"What's the matter, Vanessa? I've never seen you looking so upset. Is there anything I can do?"
"Heh. Is it that obvious?" she sniffled, her eyes still puffy from crying. "I was going to have to tell you sooner or later, I was just hoping I could do it in a slightly more dignified manner than getting caught throwing the last of his shit in the trash while crying about him like the stereotypical petty ex-girlfriend. But, in case you haven't it figured it out yet, Nick has moved out."
"Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry! But maybe in the long run, it's for the best. It's none of my business, of course, but I'm sure it's not any secret that I've always felt as if you were too good for him."
"I know, Tim," she said, dropping the box into the freshly emptied dumpster with a briefly satisfying metallic thud. "And you're right, of course. It's been coming for a long time, you weren't the only one who tried to warn me. But it's just... well I guess it's just that this is the first time I'm not just losing a boyfriend but I'm also losing a roommate in the bargain. And he did offer at least *some* help with the bills, even if he never exactly pulled his own weight. I was *finally* starting to feel settled here. They're so crazy about me at my job they're basically holding a management position open for me until I finish my degree.
"I know how lucky we were to find this place, and I know you gave us a break to even rent to us, with Nick's credit history and me barely holding down a part time job, living together for the first time. I don't have the time or the energy to even look for a new place right now, let alone move. But I don't see how I'm going to be able afford to stay; it's not exactly easy to find a roommate compatible enough to share a one bedroom apartment, and between work and school and babysitting Nick, I never did get around to developing much of a social life here. I still barely know anyone in Denver. You're just about the closest thing I have here to a best friend. How sad is that?"
Vanessa's cheeks flushed as she fought back tears. When Tim opened his arms she fell into them and finally let them flow. He just held her as she sobbed.
"I'm sorry..."
"Not at all, Vee."
He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her.
"You've been a good tenant and I don't want you to have to move, either. Tell you what: you take ten or fifteen minutes to pull yourself together, I'll come up and make us a nice, relaxing pot of tea and we'll sit down and figure this thing out together."
Vanessa went back upstairs to her apartment, brushed her hair into a ponytail and blotted her face with a washcloth dipped in cold water, in her bathroom sink that was for once free of whiskers. She took her moisturizers and perfumes from the cabinet underneath the sink and used them to fill in the spaces in the medicine chest where Nick's shaving cream and hair gel and Axe body spray had been. She shut the mirrored door and regarded her reflection in it, trying to erase the expression of worry. But the two stubborn little furrows between her eyebrows were still there when Tim knocked at her door.
"Yogi Relax tea, anyone? I brought the pot just in case you didn't have one, but if you take lemon, milk or sugar, I hope you have some, 'cause I didn't bring any with me."
"Come on in, I'll put the kettle on."
"None of that hostess jazz, Vee. You're the one having a crisis here. You just get a pen and some paper, sit down, take a few deep, cleansing breaths and for heaven's sake, try to relax. Leave the rest to me."
It was curiously comforting to watch him working in her kitchen, warming the teapot with hot tap water, scooping up the tea leaves with a little spring loaded tea ball, slowly and carefully pouring the boiling water. Tim radiated the 'fatherly' vibe that Vanessa had always secretly found sexy, which was to say the polar opposite of everything she knew about her own father, who had walked out of her life when she was just five.
Vanessa knew from her baby pictures that he was short and swarthy, with a sparse mustache that belied his Mayan mestizo ancestry, a lean, wiry frame, and blotchy skin that made him look like a teenager everywhere except around his dark, deep-set eyes. Her mother tried her best never to speak of him at all, and measured her words as carefully as if she were being cross-examined in court when the subject could no longer be avoided. She had admitted that he was an alcoholic, that they married too young, that he was unreliable. She hinted that he had other substance abuse issues, had sometimes been violent. He had never attempted to contact Vanessa, nor had she tried to track him down. All she truly remembered of him was chaos.
Tim was tall, six feet two or thereabouts, with a slightly fluffy, 'dad bod' torso above a still trim waist and long, well sculpted legs she had admired from afar as he did his maintenance and yard work around the property, wearing shorts whenever the weather possibly permitted. Beneath slightly unruly eyebrows, his blue eyes were kind and careworn. His sandy blonde hair was tinged with silver at the temples. Without his full beard which was shot through with much more grey, she guessed he'd look quite a bit younger, but she found it kind of sexy and confident that he didn't seem to care. She could never imagine Nick aging so gracefully, he was far too vain. He'd be spray tanning and keto dieting and hair-dyeing and power-crunching and Botoxing and hair-plugging and lipo-suctioning his way to an increasingly vague approximation of his younger self, trying to re-capture the mojo that he'd never really had. It struck her that until now, Vanessa had never before thought of Nick and Tim in the same context.
"You take milk or sugar?"
"Nope."
"Good, neither do I."
Tim poured her tea, then his. He clicked the pen and angled the legal pad so both of them could see it.
"Okay, let's see what we've got here. Number one is rent, obviously. Now I don't want to upset you any more than you already are, but I'm afraid it's going up to sixteen hundred at the end of next month when your lease is up."
Vanessa took a deep breath, but the two tiny furrows between her eyebrows deepened.
"I know, believe me, and I don't like it any better than you do. It's happening everywhere. Blame the city, they've been re-assessing every property at close to double its previous estimated value, and the property taxes go up accordingly. And that sets off a whole chain reaction: all of a sudden the insurance company wants a bunch more money and a bunch of expensive improvements, especially to an older building like this. Even with the bump in rents I'm not making any money; the building just barely covers its note even when we're fully occupied, and assuming there isn't some unanticipated expense. We bought this place as our retirement plan thinking we would pay it off and live on the income, but now it looks like we'll be doing good if we have enough equity when we finally have to sell the place to afford a patio home or condo. You remember the row of big old silver maple trees in the hell strip?"
"Yes! I was so sad when you took them down! I miss their shade!"
"So do I. They were a hundred years old, as old as the building. I had a tree surgeon come out every spring to inspect and prune them. But you see how many mature trees have gone, up and down the block, and all over the neighborhood: the city forester has been very aggressive about condemning older trees that might be susceptible to the Emerald tree borer. No appeal, just 'have these trees removed and the stumps ground 36 inches below ground level in thirty days or the city will do it for you at a cost of five thousand dollars per tree.' And there are only so many tree companies in town equipped to take down a tree that's a hundred feet tall with limbs hanging over the street and grind a ten-foot diameter stump, so I was lucky to find a guy who could get it done inside the city's deadline for a grand less, per tree. Insurance wouldn't pay a dime, I just had to eat it."
"Ouch!"
"Awh, it's not your problem, Vee, which is, after all, what we're really here to try and solve. I just want you to understand, it's not like all the little guy landlords made some dastardly plan to jack up rents all over the city, it's out of our hands. Did you know almost all the new luxury high-rise apartment buildings you see going up all over town are around half vacant? And do you know why they're still building more of them as fast as they can anyway? Because they're being built on credit, by contractors who can flip them to real estate investment trusts for huge profits as soon as they pass the magic fifty percent occupancy mark. Ironically, every one of those giant new apartment buildings is only making our affordable housing situation worse. So... rent. Brace yourself and let's call it sixteen hundred."
He writes '1600' at the top of the page.
"That includes all your utilities except gas & electric. I know a one-bedroom in this place pays a hundred and thirty a month, give or take, averaged over a year."
He writes '130' on the next line down.
"What does your internet and cable package run?"
"A hundred and seventy a month. I know it's a little high, but I need high speed data to be able to work from home when I need to. I don't have any premium channels or anything."
Tim nods and writes '170' on the paper.
"Did you and Nick have any other shared expenses?"
"No. The note on the Camaro was all his. Well: I'm pretty sure it's in his mom's name. But nothing to do with me, anyway. My old beater is just a hand-me-down from my mom, like most of this furniture, but at least it's paid for."
Tim nods and quickly adds the numbers, circling the total: 1900.
"See? That's not so bad. We only have to find you another nine hundred and fifty bucks and you won't even miss Nick. Well: not for his *money,* anyway. And I suspect you weren't even getting that much out of him most months. Not in money, I mean."
"You suspect correctly," Vanessa shakes her head ruefully. "Half the rent if I was lucky. Utilities, cable; I even bought all the groceries. He bought all of the beer and all of the weed, but he consumed nearly all of it as well."
"Perfect. So all you need is a nine hundred and fifty dollar roommate who handles all the rest of their own expenses. Even a little bit less if you can economize in other ways. Rental housing is so tight now, you'd be surprised what people are paying these days, especially this close to campus."
"Oh sure. Easy. What do you propose: twin beds so we gals can pretend we're back in the dorms again? Or maybe she'll be content paying half the expenses for a fold-out futon sofa in the living room?"
"Yeah, I understand, it might take some looking to find someone who doesn't cramp your style."
"Or, you know, I could just hurry up and find a new boyfriend, preferably one who's currently homeless."