Sometimes we don’t recognize shared similarities if applied differently. I consider myself a routine-driven, self-contained, always worrying planner, and found it odd that Derek, the free-wheeling extrovert, would find me so interesting. I imagined him attracted to a busty exhibitionist type, but no, he always complimented me on my even keel, and hinted that he already had too much drama from others in his life. Still I felt boring beside him. We filled our time with marathon games of Scrabble over dinner at my house, which, given my culinary exactitude, always took a number of hours in preparation. While I cooked, Derek would fish the internet for floating homes. He also looked at cars, boats, drive thru coffee kiosks, and anything he could figure out how to do something with, expounding over the possibilities as if ready to drop a down payment that day. I indulged his fantasies, which after some time I understood lacked reality anywhere but in his head, with the exception of his dream of residing on the river. He needed to move.
This became apparent the day we stopped at his house to pick up something he had forgotten, and with no one else home, he invited me in. He lived on a major highway in one of three houses surrounded by massive factories with trucking fleets barreling down the street. They had lost 7 cats to the traffic. Though their family of three had all lived there once, he took on roommates after his wife left.
We entered through the garage/workshop. Derek and his daughter Andee occupied the basement, and though she had a daybed covered with clothes on one end, he explained that he slept on a slouchy couch in front of a TV. The rest of the space was cramped with antique furniture, a ceramic and glassware collection, and a pile of VHS tapes, mostly old TV shows like Bonanza and the Munsters. He kept a computer in the laundry room, along with his daughter’s dollhouse and guinea pig cage beside the hot water heater. All was either tidy but not clean, or clean but not tidy and smelled like dank basement. I felt no compulsion to sit down or touch anything.
The main level consisted of a kitchen with a sink full of dirty dishes and counters littered with open, mostly empty snack food packages. The other rooms had been converted into bedrooms by stapling old sheets to the door-frames to serve as dividers. Toys were scattered everywhere, and again, everything looked battered or dirty. He explained that he had given this floor to his roommate who had two small daughters. His older brother slept in Derek’s former bedroom upstairs. The house did have another bedroom, his daughter Andee’s, which she no longer slept in since the piles of toys obscured the floor and bed.
Opening his door to me naturally presented some questions, which when answered, opened other doors. “So, why did you give your roommate the ground floor?,” I asked when back in the car.
“So I can come and go through the garage and he can have his own space,” he said, leaving a pregnant pause. He then told me that Nathan had some issues he didn’t want to expose Andee to. He came to know Nathan when playing pick-up basketball by his old house, before Andee was born. A teenager at the time, Nathan displayed the scars of an abusive family. “I promised him that he could always stay with me if things got bad,” he said. Derek said hadn’t heard from Nathan after they moved but then he resurfaced a couple of years ago. He had just gotten out of jail for drugs, and his girlfriend was pregnant when he went in so now he had a kid. He was looking for a place to stay since his girlfriend lived with her parents who hated him. “When I see people like him I wonder what I could have turned into if I didn’t have Pitt, so I gave Nathan my living room for a bedroom. We didn’t use it. Then Nathan’s girlfriend and daughter moved in and soon they had another daughter on the way so they’re a family of four and we only have two so they deserve more space.”
Derek often talked about Harvey Pitt, his only father figure, a neighbor who served as his mentor throughout his teenage years. He died of cancer when Derek was 25, and since Derek felt that he never had a chance to thank him, the man became idolized in his mind, and Derek often vowed to carry on Pitt’s legacy in a romantic way that rarely seemed directed towards worthy object.
“So, they’re druggies?” I asked.
“No, he pretty much cleaned up. They test him on probation. No, Nathan has anger issues.”
I came to learn that Nathan didn’t get picked up for selling drugs to an undercover cop or anything. He got arrested when someone he was selling coke to grabbed his stuff and ran. Nathan started shooting at the guy as he ran away, attracting the police.
“He just has a hot head that gets him into trouble,” Derek said this time. “He’s not a bad guy. He has a full time job now; he ‘s trying to be the family man. He see his PO and therapist. But he does sometimes blow up at his girlfriend and kids, so we moved downstairs. I have no tolerance for that.”
“If you had no tolerance you would kick him out,” I said.
“If I kicked him out it would put him back where he was which is even worse for his kids.”
“So why don’t you move out rather than sleep in a basement?”
“I don’t want to leave Adam with Nathan. Nathan doesn’t like Adam.”
“Why can’t Adam take care of himself?
Derek had told me that his older brother Adam had a heart attack a few years ago. He had a heart transplant and it took a long time for him to recover so Derek offered him his room.
“Isn’t he recovered by now?”
“From what, life?” Derek responded.
Turned out that Adam never capably supported himself. He had a heart attack at 42 due to alcoholism, chain-smoking and the fact that he sustained himself mostly with the food at the convenience store where he worked behind bullet-proof glass. After his surgery he moved in with Derek because his blood thinning medication gave every beer he downed the alcoholic effect of two and one more DUI would land him in jail. He used to spent his off hours in the ‘lottery’ sections of bars drinking and gambling all his money away on video slots. Derek gave him a reason to come home directly after work before he got drunk enough to hurt himself or others. He also saved himself the expense of paying Adam’s back rent when he gambled all his money away again, or bailing him out of jail for another drunken offense. The confessions only came out later.
One night, Derek arrived at my apartment in a state no one else would recognize as stressed, but for the Cheshire cat, that lack of smile signified something serious. He told me that Nathan was fired after mouthing off to his boss. Derek had arrived home to find a number of sketchy characters in his driveway, and when they cleared out Nathan gave him two months rent and told him of the day’s events. His employment had been arranged during his release from prison, and the only other job Derek knew Nathan had held ended when he crashed his supervisor’s car (which he had stolen after the supervisor had irritated Nathan for one reason or another.) From his demeanor he knew his roommate had no plans to seek legitimate work.
He told me that he needed to move before his home degenerated into a drug house under his name. This proved a challenge for more reasons than those already mentioned. I came to learn that his truck’s registration was up in one month. He had purchased it for $500 with fresh tags, but knew it had $5,000 worth of issues that would prevent it from passing inspection and since he hadn’t anticipated these issues, he had no extra cash on hand to either move or procure a new car.
I thought these impending deadlines would divert his internet searches in a more practical direction, but he found flaws in every affordable car and home he saw within his price range, however luxurious in comparison to his current situation. Instead he wasted precious time taking virtual tours through floating homes. As winter set in, some affordable floating options began to emerge. I pushed him to tour some, knowing that these would be the only alternatives he would consent to. In this way, I became involved.