About a week after we arrived, I got a call from the car transport people, letting me know that the tractor/trailer with the Corolla would be highballin' into town around two that afternoon and asking me to be on-hand at the destination to take delivery. This wasn't just a courtesy call... the deliverer wants to make sure that you have cash or a cashier's check ready for the driver. No checks, credit cards, no livestock accepted. I went by the bank to get a cashier's check, but when I got there I realized I couldn't remember the name of the company, and getting a cashier's check made out to "cash" seemed a bit redundant, so I just withdrew the dough, stuck it in a bank envelope, and tried to look nonchalant as I walked back to the car with the envelope stuffed down my shorts.
Sue and I got to the apartment around two and waited for the phone call from the driver. Again, the truck was too big to barrel into the apartment premises, but I figured we could arrange a nearby parking lot at which to meet and offload the car.
We waited till around six. I tried to call the dispatcher's number a couple of times, but just got a message machine, and as the sun went down, I chalked it up to deja vu and figured that, just like in Florida, the truck wasn't going to make it into town until the next morning. We got back home about 6:30 and I was just getting ready to take a shower when I got the call from the driver, who also spoke in a thick Slavic accent that made me have to guess the words he was saying based on the starting letter. I eventually translated/speculated that he was telling me the car had arrived and, by the way, did I have the cash? I told him I could be there in 20 minutes and asked him where we should meet. He told me he had found a place to park on the street near the apartment building and that I couldn't miss him.
My curiosity was piqued as Sue and I drove across town; off-hand I couldn't picture a place around there that he could park. But my imagination was woefully limited to inside the box. About a block past the apartment building, the 3 west-bound lanes abruptly narrowed to two west-bound lanes, because the Kobayashi-Maru-savvy driver had parked his rig in the right-hand lane. He didn't have traffic cones, so he had cleverly parked the Corolla behind his trailer to warn approaching drivers of the sudden lane closure. He was right; I couldn't miss him. Fortunately, although narrowly, the other drivers did.
There wasn't much I could do at this point except hurry along the transaction. So Sue dropped me off behind the Corolla, I waved in gratitude to the passing motorists who wished me well with ten-second bursts from their horns, and trotted to the front of the car to meet the driver. There in the night, under the illumination of the Corolla's headlights, illegally parked on a busy thoroughfare, I slipped an envelope full of cash to a man with an exotic accent. My picture wasn't in the papers the next morning, and I'm not writing this from Guantanamo, so I guess everything turned out all right, if you don't count strange clicking on our phone lines and the suspicious looking van parked in front of our house.
Now the only thing left to do before advancing to the final stage of making the apartment habitable was to take delivery of the furniture. Phone, electricity, gas, internet, and, most importantly, TV services were all in place, the carpet had been cleaned, and the place was just begging for occupancy. On Monday, we were notified that delivery would be Tuesday; appropriately, that night Turner Classic Movies was airing The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton