In Through The Out Door (with apologies to Led Zeppelin)
[Players:
serenityw and a handful of family who've just left, plus the first face-to-face introduction of NPC Vicki Li, Serenity's old college room-mate.]
[Scene: They say that three moves are equal in stress to one death in the family. Who knows? But everybody needs a place for their stuff, even if it's five floors up and the elevator doesn't work. Backdated to November 22, 2007, and hopefully this'll be the last 2007 entry for Red. We'll see.]
Thursday evening, November 22, 2007
Anybody who's ever had to move into a new place that, God forbid, is any amount of stories above ground-level knows exactly how what began as 'just a few boxes' can breed like cockroaches in a dumpster. There's the stuff you need right now, and it's in a box; and there's the stuff you'll probably need later, and it's in a box too. And then there's the stuff you're using, and it's not in a box, it's strewn all over your living space, so you get an empty box (or several, it's almost always several) and cram it in at random. And then, taaa daaaah! you've got moooore boxes.
Which have to be carried. Up the stairs. Over and over again, with gravity tugging your tired body down at an uneasy tilt in between every load as you trudge back towards the U-Haul because hey, working elevator? What working elevator?
Apartment supers are total bastards about elevators.
Friends and family make it better, of course. And eventually everybody gets cranky as hell, but you're so grateful to get the goddamned move over with that you just do not care one friggin' bit, cranky is fine, cranky is just great... so long as you can stifle the urge to crank right back.
When it's all finally done with and the post-moving celebratory pizza has been reduced to the occasional scattered piece amid stains on cardboard and the new place doesn't echo quite as much and you close the door behind the last friend or relative...
...that's when the Grand Finále of the moving-in process starts: the headspace part. Because relocating your things is way, way easier than relocating your self.
Except for there being less stairs.
* * * * *
Dear Mr. Kaiba
Dear Mister Kaiba
To Seto Kaiba
Hello
AAAGH. NOT WORKING. Cross-legged on the floor amid a welter of bubble-wrap and corrugation, Serenity scrubbed at her hair with both hands before crumpling up her latest draft and flinging it trash-wards with no more accuracy than the last six or seven wads. She'd never been a good aim. But she'd usually been better with words than this.
She was tired, that was all. She had one more trip back in the morning out to the New Rochelle place to pick up a few last bits that needed hand-carrying; and Bear, of course, plus litterbox, foodbowls and food. He'd have the room all to himself tonight; hopefully his yowls of horror at being temporarily abandoned wouldn't keep her host awake.
Her host. Serenity sighed, rocking back against the stack of unpacked boxes and stretching her legs out in front of her.
Saying thank-you (not the saying of it, but the method) had baffled her. So she'd thought about it, and she'd asked various people there opinions, and she'd-- winged it, more or less. And now the results, were, well, were... the best she could do.
Serenity'd managed to create a new definition for the word 'incongruous.' And, possibly, 'idiotic' and 'wrong' and 'fail'... It wasn't that it was so awful or anything, really. It was just, almost certainly, going to be the kind of thing that the receiver stared at in bafflement and then said something polite about. Right now she had it safe and sound, resting in solitary glory on the end of her bed; and maybe, Serenity thought wryly, it ought to stay there.
She sighed, shoulders slumping in tiredness. It had been a long, long day, and it wasn't over yet; the new place echoed with strangeness, walls innocent of decoration and edged with the most minimal furniture (she needed a couch. Why hadn't she thought about a couch? Hell, she didn't even have a CHAIR, except for the beanbag in the corner. How the hell was she going to get a new couch up those goddamn stairs? Maybe Ikea'd have something she could put together, no, that was stupid. But she needed a COUCH.) There were bookcases to put in place and dishes to unpack, and even if Joey'd put the bed together she still didn't have the faintest clue where her sheets were.
And there were an awful lot of boxes to go through.
Faint music filtered through the walls from her across-the-hall neighbor; it had been playing all day, and either the guy was a huge Led Zeppelin fan or he'd managed to find a station that played nothing but. She had yet to see him; but Deacon, her friend Vicky Li's fiancé, had gleefully reported his appearance: 'Ren, you know you got a neighbor looks just like Jesus? Swear to God, beard and everything-- dude tried to bum a cigarette off me.
She wasn't sure which was more disturbing, Jesus Christ living in Manhattan or Jesus Christ bumming smokes from her friends. Wasn't there some line in a Green Day song about Jesus filling out paperwork?
This wasn't getting any boxes unpacked. Wondering vaguely if messiahs ever had to help their disciples move, Serenity levered herself off the floor and wearily got back to work.
* * *
The downstairs buzzer startled Serenity enough that the jam-jar-turned-kitchen-glass she was putting away nearly met with an untimely death on the worn linoleum. The thing sounded remarkably like a fly caught in a plastic bag; but as it fizzed its way into a staccato shave-anna-haircut pattern, she bit back a grin and pressed the button that unlocked the foyer door. Pounding feet echoed through the stairwell; and when she unlocked the door, Serenity shook her head at the tousled black-haired head that poked through immediately. "Coulda just called," she said. "What's up, Vicki?"
Vicki (Vicki Huang Li, if you wanted the whole thing) reached out and tapped her former college room-mate's forehead with her knuckles. "What'd I ask you to not let me forget when I left, huh?"
"Uh... oh. You said to tell you not to forget your jacket." Rolling her eyes, the redhead snagged the heavy black denim jacket from on top of a nearby box and offered it to her friend, dangling it off one finger. "Want to come in? Where's Deacon?"
The half-Chinese young woman shook her head, multiple earrings chiming; they ran in a row of tiny gold hoops from lobe to upper edge. She was a vet technician at a Manhattan office, and one of the first people Serenity'd looked up after her initial panic and paranoia had worn off. They'd kept in contact through email and the occasional call since she'd left the city, but now--
"Nah, he's downstairs-- said his leg was hurting." She tilted her head a little, bright black eyes glinting with amusement. "Hey, you never said, 'Ren, you gonna be able t'make it to my party?"
--now, engagement ring on one hand and the other usually tucked in the back pocket of one Deacon Reece, she'd called, demanded details and a lunch-date, commiserated over past boyfriends, offered to bury certain bodies in undisclosed locations if they were provided ("Okay, I wouldn't do the burying, but y'remember all those cousins I got? No shit 'Ren, they could do it, they got this place up by Inwood'n nobody'd ever-- no? Well, okay, but you just remember I offered,") and generally stayed in touch. If she was a bit hard on her friend's nerves, she meant well. And she had helped Serenity move, which made her valuable beyond all compare... Deacon had broken his leg a while before, so he hadn't been much good in the hauling-things-up-the-stairs area. He'd turned out to be decent at setting up DVD players and so forth, though, something the redhead was fairly useless at.
The party in question was, of course, of the bachelorette persuasion. "Valentine's Day?" hazarded Serenity to the young woman in the doorway. "You got it planned out, or--"
"Done deal, 'Ren." Vicki beamed with the generous, sweet smile that her room-mate had learned to fear during their college days. "You just leave it up to me."
Goodnights followed that perilous statement, and after the last lock clicked shut Serenity sighed and turned back to the silent apartment and its boxes. She could still hear Vicki's footsteps, feel the vibrations that the stairwell filtered into the flooring, fading ghosts of movement that quieted into stillness as the foyer door opened and closed. If she'd crossed the small apartment to one of the windows, she might have been able to see the couple leave; but it was late, Serenity was tired and just... didn't feel like bothering.
Boxes. Gotta find my sheets, blankets-- oh hell, where'd I put my toothbrush?
Fourty minutes later she'd found the sheets; half an hour after that and the toothbrush and toothpaste had reemerged, packed bizarrly in with a stack of CDs. Another hour put her thin supply of kitchen gear into place; she had to peel off thrift-store tags from most of it, but at least she had a toaster and something to fry eggs in. Cross-legged on the floor, Serenity finished off the remaining unwanted bits of stone-cold pizza as her small CD player worked its way through Nickel Creek's most recent album.
More boxes, then, and another hour or so of shoving things on shelves and cardboard debris into a corner, and...
Her alarm-clock was still ticking when she parked it on the wobbly end-table beside her bed, and she blinked at the dial. 11:36, the hands proclaimed. There was no way that was right, was there? Distracted, she fished out her cell from a pocket.
Oh.
Fine, well, she had something she could sleep on now.
Flat on her back on the as-yet unmade bed, Serenity Wheeler stared silently up at the ceiling. Her ceiling, she supposed. It wasn't much to look at, but... it was hers. And that was something, the best she could do.
It occurred to her, then, that-- short of a few times at Seto Kaiba's place-- she hadn't been plainly, absolutely alone very often since her move back to the city. Now, though, she was; and if her new place didn't feel like home, it didn't feel all that bad, either. It felt-- empty, she supposed; open and unfinished, like one of those cards you bought to give somebody when you didn't want to go with a pre-printed sentiment.
Blank. Blank book, blank page, just waiting for me to write something down. Or tear it up, I guess.
Restlessly she turned on her side, one arm going across her eyes. She ached: body, mind... too long a day, too much stimulation, too much work. And abruptly she wanted Bear with her. Hope he's not being too much trouble. This is the first time he's ever been away from me overnight since I brought him home. But he'll be okay, she consoled herself hastily; what else could she have done but leave him at the Kaiba estate? And anyway, it was just for one night.
Her foot bumped something glassy and hard at the foot of the bed. Speaking of Bear, speaking of Seto Kaiba... Serenity sat up slowly and reached for her half-forgotten thank-you gift.
It wasn't... really all that bad. Tired enough to be honest, the young woman had to admit that her gift was kind of cute.
Still really, really unsuitable, but cute.
It didn't look much like the half-grown feline, but at least the colors matched: patchy gray with random shading going every which way, smudged shirtfront, paws and tailtip. And then there was the way Bear's coppery eyes always had one open just a trifle wider than the other; that too was there, though more by accident than design.
Fine. It's the best I can do, and I might as well get over myself. Tired but determined (and smiling, just a little), Serenity reached for the piece of stationary she'd left on the bed along with her gift and began to write. She'd leave it for Seto Kaiba when she went to pick up Bear, and if it wasn't perfect, what was? It was the best she could do, and that'd just have to be enough.
Somehow Serenity thought it would be.
* * * * *
Letter written in ballpoint-pen on stationary featuring a design of irises, left on the desk of one Seto Kaiba beside a wrapped gift, which, when opened, produced a portrait done in appliqué.
Dear Mr. Kaiba:
I'd like to say thank you for everything you've done for me since I came back to the city, but I'm having trouble figuring out how. It's kind of funny, really-- as much as I like to talk, you'd think I'd know exactly what to say and how to say it, but I don't.
I've pretty much gotten everything settled into my new place in the Murray Hill area-- you might have heard of it as 'Curry Hill', Lexington and 29th. It's an interesting neighborhood, kind of East Indian ethnic with a lot of weird shops and little restaurants with names I can't pronounce. I think I'll like it, though, and my new job's about to start as well.
A while back you gave me some good advice when I asked you just what you'd do in my situation, unsure about what I wanted to do or how to do it. Not everybody gets a chance to start over, and you suggested I reevaluate what I did best, maybe work out the steps of how to get from here to there. I think, once I'm a little more secure and not having to deal with all the new things-- I think I'm going to do just that. This is a new beginning for me, not an ending, and even the new things I'm starting right now are only a jumping-off place. Nothing has to end just because something else is beginning.
Anyway-- Thank you for allowing me to find a safe haven with you. Thank you for making me feel welcome in your home and for helping me talk things out; thank you for the peace that safety and, heh, serenity allowed me to find. In a weird way, thank you for not being connected to my problems any more than your friendship with my brothers caused-- that disconnection helped me see, a little anyway, that there's the rest of the world out there past my own troubles. And it helped to make me strong enough to step back out into that world and stop hiding so much. I'm still doing that (hiding, at least some) but knowing that there are safe places left here makes it a little easier to make my own sanctuary.
And lastly, thank you for your friendship with my brothers. However the three of you managed to become friends (they told me about it a little bit, not much), I'm really glad you managed it (and not just for my own sake! They need a voice of reason.)
Speaking of making things... I don't know what you'll do with this. It doesn't match your house or anything here at all, but I thought you might want something to remember your feline guest by. I'm still learning how to quilt and appliqué, so this is pretty rough-- it's kind of a silly gift (right, more than kind of) but
(the handwriting had jerked sharply here, as if the writer had grown exasperated with her own wording)
but I hope you like it anyway.
Thank you again; take care of yourself, and I hope to see you again.
Serenity Wheeler (and Bear, of course)
serenityw and a handful of family who've just left, plus the first face-to-face introduction of NPC Vicki Li, Serenity's old college room-mate.]
[Scene: They say that three moves are equal in stress to one death in the family. Who knows? But everybody needs a place for their stuff, even if it's five floors up and the elevator doesn't work. Backdated to November 22, 2007, and hopefully this'll be the last 2007 entry for Red. We'll see.]
Thursday evening, November 22, 2007
Anybody who's ever had to move into a new place that, God forbid, is any amount of stories above ground-level knows exactly how what began as 'just a few boxes' can breed like cockroaches in a dumpster. There's the stuff you need right now, and it's in a box; and there's the stuff you'll probably need later, and it's in a box too. And then there's the stuff you're using, and it's not in a box, it's strewn all over your living space, so you get an empty box (or several, it's almost always several) and cram it in at random. And then, taaa daaaah! you've got moooore boxes.
Which have to be carried. Up the stairs. Over and over again, with gravity tugging your tired body down at an uneasy tilt in between every load as you trudge back towards the U-Haul because hey, working elevator? What working elevator?
Apartment supers are total bastards about elevators.
Friends and family make it better, of course. And eventually everybody gets cranky as hell, but you're so grateful to get the goddamned move over with that you just do not care one friggin' bit, cranky is fine, cranky is just great... so long as you can stifle the urge to crank right back.
When it's all finally done with and the post-moving celebratory pizza has been reduced to the occasional scattered piece amid stains on cardboard and the new place doesn't echo quite as much and you close the door behind the last friend or relative...
...that's when the Grand Finále of the moving-in process starts: the headspace part. Because relocating your things is way, way easier than relocating your self.
Except for there being less stairs.
* * * * *
Dear Mr. Kaiba
Dear Mister Kaiba
To Seto Kaiba
Hello
AAAGH. NOT WORKING. Cross-legged on the floor amid a welter of bubble-wrap and corrugation, Serenity scrubbed at her hair with both hands before crumpling up her latest draft and flinging it trash-wards with no more accuracy than the last six or seven wads. She'd never been a good aim. But she'd usually been better with words than this.
She was tired, that was all. She had one more trip back in the morning out to the New Rochelle place to pick up a few last bits that needed hand-carrying; and Bear, of course, plus litterbox, foodbowls and food. He'd have the room all to himself tonight; hopefully his yowls of horror at being temporarily abandoned wouldn't keep her host awake.
Her host. Serenity sighed, rocking back against the stack of unpacked boxes and stretching her legs out in front of her.
Saying thank-you (not the saying of it, but the method) had baffled her. So she'd thought about it, and she'd asked various people there opinions, and she'd-- winged it, more or less. And now the results, were, well, were... the best she could do.
Serenity'd managed to create a new definition for the word 'incongruous.' And, possibly, 'idiotic' and 'wrong' and 'fail'... It wasn't that it was so awful or anything, really. It was just, almost certainly, going to be the kind of thing that the receiver stared at in bafflement and then said something polite about. Right now she had it safe and sound, resting in solitary glory on the end of her bed; and maybe, Serenity thought wryly, it ought to stay there.
She sighed, shoulders slumping in tiredness. It had been a long, long day, and it wasn't over yet; the new place echoed with strangeness, walls innocent of decoration and edged with the most minimal furniture (she needed a couch. Why hadn't she thought about a couch? Hell, she didn't even have a CHAIR, except for the beanbag in the corner. How the hell was she going to get a new couch up those goddamn stairs? Maybe Ikea'd have something she could put together, no, that was stupid. But she needed a COUCH.) There were bookcases to put in place and dishes to unpack, and even if Joey'd put the bed together she still didn't have the faintest clue where her sheets were.
And there were an awful lot of boxes to go through.
Faint music filtered through the walls from her across-the-hall neighbor; it had been playing all day, and either the guy was a huge Led Zeppelin fan or he'd managed to find a station that played nothing but. She had yet to see him; but Deacon, her friend Vicky Li's fiancé, had gleefully reported his appearance: 'Ren, you know you got a neighbor looks just like Jesus? Swear to God, beard and everything-- dude tried to bum a cigarette off me.
She wasn't sure which was more disturbing, Jesus Christ living in Manhattan or Jesus Christ bumming smokes from her friends. Wasn't there some line in a Green Day song about Jesus filling out paperwork?
This wasn't getting any boxes unpacked. Wondering vaguely if messiahs ever had to help their disciples move, Serenity levered herself off the floor and wearily got back to work.
* * *
The downstairs buzzer startled Serenity enough that the jam-jar-turned-kitchen-glass she was putting away nearly met with an untimely death on the worn linoleum. The thing sounded remarkably like a fly caught in a plastic bag; but as it fizzed its way into a staccato shave-anna-haircut pattern, she bit back a grin and pressed the button that unlocked the foyer door. Pounding feet echoed through the stairwell; and when she unlocked the door, Serenity shook her head at the tousled black-haired head that poked through immediately. "Coulda just called," she said. "What's up, Vicki?"
Vicki (Vicki Huang Li, if you wanted the whole thing) reached out and tapped her former college room-mate's forehead with her knuckles. "What'd I ask you to not let me forget when I left, huh?"
"Uh... oh. You said to tell you not to forget your jacket." Rolling her eyes, the redhead snagged the heavy black denim jacket from on top of a nearby box and offered it to her friend, dangling it off one finger. "Want to come in? Where's Deacon?"
The half-Chinese young woman shook her head, multiple earrings chiming; they ran in a row of tiny gold hoops from lobe to upper edge. She was a vet technician at a Manhattan office, and one of the first people Serenity'd looked up after her initial panic and paranoia had worn off. They'd kept in contact through email and the occasional call since she'd left the city, but now--
"Nah, he's downstairs-- said his leg was hurting." She tilted her head a little, bright black eyes glinting with amusement. "Hey, you never said, 'Ren, you gonna be able t'make it to my party?"
--now, engagement ring on one hand and the other usually tucked in the back pocket of one Deacon Reece, she'd called, demanded details and a lunch-date, commiserated over past boyfriends, offered to bury certain bodies in undisclosed locations if they were provided ("Okay, I wouldn't do the burying, but y'remember all those cousins I got? No shit 'Ren, they could do it, they got this place up by Inwood'n nobody'd ever-- no? Well, okay, but you just remember I offered,") and generally stayed in touch. If she was a bit hard on her friend's nerves, she meant well. And she had helped Serenity move, which made her valuable beyond all compare... Deacon had broken his leg a while before, so he hadn't been much good in the hauling-things-up-the-stairs area. He'd turned out to be decent at setting up DVD players and so forth, though, something the redhead was fairly useless at.
The party in question was, of course, of the bachelorette persuasion. "Valentine's Day?" hazarded Serenity to the young woman in the doorway. "You got it planned out, or--"
"Done deal, 'Ren." Vicki beamed with the generous, sweet smile that her room-mate had learned to fear during their college days. "You just leave it up to me."
Goodnights followed that perilous statement, and after the last lock clicked shut Serenity sighed and turned back to the silent apartment and its boxes. She could still hear Vicki's footsteps, feel the vibrations that the stairwell filtered into the flooring, fading ghosts of movement that quieted into stillness as the foyer door opened and closed. If she'd crossed the small apartment to one of the windows, she might have been able to see the couple leave; but it was late, Serenity was tired and just... didn't feel like bothering.
Boxes. Gotta find my sheets, blankets-- oh hell, where'd I put my toothbrush?
Fourty minutes later she'd found the sheets; half an hour after that and the toothbrush and toothpaste had reemerged, packed bizarrly in with a stack of CDs. Another hour put her thin supply of kitchen gear into place; she had to peel off thrift-store tags from most of it, but at least she had a toaster and something to fry eggs in. Cross-legged on the floor, Serenity finished off the remaining unwanted bits of stone-cold pizza as her small CD player worked its way through Nickel Creek's most recent album.
More boxes, then, and another hour or so of shoving things on shelves and cardboard debris into a corner, and...
Her alarm-clock was still ticking when she parked it on the wobbly end-table beside her bed, and she blinked at the dial. 11:36, the hands proclaimed. There was no way that was right, was there? Distracted, she fished out her cell from a pocket.
Oh.
Fine, well, she had something she could sleep on now.
Flat on her back on the as-yet unmade bed, Serenity Wheeler stared silently up at the ceiling. Her ceiling, she supposed. It wasn't much to look at, but... it was hers. And that was something, the best she could do.
It occurred to her, then, that-- short of a few times at Seto Kaiba's place-- she hadn't been plainly, absolutely alone very often since her move back to the city. Now, though, she was; and if her new place didn't feel like home, it didn't feel all that bad, either. It felt-- empty, she supposed; open and unfinished, like one of those cards you bought to give somebody when you didn't want to go with a pre-printed sentiment.
Blank. Blank book, blank page, just waiting for me to write something down. Or tear it up, I guess.
Restlessly she turned on her side, one arm going across her eyes. She ached: body, mind... too long a day, too much stimulation, too much work. And abruptly she wanted Bear with her. Hope he's not being too much trouble. This is the first time he's ever been away from me overnight since I brought him home. But he'll be okay, she consoled herself hastily; what else could she have done but leave him at the Kaiba estate? And anyway, it was just for one night.
Her foot bumped something glassy and hard at the foot of the bed. Speaking of Bear, speaking of Seto Kaiba... Serenity sat up slowly and reached for her half-forgotten thank-you gift.
It wasn't... really all that bad. Tired enough to be honest, the young woman had to admit that her gift was kind of cute.
Still really, really unsuitable, but cute.
It didn't look much like the half-grown feline, but at least the colors matched: patchy gray with random shading going every which way, smudged shirtfront, paws and tailtip. And then there was the way Bear's coppery eyes always had one open just a trifle wider than the other; that too was there, though more by accident than design.
Fine. It's the best I can do, and I might as well get over myself. Tired but determined (and smiling, just a little), Serenity reached for the piece of stationary she'd left on the bed along with her gift and began to write. She'd leave it for Seto Kaiba when she went to pick up Bear, and if it wasn't perfect, what was? It was the best she could do, and that'd just have to be enough.
Somehow Serenity thought it would be.
* * * * *
Letter written in ballpoint-pen on stationary featuring a design of irises, left on the desk of one Seto Kaiba beside a wrapped gift, which, when opened, produced a portrait done in appliqué.
Dear Mr. Kaiba:
I'd like to say thank you for everything you've done for me since I came back to the city, but I'm having trouble figuring out how. It's kind of funny, really-- as much as I like to talk, you'd think I'd know exactly what to say and how to say it, but I don't.
I've pretty much gotten everything settled into my new place in the Murray Hill area-- you might have heard of it as 'Curry Hill', Lexington and 29th. It's an interesting neighborhood, kind of East Indian ethnic with a lot of weird shops and little restaurants with names I can't pronounce. I think I'll like it, though, and my new job's about to start as well.
A while back you gave me some good advice when I asked you just what you'd do in my situation, unsure about what I wanted to do or how to do it. Not everybody gets a chance to start over, and you suggested I reevaluate what I did best, maybe work out the steps of how to get from here to there. I think, once I'm a little more secure and not having to deal with all the new things-- I think I'm going to do just that. This is a new beginning for me, not an ending, and even the new things I'm starting right now are only a jumping-off place. Nothing has to end just because something else is beginning.
Anyway-- Thank you for allowing me to find a safe haven with you. Thank you for making me feel welcome in your home and for helping me talk things out; thank you for the peace that safety and, heh, serenity allowed me to find. In a weird way, thank you for not being connected to my problems any more than your friendship with my brothers caused-- that disconnection helped me see, a little anyway, that there's the rest of the world out there past my own troubles. And it helped to make me strong enough to step back out into that world and stop hiding so much. I'm still doing that (hiding, at least some) but knowing that there are safe places left here makes it a little easier to make my own sanctuary.
And lastly, thank you for your friendship with my brothers. However the three of you managed to become friends (they told me about it a little bit, not much), I'm really glad you managed it (and not just for my own sake! They need a voice of reason.)
Speaking of making things... I don't know what you'll do with this. It doesn't match your house or anything here at all, but I thought you might want something to remember your feline guest by. I'm still learning how to quilt and appliqué, so this is pretty rough-- it's kind of a silly gift (right, more than kind of) but
(the handwriting had jerked sharply here, as if the writer had grown exasperated with her own wording)
but I hope you like it anyway.
Thank you again; take care of yourself, and I hope to see you again.
Serenity Wheeler (and Bear, of course)