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I could no longer live in my apartment given the broken door and
large roadside hole so I needed to find a new place for a while as I
sorted through the new issues in my life. As Daina had a spare
bedroom, and we were already taking my computer and stereo to her
condo for safe keeping, I asked if I could stay there for the next
few days until I knew what my long term living circumstances would
be. She agreed and with our third trip to my apartment the morning
after the incident I collected my toiletries and a bag of clothes and
any other little valuable kitsch I might have lying around. It felt
wrong leaving the rest of my stuff in this now permanently open
place, but moving everything to Daina's was too much to handle with
no empty room to put it into. I just had to let my nerves settle and
hope the rest of my belongings wouldn't interest strangers while I
was gone. It probably helped that my apartment was directly under
the manager's, but I fretted just the same each day I was at Daina's
and not checking on my place.
With my computer taking up the majority of her small dining room
table it occurred to her that, with all of my desktop publishing
software in her place, I could help her make Christmas time letters
to her various family members and relatives. While I could, I warned
her that using only my printer they wouldn't be as crisp and clear as
the Quarterly and The Doctor Who Report issues were. That was fine
with her as they'd still be a step up and save her from writing all
of the permutations by hand. She composed the base letter and we
went to the local copy shop to find an appealing style of paper to
print them on. By the end of the day we were done and I helped her
with the envelopes, sticking on return address labels and stamps as
she wrote the mailing addresses on them and sealed each card with the
letter included. I was thankful for the task as it kept my mind off
of my unguarded stuff, but as she decided to drop them off at the
mail box that night, I asked if we could swing by my place just to
ease my nerves. Everything left behind was still in place.
The following day she was off to work and with little idea what to do
with myself, I decided to assemble my stereo components and realized
her television was modern enough to have stereo jacks on the back,
allowing me to hook it up to my stereo system as well. For the first
time I was able to watch television with great stereo sound and
excitedly showed Daina when she got home. It turned out it was one
thing to assemble my own stereo but she was nervous about the
thought of it intermingled with her television. I assured
her it was completely safe and there was nothing to worry about.
She took me out to eat that night and I fought off the urge to ask
her to swing by my place, less it became an annoying daily habit. I
was able to do this for two whole days before asking to check on it
again midweek to find everything still in place and untouched, though
a bit cold with a few snow flakes blown in through the hole in the
wall.
As Daina had a cat, I needed to have the door to her guest room
closed at all times to keep the cat out. While I wasn't allergic
to cats, I was allergic to the household dust that would get into
their fur. As her cat was a single person only feline, I didn't
have to worry about it coming to me for attention. My days finally
fell into the routine of working on the next TDWR issue while
listening to cable news. In between I'd stay in touch on the car
accident investigation and the ramifications.
The driver had run home the night of the accident and when the
police figured who the car belonged to they went to his house to find
him. His wife claimed he wasn't there and since they didn't have a
warrant, they couldn't force their way in. The driver turned out to
be a chronic drunk with a history of such driving violations. But he
had a good lawyer and as the police couldn't check on him that night,
there was no proof that he had been drunk at the time of the
accident. Nor, too, could they prove he was even the driver that
night as the apartment manager's husband only saw his backside as he
ran away from the scene. His story was that he had left the cowboy
themed bar to discover his truck had been stolen and then for some
reason walked the two blocks to the local 7-Eleven to call his wife
for a ride home. Why didn't he call from the bar, it was
still open at the time? He couldn't explain, nor had the
7-Eleven clerk remembered seeing him. In the world of land-lined
telephones, no record per call was kept by the local telephone
company so his story couldn't be disproven. It was also
odd that he had his wife give him a ride home, yet she told them
after this supposed ride home that he wasn't there... He
couldn't explain that, either.
When I called his car insurance company to cover my damages and other
costs, they told me they wouldn't be paying as the owner had told
them 'the car had been stolen' and they weren't responsible for the
damages caused by 'whoever stole it'. Yet while the driver had
verbally told police that his car had been stolen, he refused to file
a stolen vehicle report and swear to it. A smart thing for him to
do as the police told me they were planning to
immediately charge him with filing a false report if he did. But
his car insurance company didn't let it get in the way, just that he
had mentioned the possibility to a cop in passing was good enough
for them not to pay for the damages. Thus it seemed my costs weren't
covered by his insurance, nor did I have any renters' insurance at
the time to cover it either and I was apparently out of luck.
Then to my surprise the apartment complex's own insurance offered to
cover the damage, less the value of the couch given its age and
having come from a thrift store. Of my just under two thousand
dollars worth of damage, I received a check for sixteen hundred
dollars and knew under Food Stamp rules I couldn't save it in my bank
account past the end of the month without reporting it. So
what to do with the money? I concluded much of what had been
destroyed I could live without, such as the keyboard I had purchased
to play with and rarely used since. Buying a replacement couch was
out of the question as Daina's condo didn't have any room and I
didn't want to ship a new couch to my broken apartment. I decided
to replace my computer with a second generation PC clone. Their
prices had plummeted in anticipation of the fourth generation PC
coming out in the next year, so it was a good time to upgrade at
least one step up the ladder, even if I'd still be two steps behind.
I placed an order for it at Jeff's friend's business which had since
moved from his basement into a real store front at a shopping center
and he would have the parts in and fully assembled by the end of the
year.
As for a place to live, after two weeks staying in Daina's spare
bedroom it was time to pay my rent, but as I couldn't live at the
apartment anymore, I brought this issue up to the manager. She
realized the duplicate apartment above her own was empty and said I
could move in there at the same rate and not even have to worry about
changing my mailbox as my current apartment wasn't going to be
repaired and re-let until next summer. So for Daina's Christmas
break we spent much of the time making trips from my old apartment up
two flights of stairs to the new apartment carrying a handful with
each trip. Daina particularly damned me for having concrete block &
board shelves for most of my storage, but I pointed out to her it was
cheap and easier to carry up one piece at a time rather than trying
to wrestle with a whole shelving unit all at once. She grumbled it
might be the case, but still damned me for it under her breath with
each concrete block she had to carry up.
By the last week of December Nineteen Ninety-One, I was moved into my
new apartment, a duplicate to my old apartment, the only way to
realize the difference was the two flights of exterior stairs to
reach my door, and that my unused patio was now a balcony. I
pledged to myself to actually use the balcony once Spring came.
To replace my couch, a friend in the writer's group had an old wooden
framed couch I could have as its pieces had come apart over the
years, but as he knew I was handy with wood he thought I could get it
back together and into a usable shape. My first night in the new
apartment I spent pounding the pieces together with a mallet and
using glue for the seams and fresh cross dowels for stability. I was
startled by a late night phone call and it turned out to be the
manger wondering what all the noise was as they were trying to sleep.
I apologized as I hadn't realized the time.
I settled into my new apartment assuming I'd be there for at least
the next year or two.
Little did I know that was not to be.
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