Stuck in New Jersey!
Part I   by Christian Livemore

I’ll warn you now:  this is a long story.  I apologize for that, but to
leave something out would be unfair to posterity, which, I’m sure
you’ll agree, is wildly interested in the details of my move to Savannah.

It would also be unfair to the truth, because when this large a collection
of irritations, mishaps, falsities, opprobrious conduct, dereliction of duty,
general rapscallionism and downright criminal behavior happens to two
people in the short span of a week, it must be recorded.

Besides, if I left anything out, the whole fabric of the story might
not properly weave together, which might lead some folks to believe
that I had made the whole thing up.

And believe me, I am not making this up.

Everything started out according to plan, which of course is how World
War I, World War II, Vietnam, the reign of King Leopold, the Nixon
administration and Ishtar all began.

We arrived at the Ryder rental location at 9am sharp and, as promised,
our Ryder truck was waiting for us.

The plan was to load the Ryder truck and get out of the city by 4pm.
From there we would drive to Newark Airport to pick up the rental car.
My best friend and now ex-roommate Stephen would drive the rental car
while I drove the Ryder truck.  When we got to Savannah, we would
unload the truck and return it, then wrap up any unfinished business in
town.  We would then head back north.  I would drop Stephen off at his
folks’ house in North Carolina for the holidays.  I would continue back
to New Jersey and return the rental car, stay up here for Christmas,
then head back to Savannah with my 14-year-old sister, of whom I have
just gotten custody, in tow.

We signed the paperwork at Ryder, got in the truck and pulled out onto
9th street in Brooklyn.  I had been a little nervous about driving a 15-foot
truck through traffic in Brooklyn and about finding a space in front of our house.
Parking spaces in New York are like gold.  Some people pay more every month
for a parking space than I pay in rent.  But the whole thing went like clockwork.
We made it back to our house in five minutes and lo and behold, the space
directly in front of our building was vacant.

The moving guys were running about two hours late, but we figured that
was okay because Stephen wasn’t quite finished packing yet.  So Stephen
continued to pack, and the moving guys finally arrived at about noon.
We had booked them for three hours and time was money so they got right
to work. Three hours, two cigarette breaks and one large sausage pizza
later, the moving guys finished loading at 3pm.

That’s when the wheels went off the wagon.

The head mover went upstairs and showed Stephen an estimate of $350,
which Stephen signed off on.  By the time Dan got downstairs, however,
the estimate had magically jumped to $450.  But since I didn’t know he
had just quoted Stephen a price $100 lower, I paid the man.  Now bear
in mind, I’ve been out of work since the attacks on September 11th put
me out of a job, so an extra $100 HURTS.

I should also mention here that I was even shorter on cash than I
thought I would be.  I had just bought a car.  Georgia ain’t like New
York City.  There’s no subway.  A person needs a car, especially if
that person has custody of their 14-year-old sister, who needs to be
shuttled to and from after-school activities, movies with her friends,
the mall, and the beach.  Plus I have to get you know, like, a job,
which I will need to drive to.

I paid $1,500 for this car, which seemed at the time to be a good deal,
until the engine blew the day after I got the car registered.  The guy
who sold me the car said he would make me a good deal since I lost my
job because of the Trade Towers.  Apparently a good deal on a car
nowadays does not include an engine.

So as I was paying Dan the moving guy an extra $100, my mechanic John
was putting a new engine into my car.  He gave me the engine free because
he’s a hell of a nice guy.  He salvaged it from a two-year-old car that had
been in an accident and he had been saving it, and I was the beneficiary of
his planning and kindness.  Still, the labor was going to cost about $1,000.

It was also at about this time that I noticed a parking ticket on the
truck’s windshield.  Apparently we had parked a little too close to the
fire hydrant.  We had to park the truck, and we had to park it in front
of the house, and that space was the only one available unless we
double-parked, which would have blocked traffic and meant an even
larger fine.  But apparently the traffic cop didn’t take any of that
into account.  The ticket was for $50.

So okay – so far I’m down $1,100 (Stephen obviously paid half of the
$100 I paid to Dan).

When the movers left, I had my little twelve-year-old neighbor Jacob
watch the truck while I went upstairs to see how Stephen was doing.  He
was supposed to be wrapping up loose ends, then we were going to take
turns watching the truck while the other swept and mopped the floors.

You can’t leave a loaded truck unattended in New York City, not even
for five minutes.  Have you ever seen the pit crews at the
Indiannapolis speedway service a car in 60 seconds?  They could learn a
thing or two from the thieves in New York City.  A lot of folks believe
the Bible is just a collection of fairy tales.  I do, too, mostly.
Except for that part about the plague of locusts.  That part is true.
Don’t believe me?  Come to New York and leave your car unattended while
you run into the deli to grab a newspaper.

I had not been upstairs since the movers arrived.  When I entered the
apartment, I wondered briefly if the movers had snuck in and put all
our things back into the apartment while I wasn’t looking.

There was stuff everywhere – on the floors, on the windowsills, on the
built-in bookshelves.  And there was Stephen, sitting in the middle of
it all, looking like he was about to cry.

About this time I noticed that one of my cats was missing.  Willy D is
about six months old.  I got him for my sister Charity.  Charity has
not had an easy time of it so far in life, and I’m trying very hard to
make things nice for her when she comes to live with me.  She loves
this cat.  It’s the only pet she’s been able to hold onto for more than
three months.  And now he’s missing.

Did the movers let him out?  Is he hiding somewhere?  I searched the
house and when that produced no cat, I searched the neighborhood.
No Willy D.

This is when I panicked.  I began to cry, thinking how my poor sister
has lost another cat.  Then I noticed that my other two cats, Shiloh
and Badness, were hovering around the refrigerator.  I went over to
investigate and spotted just the tip of a little orange tail sticking
out from under the refrigerator.  I was relieved at first, until I
reached down to touch the tail and it didn’t move.  I pulled the tail
now.  Nothing.  Not even a twitch.

Apparently my scream was so loud, our downstairs neighbor Ken
thought that Stephen had murdered me.

Stephen ushered me out of the house.  I went downstairs on the stoop,
where my neighbor Denise was talking to her son Jacob.  I was convinced
Willy D had been crushed under the refrigerator by the movers.  Denise
assured me that he was probably just hiding and went upstairs to help.

A few minutes later she came back down.  Willy D was fine. He had
hidden under the refrigerator, so Stephen and Ken lifted the
refrigerator up while Denise dragged the cat to safety.

Now before you brand me a hysteric, I beg you to remember that I’ve had
a stressful couple of months.  I lost my job because of the Trade Towers.
I have very little money.  I can’t collect unemployment until February 15
because the Labor Department claims they overpaid me $1,600 the last time
I was on unemployment ten years ago, and is assessing me the original $1,600
plus a four-month penalty for not bringing their mistake to their attention.
So by the time I’m eligible for unemployment I’ll only have five checks coming to me.

Add to all this the fact that I’ve now got custody of a 14-year-old,
I’m about to leave for Savannah and still don’t know where we’re going
to live, and have no place to unload the truck into when we get there.
And last and at this moment definitely not least, my mother’s Xanax
prescription the she gave me for emergencies is packed somewhere in the truck.

As my neurotic father always says, “Very nervous, lot of problems, very
nervous person.”

The Willy D situation has just cost an hour.  I put all the cats in
their carriers so there wouldn’t be any further problems.  Stephen went
back to packing and Jacob and I guarded the truck.

I won’t bore you with the details of the next several hours.  There was
packing, there were breaks, there were arguments about finding a lot
for the truck, sleeping on the bare floor and leaving the next day.
The upshot is that by the time we pulled away from our former residence
in Brooklyn, it was past midnight.

So okay – now I’m down $1,100 and we are eight hours behind schedule.

But at least we’re out.  We pulled onto the BQE and drove away from the
city for the last time.  I’ve lived here for 14 years, and it’s been
great, but it was time to go.  And leaving felt good.

We were crossing the Verrazzano Bridge and reminiscing about our time
in New York when we smelled it.

Remember how I had put the cats in their carriers so there wouldn’t be
any more problems?  Well, since we stayed in the city considerably
longer than we’d expected to, the cats had been locked up for about
seven hours now.  With no litter box.  They had been whining steadily
since we left the house, but we thought it was because they didn’t like
being in the truck.  Unlike dogs, cats do not like trucks.

We now know that cats also whine when they have to go to the bathroom.

It was Willy D who just couldn’t take it anymore.  He’d had a hard day.
 Three men had come and taken away all the furniture, then just when
he’d found a nice quiet place to hide, the humans dragged him out and
locked him in a cage and didn’t let him use the necessary for seven hours.

I can think of only one thing worse than a body soiling itself and then having
to sit soaking in it for two hours, and that is if the body next to you has soiled
themselves, and you have to sit in it with him for two hours.

So there we went over the Verrazzano Bridge -- Willy D stewing in his
own juices, to put it delicately, and Badness with him; both of them
crying out in their discomfort, which stirred Shiloh to begin crying
because of the noise; Stephen’s Australian Shepherd Bridget – not a
small dog -- wedged on the floor between Stephen’s feet; approaching a
toll with a clearance of 13’ feet and our truck with a clearance unknown.

When we got to New Jersey, we asked the man in the toll plaza which way
was Newark Airport.  This toll collector, who was drunk at the very least
and quite possibly something very much more than that, treated us to a
ten-minute monologue about the sheik who was convicted of the 1993
World Trade Center bombing.  The Feds had explained the long delay in
bringing the man to justice by saying that for many years they could not find
him.  It seems this toll collector could not understand how the authorities for
so long could not find a blind man in a turban and a long white beard walking
down the street with a cane while being followed by 2,000 supporters
stabbing their fists in the air and chanting Allah Akbar.

While I could see the man’s point, the cars were beginning to pile up
behind us, and New Jersey drivers are not famous for their patience.
It was 1am by now, the car reeked of cat pee and defecation, and
Bridget, who didn’t like the looks of this man and was coming unhinged
by all the honking horns, was beginning to growl.

When I finally got the man to give me directions to the airport, I knew
they were wrong, but seeing that it was a lost cause, I pulled away.

Three U-turns and three more trips through the toll plaza later, we
finally found our way to the airport and the Dollar Rent-a-Car counter.
 And believe it or not, we were early.  Or, at least, early for the third
reservation I had phoned in about 10 pm.  And because we were early,
they could not honor our reservation.  The boy behind the counter
claimed it was because they didn’t have any midsize cars available.

“So you’re telling me,” I said to the boy, “that we have to wait 30 minutes
to get a car at the rate we were quoted because you honestly believe that
sometime between 1:30 and 2 in the morning on a Tuesday night,
somebody is going to return a midsize car that you can then rent to us?”

“Those are the rules, lady,” the boy said.

“Let me ask you this,” I said.  “When you took my reservation at ten
o’clock, did you have any midsize cars in then?”

“They take the reservations at the 800 number.  They don’t have any
idea what we have in stock,” the boy responded.

“Then how could they even promise me a midsize car if they had no way
of knowing if you had one to give me?  Isn’t that false advertising?”

 “I don’t know anything about that.  All we have available right now
are minivans.  I can let you have one of those, but it’s going to cost you.”

“How much?”

“Three hundred eighty-nine dollars.”

That was $150 more than I had been quoted, but it was late, I was
tired, and the smell of cat waste had seeped into my lungs and was
contriving, with the remnants of the dust from the World Trade Center
attacks, to keep me from breathing.

“Fine, I’ll take it,” I sighed.

I walked out to the lot, past a Chevy Cavalier, a Dodge and a Buick,
midsize cars all, to the minivan I had just rented.

Now I’m $1,175 overbudget and nine-and-a-half hours behind schedule.

We stopped at the very first motel we saw that accepted pets.  We were
going to pay for the dog but sneak the cats in.  We felt guilty about
it, but hotels charge ten dollars per night per pet, and that extra $30
a night we just could not afford.

We got into the room and Stephen went straight to bed.  I, on the other
hand, had things to do.  I bathed Badness and Willy D, then I fed all
the cats and the dog, then I washed out the cat carrier and left it to
soak overnight.  Then of course I had to shower myself after being in
such close contact with Willy D and Badness.

For the purposes of my narrative, I will define the end of a day not by
the stroke of midnight or by when normal people go to bed, but by when
I went to bed.

By the time I got out of the shower and ready for bed, it was 4:30 in
the morning.  Checkout time was 11am, and I had to drive a 15-foot
Ryder truck 800 miles in the next two days. We should have been in
Maryland by now. But we were just barely over the New Jersey border.

So okay – now I’m $1,175 overbudget and twelve-and-a-half hours behind
schedule.

End Day One.
 
 

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