Like Coffee and Doughnuts. Elle Parker
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of seafood as long as it’s not in a condition to fight back, but I especially like food that requires a little effort to eat. I scooped one out of the shell and dipped it in butter.
“Mmm, man, these are good.” I hummed, closing my eyes to savor it.
“Yeah, they’re not too bad.” Seth slurped one into his mouth and washed it down with a drink of beer. He wiped the butter from his chin with the back of his hand.
Seth will eat anything you put in front of him, regardless of the state it’s in. I’m not even sure it has to be food. Let’s just say I wouldn’t reach in front of him to get the salt.
He bit into a chicken wing and flipped over the section of newspaper he was scanning. “Hey! Here’s something,” he said, marking the ad with a buffalo sauce fingerprint.
I took the paper from him and read out loud. “Madeira Beach. One bedroom apartment located in commercial neighborhood. No pets. No kids. No floozies. Call Adele.”
“Got enough character for you?”
“No floozies? Are they serious?” I dunked another clam and ate it, staring at the paper. “If these are Bible nuts, I wouldn’t be able to take it.”
“Call the number,” Seth said.
I pulled my cellphone from my pants pocket and flipped it open, checking the ad as I dialed. The phone rang several times, and I wondered if I was going to get anyone when there was finally an answer.
“Yes?” came the feeble voice of an old lady.
“Ah, hello, ma’am. Would I be speaking to Adele?”
“No. That’s my sister-in-law.” Her words were well formed and clipped at the end. “I’ll get her.”
I could hear her set the phone down and muffled voices in the background.
“Yeah, what can I do for you?” This voice was deep and gravelly, and you could just about hear the lung cancer over the line. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind this woman was a heavy smoker and probably had been since prohibition.
“You have an apartment for rent?” I asked. “I’m lookin’ at your ad here in yesterday’s paper.”
“You got pets?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. And I don’t have kids, and I am most definitely not a floozy.”
“You date ’em?”
“Nope, and I’m not really in the market for a roommate at the moment, if that’s what you’re getting at.” The broad was blunt, but I kind of liked her. She sounded like she didn’t take shit from anybody, and I doubted I’d have to worry about any Bible thumping going on.
“The apartment is on the second floor, six hundred a month, plus utilities. We don’t put up with late payers, loud tenants, or people who mess up the place. And, you gotta’ pay a three hundred dollar deposit and a month’s rent up front.”
“What about parking?” I asked. Seth nodded his approval.
“There’s parking in the front, off the street.”
“Sounds good. When can I come see it?”
“Anytime, I guess,” she said. “We’ll be around until tomorrow afternoon at least. You can come tonight if you don’t make it too late.”
“Tomorrow sounds great. What’s the address? I could be there around ten if that works for you.”
“That’d be fine. Nine twenty-seven First Street. Up past the Winn Dixie.”
“Sure, I know the area. I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks.”
She hung up the phone without saying goodbye. I put mine away and took a sip of my drink. It sounded promising. Madeira Beach is crammed into about two square miles, in the middle of a long string of other little beach towns, and the area she mentioned was convenient to everything.
“Well?” Seth asked, sucking the last bits of meat off a chicken bone.
I shrugged. “The price is right. Location might not be bad. You want to check it out with me?”
“Yeah, sure.”
* * * *
“I can’t believe you don’t own a coffee maker,” I groaned as Seth and I sat waiting for a stoplight. It was nine in the morning, and I didn’t feel properly awake, since I hadn’t been treated to my daily dose of caffeine for the second morning in a row.
Seth, on the other hand, was full of piss and vinegar and some neon puce colored drink that came in an industrial can. I didn’t know the name of it, because I couldn’t bear to watch.
“Coffee tastes like dirt,” he said. “And it stinks after about the first fifteen minutes.”
“It is a necessary part of life, and if you don’t shut up, I’m going to kick you out of the car and run over you. Repeatedly.”
Seth chuckled. “I said I would buy you a cup somewhere, just find a place and pull over.”
“I know where I’m going. I refuse to drink convenience store coffee after the lousy night of sleep I just had.”
* * * *
The apartment turned out to be a sweet deal, and I snapped it up. We signed the papers on the spot. Calling the First Street neighborhood a “commercial area” was a bit of a stretch. There was a plumbing outfit, the back side of a mini golf course, and the CVS at the end of the block. Everything else was apartments.
Adele’s building was a plain, two-story block with a ground floor storefront and a big, faded sign over the door that read Triggs Hardware. The layers of dust on the plate glass windows suggested it had been closed for years, and from what I saw through them, it appeared the space was being used for storage now. The apartments, entryway and stairs were all clean and relatively well cared for.
It took a little charm, but I convinced them to let me move in right away. I used the same charm to get Seth to spend the day helping me haul furniture. I also used a lot of beer. Much as I enjoyed his company, I needed to be back in my own space as soon as possible, and I pushed to get as much done as we could in one shot.
Seth caught his end of the mattress as I slid it out of the truck, and we headed for the entryway. “You are a very surly man when you’re on a mission,” he said. “It’s not at all attractive.”
“I’ll buy you dinner after we’re done with this, how’s that?”
“You have to buy me beer too.”
“I already bought you beer.”
“Yeah, but we’re nearly out of that beer, and I’m going to need more beer later.”
“Fine, I’ll buy you dinner and beer.”
“Next you’ll be expecting me to put out.”
Adele chose that moment to come into the hall, carrying a big, vinyl purse and a shopping bag. We were halfway up the stairs with the mattress, and she stopped and stared at us through huge, black sunglasses.
“Ah. Good evening, ma’am,” I said, nodding to her. Seth grinned at me with the smug expression of someone who’s not dealing with his own landlord.
“You can drop all that ma’am bullshit. Adele is fine. I thought Ruth said you weren’t moving in until tomorrow.” She had a sour expression that made me feel like a roach she’d discovered in her kitchen.
“Well yes, ma—Adele, she did say that, but you see there were extenuating circumstances, and when I explained them to Ruth she told me I could move in right away.”
“What kind of circumstances?” she asked, all gravel.
“My friend is a pig.”
Seth huffed