How Does It Feel to Be Without a Home, Like a Complete Unknown, Like a Rolling Stone...
Previously, Part 5: At Least With Moose and Bambi There Was Still Honor Among Thieves...
I needed a bed for the new place but couldn't afford one. I called my friend Kenny and told him about the room in East Walpole and that I needed an inexpensive bed, hoping he had some ideas. He said his sister and her husband were getting a new bed, and he just helped them carry their old one out to the curb. He said the garbage truck was gonna take it, and today was garbage day, so if I wanted it, I better get over there right away, or it'd be gone.
I wasn't overly excited about sleeping on a used bed. It grossed me out thinking how many times Kenny's sister and her husband fucked on it, but I didn't have any other options. I justified it by thinking about how many people fuck on hotel mattresses, and that never stopped me from spending a night there…
I cleared the backseat of the GOAT and left Moose and Bambi's apartment in Foxboro in a hurry. I had to get to Sharon to pick up the queen-size box spring and mattress, or they'd be gone.
When I pulled up, the garbage truck was just two houses away. If I had arrived a few minutes later, the mattress and box spring would've been on their way to a landfill.
I put the roof of the GOAT down, loaded the two pieces, and took a slow, careful ride over to East Walpole with Kenny, who had offered to help me carry everything upstairs. It was the first time I saw the house.
Dick was the owner, and he was once a crackerjack auto mechanic who drag-raced at Epping, New Hampshire, driving and wrenching his Ford Shelby to many impressive victories.
When I moved into his house, Dick was in his early forties, stood around five foot ten, and was lanky with a midsection that was very capable of liquid storage. He wore mirrored aviator sunglasses, had some color from the sun on his face during summer months, and struggled to control his thinning, light brown hair. He spoke through thin lips, displayed a wise-guy smile, and had a good-sized helping of the devil peering out through his light-blue eyes. He reminded me of a young Jack Nicholson. Dick's unquenchable thirst for booze eventually consumed his life and destroyed his marriage.
After the divorce in 1975, Dick maintained possession of his house in East Walpole, dividing the 3-story into five rentable spaces.
The entire first floor was turned into a good-sized apartment and was rented by a family with two young kids. The second floor had three rooms, each with a locking door, and one bath we all shared. Each room was rented by the week for twenty-five dollars, cash only, which Dick collected every Monday, early morning, open six-pack in hand. The second floor had the look and smell of a boarding house.
A big dude who was about ten years older than me, a trucker who drove 3-11 PM, rented the room across from mine, next to the bathroom, which he always seemed to have first dibs on. After work, he spent three hours every night shouting CB codes and lingo into his CB radio. It would've been amusing if I didn't have work in the morning and wasn't trying to sleep.
An unassuming middle-aged married man rented the room next to mine for afternoon dalliances. He told me it was much cheaper than paying for a no-tell motel on Route 1. The lesson there was "cheating on your wife doesn't have to cost a lot of money." Unless, of course, you get caught…
I rented the third room. It was 12' x 12' and had two double-hung windows: one that overlooked the front of the house just above the short roof over the front porch and another on the gable end that had a great view of Bird Park. My room got the most sun of the three, but because it was over the stairwell, it was the noisiest and the coldest in winter months.
Up on the third floor, an older gentleman lived alone in a small apartment that had always been a rental. Aside from the outdoor stairs he had to climb, I was envious of the privacy that space provided him. And he had his own bathroom.
Because of the number of cars needing parking, the front lawn became an extension of the driveway, and in Dick's condition, he didn't seem to care too much about the dead grass.
Kenny and I set the old mattress and box spring directly on the floor, and after I dropped him off, I drove back to Moose and Bambi's for the table lamp. Then I picked up my girlfriend, and she insisted that we stop on the way back to East Walpole to pick up a couple of cans of Lysol disinfectant.
We sprayed the piss out of the box spring and mattress and left with both windows wide open. I never liked the smell of Lysol, but in this case, it was necessary. Besides, my girlfriend wanted no part of that bed unless it was thoroughly disinfected and had a new mattress pad and sheets. I was in a hurry to break it in, but that had to wait.
Another minute in that room, and I might've passed out from the odor anyway…
To be continued…
*All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental…