# Ending 1.5 Chapter 9

Chapter 9: The Beginning
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Pouring over our notes from before, we plan a rudimentary route around the immediate area of the city. Top priority is a more affordable place to live; this hotel will burn a hole into our safety net if we stick with it much longer. Along the way, we’ll be on the lookout for cheap stores and thrift shops, as well as any place signaling a need for employees. We probably won’t get everything done today, but that doesn’t mean we can slack off.
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As we poke and prod around the stores lining the main highway through the city, we extensively discuss what we’re going to be doing in the coming weeks. Talentless as I am, I’ll most likely fall into a service job for minimum wage. It won’t be much, but it’ll be somewhat consistent and hopefully won’t make me want to rip out my own spine. Fang will start working on writing some new music and looking for gig jobs around the city. There were plenty of slightly seedy bars and restaurants dotted around, so finding one that’ll pay an up-and-coming musician for a live performance shouldn’t be too hard. I hope.
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After a few hours of wandering around in the heat and some light food shopping, we returned to our hotel with a few grocery bags and some fresh knowledge. Fang easily identified more than a few places that would be likely to let her play during our stint, and I took note of a couple of places with ‘Now Hiring’ signs in the windows.
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“I told you it would be easy,” Fang gloats.
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“I didn’t doubt it for a second,” I reply.
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“You totally did, but that’s okay. I forgive you.”
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“Now, that I doubt.” She flashes a smirk that says ‘you should.’ I might need to sleep with one eye open tonight.
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I wake up in a bed that isn’t mine for the first time since I left Rock Bottom. I only lived in Volcaldera for five months, but that was more than enough time to get acclimated. The sheets, the mattress, the springs, the frame; all different in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
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It was easily the best sleep I’ve had this year.
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I splay myself out on the overly spacious bed, stretching and popping and grunting in as many ways as I can manage.
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“Can you fucking stop?” Fang groans drearily. I continue without responding, only somewhat overplaying it. “You’re getting a boot to the face if you don’t.” I relax a bit, partially because of the threat and partially because I have no stretches left in me.
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“Come on, we got stuff to do today,” I say. She groans again, pulling the blankets closer.
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One shower, breakfast, and painful coaxing of Fang out of bed later, and we’re more or less ready to tackle the day. Today’s agenda: find a place to live. We’ll be dedicating pretty much the entire day to hunting down listings and making calls. The sooner we have something lined up, the better.
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With that in mind, we head to a local library, hop onto a computer and start pouring through rental listings from all over the area. There are plenty of houses we have no hope of ever affording, a bunch of places from neighboring cities that somehow didn’t get filtered out, and a heap of obvious scams and offers that sound far too good to be true. A few pages in, we finally start finding more suitable entries, although most are still outside of what we consider tenable.
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One in particular catches our eyes. One bedroom, one bathroom, fully furnished, for one thousand a month in a condominium not too far from the main road. Nothing about it jumps out as particularly suspicious, so we give it a shot, noting down the number and dialing it into a payphone located outside. The line rings and rings, and just as it feels like it’s about to time out, the other side picks up.
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“Hullo…” a male and clearly tired voice mutters from the phone.
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“Hi!” I reply a little too loudly. “I, uh, saw your listing for a condo on sixth street. Was wondering if that’s still open.”
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“Sixth street…” He mumbles something incoherent. “Saturday? Yeah…” A long yawn creeps through the phone. “Yeah, that’s open. I can meet you there… maybe an hour… no, two. Two hours. That good?”
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“I- yeah, that will work. Be there in two hours.”
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“Yup.” The phone clicks rather abruptly.
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“Well, that sounded good,” Fang cuts in. “Guess we got two hours to kill.”
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“Let's not get too ahead of ourselves,” I caution. “We should keep looking, in case this falls through.” We go back inside and continue working, noting down a couple more entries for future reference.
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An hour and a half later, we decide we’ve had enough and make our way to our prospective new home. We post up on the wall outside, awaiting the owner’s arrival.
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“Hope this goes well,” I sigh anxiously. “Wouldn’t like to be jerked around for a week by a bunch of stingy landlords.”
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“Doesn’t look like he has any other takers. I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Fang says, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Long as he’s not a bigot, anyway,” she smirks.
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“Yeah…” I reply, looking at the floor and suddenly feeling much less assured.
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“What?”
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“I was just thinking…” Careful. This could go either way. “Maybe you could cool it with the… social justice stuff? Just for this?” She gives me a look that’s difficult to read. Either she sees my point or she’s getting ready to chew me out.
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A series of stomps echo out from a nearby stairwell, interrupting her train of thought. “We’ll talk about this later,” she mutters.
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“Sweet Raptor, it’s hot out there today,” an older male shouts as he crests the final step. He’s a dark blue ankylosaur wearing an obnoxiously bright and colorful Hawaiian shirt, and holding a small tan handbag. The shirt reminds me of Naser’s equally horrific choice of attire. “Hello there! There’s two of you. Wonderful, wonderful.”
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We exchange pleasantries with the landlord while he struggles to figure out which key goes to the door. Just as the wait gets awkward, the door clicks and he ushers us inside. “Come in, come in. Take a look around. Just, don’t make yourselves at home. Yet.” He chuckles at his own joke, then promptly collapses into a recliner in the living room.
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The listing said fully furnished, and it certainly wasn’t misleading. A couch, recliner, coffee table and TV stand in the living room, a kitchen with just about everything you could ask for, a reasonably sized bedroom with a closet, a bathroom with hot water, and even a little balcony. For the price, I don’t think we could’ve done much better.
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“So, uh…” Fang says, getting the landlord’s attention.
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“Everything look good? No holes in the walls?” he asks.
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“Yeah, it looks great.”
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“Alright!” He reaches into his handbag and pulls out a stack of paper, offering it to us. “Here’s your lease. Take a looksie, or don’t. Not my decision. Important part is, the security deposit and first month’s rent are up front, two grand altogether. You got that and a signature, it’s all yours for the year. Long as you keep up on payments and… y’know.”
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We take a ‘looksie’ through the contract, and it’s every bit as long and uninteresting as I imagined it would be. The main takeaway I get is that as long as we don’t knock down any walls or hide any bodies, we’ll probably be fine. We sign our name and initials, then hand it back to him.
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“Perfect, alright. How do you want to do payments? You got a ‘preferred app’ or something?”
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“You, uh, take cash?” I ask. He raises an eyebrow, then snorts.
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“Course I do! Makes it easy for me, and I don’t have to hear all those excuses. ‘Oh, you didn’t set it up right! Oh, there was a glitch!’’ Bah! Uh… anyways. When can you get that done?”
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“Today. Like, an hour, tops.”
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“Hah!” He claps his hands together. “That’s what I like to hear. Go ahead, I’ll wait here. I’ve not got much better to do today.” We exit the room, then Fang grabs my arm.
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“Do we have that much?” she whispers.
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“Yeah… barely…” I reply.
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We head back to our hotel room, collect and repack our belongings, check out with the receptionist, and head back to the condo room. Two thousand dollars - most of our reserve - changes hands to the landlord.
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“Well! Mister Anon. Miss Fang. It’s all yours.” We shake hands with him, and he gives a quick wave as he closes the door behind him, leaving us in our new home. I sigh in relief. Everything went off without a hitch. Not that there was ever any doubt, of course…
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Fang heads straight for the balcony, pulling open the sliding door and leaning against the banister. I follow her out, knowing full well what I’m getting myself into.
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“‘Social justice stuff’, huh?” she asks indignantly.
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“Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that, I just…” I trail off, unwilling to finish that sentence.
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“I know… I know.” She stares out into the city, letting the silence settle in for a moment. Even though we were only a few floors up, we dwarfed a significant portion of the vista.
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“When he called me ‘miss’, I expected to be angry, or upset, or something. But there was just… nothing. Like it was a normal conversation. I feel like that should bother me, but… it doesn’t.” There’s a point I can make here, but I force the urge down. Now doesn’t feel right.
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“Can’t be because he was important,” she continues, tone softening. “Can’t be because he was a stranger, either. Neither ever stopped me before. My family, teachers… you. I was always willing to give anyone and everyone a piece of my mind. And…” She scowls at the thought crossing her mind. “Trish would always congratulate me when I told her about it. Told me she was proud when I told her how I put you in your place, when all I really did was embarrass myself.” She sighs, resting her head against the banister.
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“Always made me feel like shit, too. Like I knew I shouldn’t have been doing it. It got her so excited, though. More than music, more than the band… more than anything, it seemed. So I kept doing it. Now…” She glances up at me.
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“If I stopped, would that change anything with us?”
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“Of course not,” I reply. She looks back out towards the city.
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“So if it doesn’t matter to you, Trish isn’t here to care about it, and it apparently doesn’t mean anything to me… why should I bother?” She throws me a sideways look, searching for my answer.
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“Well, way I see it…” I start. “We came out here to start over. Left behind everything we didn’t need. If you don’t need it, you should leave it behind. Trish thought you needed it to help get your band noticed, but I know your music can speak for itself. Focus on that instead.” She watches me for a bit longer, then smiles softly.
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“Yeah, that… sounds right. Although…” She smirks, but her tone makes it feel forced. “That would mean dad was right.”
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“That’s not important. We don’t have to worry about what he thinks anymore. We only need to work on us, alright?” That certainly seems to have perked her up. She pushes herself off the banister, standing straight.
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“You’re right. I shouldn’t be giving a single fuck about anything or anyone still in Volcaldera.” She nods, then looks over at me. “Guess we’ve got work to do, then?”