove by while I stood looking at my map, next to the hedge-and-gate barrier. He lingered while we decided which way to go, clearly having nothing better to do.

We cut north a bit, to a bigger through-street, and then split off at La Brea, Mark going to check in with work, me continuing on to the Apple store, to see if they could do anything for my poor departed lappy.

They could not, so I resigned myself to shelling out the money for a new one, and I met Mark at a nearby Trader Joe's he'd found while waiting for me to be done. We bought familiar items and packed them into my pannier, along with my dead computer.

And we biked back, easily rolling along the wide lanes of Los Angeles (even with my heavy bag), no honking, no one threatening to side-swipe us, over the hills and far away, biking in California with no aching in my heart*. (*credit to Led Zeppelin) What a nice surprise. A 16- or 17-mile round trip with no drama.

The hill up to our house was the hardest part, but we managed to bike up the whole way without stopping to rest. We got home feeling exhilarated and triumphant, and sat down to make some serious sandwiches.

February 14, 2007

We finally arrived in Los Angeles 12 hours after our scheduled arrival. The train had to turn around and go back to Tucson because of a freight derailment, further along, and we'd been put on a bus to LA, around the time that the train had intended to arrive.

"I HATE Amtrak!" the woman sitting in front of us spat in regular intervals. "What if I was gettin' married? What if I was the bride for a $30,000 wedding?" she invected to no one in particular.

I thanked my lucky stars that such a wedding wasn't happening, and that I was not her groom.

"I HATE AMTRAK!" she yelled.

Mark rolled his eyes at me.

"I mean, if you're in a hurry, you don't take the train," I said to Mark, sotto voce. He nodded. We watched the desert hills roll by, covered in windmills and peppered with a few houses and the occasional gas station.

The sun was descending by the time we got to the outskirts of LA, the stretching suburbs of suburbs of suburbs. The light shone through a layer of orange air that stirred a little anxiety in my chest. Smog.

Ten minutes from the station a skyscraper came into view with its lights turned on to create a heart, for Valentines' Day.

"That's the Metro building," said the LA native sitting behind us, his sausage-smelling breath wafting up with his words. A few people scrambled to the windows to try to take pictures.

The bus driver fumbled around the Amtrak station, not sure where to let us out. The natives finally sorted him out, and we disembarked into the cool night air. We went to the baggage claim and picked up our bikes and my massage table, where they'd been waiting for 12 days.

"You owe us a lot of money for these things," the shipping employee told me, leafing through a shipment log.

"What do you mean?" I said.

"You gotta hand over a lot of cash before I can give these to you," he said. "They been here for like two weeks!"

"Oh, you mean $2 per item per day, right?"

"Oh," he said. "Well if you're not gonna argue with me, then I'm not gonna charge you." He closed the shipment log.

"Really?" I said, confused.

"Yeah, don't worry about it," he said cheerfully.

"Uh, wow, okay, thanks!" I said, probably sounding more disoriented than grateful. "He's not charging us," I said to Mark.

"That's awesome!"

"Yeah don't worry about it," the employee said again, enjoying himself.

Mark and I hauled the stuff outside and waited for Tom to come pick us up in his pick-up truck.

Mark went in search of water to refill the Nalgene, while I used my pocket knife to make salsa with the last of our tomatoes, some soy sauce, cilantro, a packet of onion condiment, and wasabi for spice. It was surprisingly tasty.

We took a picture of MooBoo, our travel mascot, against the heart of the Metro building. I wished my computer hadn't given up the ghost, the previous night. It would be nice to watch an episode of Boston Legal while we waited. But eventually Tom arrived, and all our stuff fit in the truck, and he drove us to our new home without incident.

It was a lot higher up the hill than GoogleEarth had said.

And by the way,

Wow, Hills.

In a daze, we dragged our belongings inside and met our old skateboarder dude roommates. They offered us peanut butter and jelly, helped carry a few things, and introduced us to the 13 year old Chocolate Lab that lives here part time.

Tom used the bathroom and then ran back to finish his Valentines' Day date with his girlfriend.

"See you soon, darlin," he said, kissing me on the cheek. "Later, buddy," he said to Mark, giving him a good looking hug.

Mark and I sat, dazed, for a little while, talking with our new roommates about the train and bus snafus, the grand journey-ness of it all, just trying to make sense. But after not too long we gave up on sense and opted for sleep on the double mattress left behind by the last occupant.

We laid out a sheet across the bed, and used our sleeping bags as blankets. Mike, one of the roommates, had lent us a couple pillows, which felt like pure luxury. It'd been a full month since we'd slept on a real bed.

And boy did we sleep.

February 11, 2007

I’d spent two days sneezing on the train, and still hadn’t shaken the nose tickles by the time we finally arrived at the Catalina State Park campgrounds.

The train had arrived at the station in Tucson at 1 in the morning, and I sneezed may way through an uncomfortable sleep on the Amtrak station bench, while we waited for the 6:05am bus. I sneezed my way through the bus ride, and kept right on sneezing during the cab ride and the walk from the park entrance to the ranger station, heaving chest loaded down with a backpacking backpack on my back and a smaller backpack on my front.

We waited until 8:30am for a spot to open up in the non-electric sites, and then walked the last half mile to our new home. We set up our tent and I sneezily crawled in, the sun starting to saturate the cloudy skies to a brighter gray, as we lay down for some real rest.

We woke up at around 1pm. We made food, taking in the Catalina Mountains right there behind us, eating open-face peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I only sneezed a couple times; it seemed to be subsiding with the fresh air.

I looked at my phone to check the time, and saw that there was a missed call from Tava, at 8am. Apparently my phone had called her (buttons pushed while it was crammed between me and my bags, probably), and she’d called right back.

I told myself I really should taker her off of my speed dial list.

Tava and I lived together for 7 years, if you count the first year in the dorms where we lived in rooms two doors down from one another. It had been a very romantic, intimate relationship, for a long time, but in the last year, since we’d stopped living together, and maybe a little even before that, it had just, well, sort of dissolved.

I stopped returning her phone calls, because every time I saw her she made it clear that she had no interest in listening to anything I had to say, anything I felt or thought. My intensity and insight used to be something that had drawn Tava to me, but of late, it seemed like she maintained the friendship only out of a sense that she should; that she didn’t want to let it go, but with no interest in anything beyond superficial conversation. I’m not very good at superficial conversation.

Or at least, not with Tava. I’d spent too much time lying next to her in my tiny dorm bed, talking about philosophy or love or art or anything, anything so long as it was substantial.

While Mark went to wash our dishes, I played her voice message, snuggled back into my sleeping bag in the tent, with the door open.

“Hey, Maddy. I just saw that you called. I just got up, but I’m awake now, so you can call me back anytime. Okay bye!” she said, in a familiar, friendly, sleepy tone.

“End of message. Press 7 to delete this message, or 9 to save it in the archives,” said the phone machine lady.

I stared off into the yellow grasses surrounding our tent.

“Are you still there?” said the phone machine lady.

I took the phone from my ear and hit the end button, refusing to choose between 7 and 9. And then I sneezed a few times. I decided it must be something from the train, some sort of cleaning product maybe, that was now all over my sweater and fleece, which I was using as pillows.

Mark got back from washing dishes and sat down next to me, half in the tent. I played the message for him.

“Well. That was pretty charming,” he said grudgingly, understanding that it was confusing for me. “But, I mean, you don’t have to do anything about it right now. It’s opening up a whole can of worms you didn’t intend to open. I mean, you could call her and say you hadn’t meant to call, but she clearly wanted you to be calling her, so that might not be the easiest way to start a conversation.”

“Yeah, she did sounds like she wanted me to call,” I said. I sighed. I thought about Molly, and how I'd left Chicago with our friendship on a strained note, too.

I felt my eyes well up, thinking about all the ties that had been stretched 1500 miles thin, so far, and were only getting further. How do you resolve a conflict when you're across the country, can't get together to make sushi and watch Sex in the City, to make up?

I thought about calling Tava back, this time thinking she might be a good person to commiserate with about Molly.

But it was just too loaded.

So I called a different friend, instead -- Ruby. Ruby is an easy friend. Our relationship is based on mutual intellectual stimulation, and not on a ton of complicated emotional and historical dependencies. We do have emotional ties, but they're driven by our ability to enjoy one another's minds. We have separate social networks and living situations, and always have.

Ruby talked to me about both of them, let me cry out a little frustration and fear, while Mark played guitar and worked on his songs, at the picnic table.

I felt a bit better after getting off the phone, or at least a little vented. I got out of the tent and looked around at the gray skies and the desert mountains and tried to take a deep breath. My chest ached with the effort. I felt like I'd been crying for hours, my muscles exhausted from sobbing.

But there had been no sobbing. Just sneezing and a little light crying. No thunderstoms, just drizzle.

Even so, the physical sensation was the same.

I looked at the yellow grasses.

"Are we gonna go on that hike?" I said.

"Yeah, let's do it."

We started walking out of the campgrounds.

"You know what?" I said to Mark.

"What's that?" he said, arm around me, concerned and caring, wanting me to feel better.

"I feel heartbroken. I haven't felt this way in... God, for a long time."

He stroked my back gently and sighed.

"Since my second year of college, after Gregory. I feel like I felt this one night with Tava, after Gregory and I crashed and burned. We had dinner in this little studio apartment she'd rented, which she hated. It was the middle of winter and it was far from campus and lonely, so I came over, and she made this stir-fry that impressed the hell out of me, at the time. With peas and carrots and ginger. You know, cuz I didn't really know how to cook yet."

"Mm," Mark said, as we walked down the road to the trail head.

"And we listened to Bjork, and then we went to bed, and we were lying there on the futon, staring at the ceiling and talking about our broken hearts. Did I tell you her ex was named Gregory, too?"

"Yeah, I think so," Mark said.

"Yeah, so, both of us just felt confused and broken. And we lay in bed on our backs, trying to use talk and, you know, our friendship, to mortar up the cracks."

"Mm."

"That's how I feel. Like I did then," I said, looking off into the distance, maybe east, toward home; I wasn't sure. But whatever direction I looked, there were mountains betweeen me and whatever lay beyond.

"Just like that," I said. And Mark put his arms around me and squeezed my aching chest tight.

There’s a check traveling across the country in the mail, right now – or maybe it’s already arrived – while we mosey our way down through Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas on the train. We eat oatmeal from a thermos we set up the night before, using our electric kettle and the bathroom outlets and water from the little sink in the observation car. Oh, and oats brought from Whole Foods in Chicago. Which were probably shipped from a processing plant in Pennsylvania. Which probably got the raw oats from Iowa.

The check is made out to our future roommate, whose voice we know only through IM. We staggered back and forth between our two options – did we want to live with 3 guys, or with one girl? The guys are in their late 20s/early 30s: a musician and two self-proclaimed ‘old skateboarder dudes.’ The girl is 23, vegetarian, on top of her shit, has a dog with separation anxiety, and sounds a little uptight. The guys, well, they’re 3 guys. Sharing one shower.

Back and forth, pros and cons, discussion after discussion, first feeling committed to one, mapping out routes to groceries, and then making whole new maps and plans the next day, from the other address.

The girl ran around to different housing options, trying to find something with our price range in mind, something without carpeting for her dog to tear up, with no shared walls for her dog’s barks to pierce when no one is home. She found a house with bamboo floors and crown moldings, a mile from the train, less than a mile from Trader Joe’s. Uphill, said GoogleEarth, all the way to Trader Joe’s, but downhill with the groceries all the way back.

“Hola!” she says in her email, giving us the details of this house she thinks is just so cute, and that is even a little below our upper price limit.

“Holla back!” I say, in my response, having misread her greeting. I catch it a few days later when I go back to reference her email.

Oops. Californians say ‘Hola;’ Chicagoans say “Holla.”

We reread her description of the house, her description of herself, look at our maps, and think “Yeah, okay, yes.”

“Sounds like a plan then,” I email. Let’s send in that rental application, that credit check. We bundle up and leave Molly’s house with the form in hand, squinting against the cold wind on our way to Kinko’s.

But then the skateboarder dude, Luke, who runs a surf and board shop, mentions that they have a yard with a small garden and a porch and that they’re set back behind another house, so there’s no traffic noise. And they compost. And have bike hooks and a workbench in the basement.

They compost!

The check is half our deposit. Luke will get the other half on arrival.

Holla back, y’all.

Note: Posted via the wireless connection at our campgrounds in San Antonio. What is the world coming to.