Outrunning Shadows

Chapter 5: The Move-in

Chapter 5 – The Move-In





         A week passed uneventfully. Andrew had arranged with the realtor’s office to start moving some of his things. He wouldn’t officially move in until the upcoming Monday, but he was allowed to move a few things in early.


         After work on Thursday, he drove over to his new house. The furniture trucks were going to start arriving soon.


         Andrew arrived with a printout of what he had bought. Andrew loved decorating houses. It was his favorite part of having to move so much. Every time he and his uncle moved to a new place, Andrew had new space to play with.


         He walked all through the house with the paper print out in his hand. He couldn’t help but think how much it reminded him of a wedding gift registry. He decided that maybe he would marry Evan. That would stir things up around this town. He stood in the kitchen. He pictured himself at the stove in dark slacks and white dress shirt cooking breakfast before leaving for work. Evan was sitting in his usual T-shirt and jeans at the table waiting for his food. They discussed the people who lived in town. They talked about the latest weird thing that their neighbor Engrid had tried to do. He looked over at Evan who yawned with his mouth full of perfect white teeth and stretched his long lithely muscled arms. Oh Evan Grayson was a work of divine art.


         Andrew didn’t consider himself attractive at all. He saw himself as too skinny, too bookish, and not very sexy at all. To Andrew, Evan was built like a real man. Evan was tall, medium build, sandy blonde hair, and green eyes. His t-shirt and jeans were always a tad too tight. They weren’t tight enough to be obviously tight. It didn’t seem like Evan had bought them to look that way. It was more like they had once fit him, but he’d outgrown them but insisted on continuing to wear them because they were comfortable. Evan was attractive partly because he seemed comfortable in his own body. Evan seemed to like being the way he was. Evan seemed to be what Andrew always longed to be. Evan was secure in his body and happy with his life.


         Andrew always felt the need to compete with the other boys. Since he had always been the new kid in town, he always had to be the most charming and the best dressed. His uncle would expect nothing less from his poor, orphaned nephew. He’d always strived for others to like him. A lot of the other boys on the base didn’t care what other people thought of them and so they didn’t mind telling others what they thought of them. Andrew took criticism seriously and personally. If someone criticized him, he would stop at nothing to redeem himself in their eyes. He felt a tinge guilty for the stunt he’d pulled at Engrid’s house but he wasn’t sure how to go about making it up to her.


         Andrew’s trust fund from his parents started sending him the proceeds when he turned 18. In the seven years since then, Andrew hated to think how much of their hard earned money he had spent on his appearance- especially clothes. Andrew’s closets were full of designer labels. Unless it was a sweater, Andrew never wore clothes that he had not just ironed. He had about three different kinds of facial cleanser in his shower, about a half dozen different hair styling products- melting gel, styling gel, scrunch spray, and on and on.


         Andrew stood in the kitchen lost in his own imagination. He tried to envision Evan naked, but his mind just couldn’t contain the glory.


         He heard an old diesel engine drive up outside. He went to the window. The delivery truck had arrived from Harvey’s Furniture. Andrew hurried out onto the porch to welcome them. The leader of the pack was a gruff, barrel chested chain smoker named Bill. His short, wiry companion was Leo. They had a crew of about six guys in the three trucks. Andrew’s house wasn’t all that big, but it took a lot of furniture to fill it up. The men piled out of the trucks and pushed the sliding doors of the truck bays open. The delivery trucks were already onsite. The foreman of the project had instructed the guys to place the furniture where Andrew wanted it; not just dump it all inside the front door and leave.


         While they were getting situated, Engrid appeared. Since it was nearly 80 degrees today, Engrid had made lemonade for all the guys. She’d stood in her window and counted them all and brought an appropriate number of plastic cups. She set all the things down on the porch and told the men to have some when they were ready. There was a random chair sitting on the porch that Engrid sat on. That goes with the kitchen table, Leo informed her. She didn’t seem to care that Leo thought the chair needed to go in right that instant. He walked back down the steps and got another item to carry into the house.


         While Andrew was outside telling the workmen which rooms the things went in, Engrid took it upon herself to supervise the work inside the house.


         When all the pieces of furniture were put in their places, the work crew departed. Andrew thought that Harvey must have given them a talking to because they had even assembled the bed frames and put the mattresses on the beds. They had arranged the chairs around the kitchen table and arranged the furnishings around the living room just perfectly. Perhaps Engrid’s supervision had something to do with that.


         When they left, Andrew stood on the porch and waved to them as they drove away. As he was standing there, Engrid came up behind him and stood by his side. What he wouldn’t give to have Evan standing there.


         “Well, I’ve got some other things to bring over from where I’ve been staying.”


         “Can I come? I’d love to help.”


         He thought about it for a moment and then decided that it couldn’t hurt and he’d appreciated the extra set of hands. So he and Engrid got into his black Pathfinder and drove off into the sunset. He hadn’t gotten off work until 5, so now it was getting dark. Darkness was coming later and later, signaling the approaching summer.


         “I heard the other day on the news that a climatologist at the state university in Columbia predicts this will be one of the hottest summers on record.” Engrid broke the silence.


         “Really?” He was still obsessing about Evan and how unbelievably sexy he was. Engrid of course had no idea that Andrew wanted to have hot, raging, wall-banging sex with her gardener and surrogate grandson. She just sat quietly watching the landscape of town pass by and they drove out to the edge of town. She had her arms primly folded across her 84 year old breasts which were surprisingly alert for her. It must be that new under wire the sales girl at the outlet mall in Columbia had sold her a couple of months ago.  Andrew still didn’t know that Evan and Engrid even knew each other that well. He figured they probably had met and knew who each other was just from having lived in the same small town for nearly a quarter of a century. He didn’t know about the strong bond that existed between them.


         “Yes and a record hot summer in South Carolina is not something to joke about,” Engrid kept talking.


         “No, it isn’t.”


         “I thought you just moved here?”


         “I’ve lived in here for the last seven years.”


         “Oh, that’s right. But you’re in the midlands of South Carolina now- that’s a horse of a different color. At least in Greenville you’re not too far from the mountains and you’ve got nice northern breezes coming down from places like Tennessee and Kentucky. Here, on the rare occasion we get a breeze, it comes out of Alabama and Mississippi.” She said. “On a really cold day, we might get some wind out of West Virginia.”


         “I guess that’s true.”


         She noticed the distance in his voice.


         “What are you thinking about?” She grinned in an attempt to cheer up the grumpy Gus, “You look like something’s bothering you.”


         “Nothing. Just tired I guess.”


         “Oh. Well, you should be happy. In a couple of days, you’ll be living in your new house next door to me!” She was far more excited about the prospect than he was. Andrew just stared wistfully at the road ahead.


         “How far out in the sticks do you live?”


         “I live in Shady Acres.”


         Engrid was aghast. “The trailer park?”


         “Yeah.”


         She couldn’t believe her ears. She’d totally forgotten about her plan to invite Andrew to stay with her while he got settled. She felt pangs of guilt as she realized that her new project had been living in a trailer park all this time. 


“You live in a trailer park? Do you know what sort of people live in trailer parks?”


         “They’re quite nice.”


         “You’ve been living alone?”


         “No, I’ve been staying with a guy named Paul who’s a truck driver. In fact, he’s supposed to get back from San Diego today sometime. Maybe you’ll get to meet him.”


         “You’ve been living with another man?”


         “We’ve been sharing living space, yes.”


         “How many bedrooms does a trailer have?”


         “Some have three or four. Paul’s only has one. It’s more of a camper than an actual trailer.”


         “Where do you sleep?”


         “In the bed.”


         “Where does Paul sleep?”


         “He’s on the road most of the time, but when he’s home, I scoot over.”


         “You’ve been sleeping with a truck driver?”


         He cut his eyes at her. “We’ve been sharing sleeping quarters, yes. It’s not like we’ve been having sex or anything.”


         She flinched at that word. ‘Sex’ was a dirty word to her. It sounded so cold and immoral. She preferred ‘making love’ to ‘having sex.’


         “He’s just a friend of mine that I met in college. He lives here and I’m staying with him while I find a house.”


         Paul knew that Andrew was gay and was fine with that. Andrew knew that Paul was not. They were able to share sleeping space because each knew the other’s boundaries and were willing to respect them.


         “Will Paul be moving into your new house?”


         “I offered, but Paul wants his own space.”


         “Oh.” She seemed to relax a bit. To be an uppity old prude, it didn’t take Engrid long to think Andrew was sowing wild oats with a truck driver named Paul.


         She dropped the subject and resumed staring out of the window at the passing pine trees. They turned onto a gravel road. They had arrived at Shady Acres. Andrew drove past all these nice trailers with porches attached and that looked like they might actually be quite cozy. As they drove along, the trailers got smaller and older and more run down.  Finally, they arrived at the end of the road. Andrew stopped in front of an old camper with a sagging canvas awning out front. Engrid was a little nervous. This wasn’t her part of town. She was a cotillion and garden party sort of person. Andrew hopped out of the car and walked up to the door. There was no big rig in the yard, so Engrid figured this Paul must not be home yet. Andrew got out and walked up to the rickety porch.


         “Are you coming?” He stood on the porch and called out to her.


         She couldn’t hear so she opened the door and stood on the gravel. “What?”


         “Are you coming? I need you to help me carry some boxes out to the car.”


         “Oh.” She shut the door and walked cautiously toward the front of the camper. She wouldn’t have nerve enough to do that if she didn’t trust Andrew. She glanced around and didn’t see anyone else. Andrew could get her in there and have his way with her and no one would ever hear her. She looked up at him as he waited for her to hurry up. It would be completely dark soon and he wanted to get this done. It would be dark by the time they got back to his new house anyway. She mounted the steps one at a time and went up onto the porch made of 2x4’s and 10 penny nails.


         Andrew had already disappeared inside the camper, but left the door open so Engrid could come in when she made it. She stuck her head in the door and looked around. She couldn’t fathom how two grown men shared such a cramped little space. No wonder Andrew wanted to move into Rose’s old house. “I couldn’t live here two seconds,” Engrid thought as she made her way through the main room/kitchen toward the bedroom where she heard Andrew rummaging around.


         “Andrew?” she called out, “Do you need any help.”


         “I can bring it out, you just have a seat.”


         She looked around. There were two small recliners in front of a tiny television set over in the corner by the table that could be folded down to make a bed. She made her way across the room and dusted off one of them and sat down. She reached over and picked up a magazine from the rack. The Atlantic Monthly- she hadn’t expected that one. She leafed through the pages as she waited for Andrew to get finished in the bedroom. He brought a stack of boxes out and sat them on the edge of the counter by the sink. She looked over at him. He was still dressed from work, sans the tie. He had a little dust on the front of his pants, which he noticed and promptly brushed off and returned to the bedroom for the next load.          


         Engrid carefully returned The Atlantic Monthly to its place in the walnut wood veneered particle board magazine rack. She ran her fingers along the sides of the magazines to look at their titles. They were mostly literary magazines with a few science journals interspersed. This confirmed that Andrew had sophisticated tastes when it came to reading.


         Andrew called out to her, “Engrid, do you see an empty box on the table?”


         “Yes, sir I do.”


         “Could you put those books in the window in that box and set it on the floor. I’ll get it from there because it might be too heavy for you to carry all the way out to the car.”


         “Sure.” She stood up and started loading a row of books from the window sill into the box. She was intrigued by the titles she saw. Among the books were: Ethics and World Religions, The History of the Reformation in Britain and Ireland, Celtic Spirituality, Better Homes and Garden Cookbook, Charleston Receipts, and a couple of John Grisham novels. She loaded them into the box and carried them over to the counter and sat them in a folding chair by the bathroom door about three feet away from the others by the kitchen sink.


         “How much more to you have?”


         “Not much, just a few books and some clothes.”


         “How many books to you have?”


         “About 15,000.”


         “Geez. How do they all fit?”


         “The last place I lived before I went to college was Binghamton, New York. I didn’t have room for them in my apartment in college, so most of them are still there in a self storage unit. I called a friend of mine yesterday who lives there. He’s coming to visit his family for Memorial Day in Houston. He has a truck and so he’s going to load them all up in there and drop them off. It’s a little out of his way, but he’s gonna spend the night at my place.”


         “Oh, okay. Where are you gonna put them?”


         “One of the bedrooms is going to be a library.”


         “Oh, I see. We have a library here in town, you know. It’s quite nice. Dora’s done a good job the last couple of years getting people to donate books. Maybe you could unload some of them.”


         “No, I like my books, I’m gonna keep them.”


         “Oh, well if you change your mind…”


         “Those boxes on the counter are mostly clothes, could you go ahead and take those out to the car and put them in the back?”


         “Okay,” She went over and picked up the top one and headed out the door. She was quite glad to get out of that stuffy little trailer for a few minutes. As she was loading the boxes in the back of the Pathfinder, Andrew emerged with about three boxes stacked on top of one another. After a couple more trips with Engrid opening and closing doors for him, everything got loaded and they drove back out to the highway going back towards town. Engrid relaxed now that that was over and she hoped that would be the last time she had to go to Shady Acres. She knew she’d probably have to meet Paul at some point.


         She was still thrown by the idea of two men sharing a bed. When she was growing up, they lived in a tiny little house and her brothers had to share a bed and she shared a bed with her sister, but that was different. Two grown, unrelated men sleeping in the same bed was a bizarre and foreign concept for her.  Gay sex was well beyond her realm of cognition. But, that was about to change for poor Engrid. Poor Engrid didn’t know what she was about to face in the months ahead. She was just sitting there excited that she had a nice new neighbor and that she got to be helpful this afternoon as she watched the pine trees whizzing by outside the window of Andrew’s black Pathfinder.