The neighbor across the hall is a rather eccentric woman. (Eccentric is the term I use for people that don't mean any harm but still make me feel like fleeing wildly in any direction). I had encountered her on a previous visit to Lakeland... I was coming out of the elevator and she was standing in the lobby. She immediately asked me who I was, where I was from, who I was visiting, what I did for a living, what kind of car I drove, and a bunch of other questions that I'd normally expect from Joe Friday. I managed to edge away from her before I had to produce any medical records, and, though our paths would cross again from time to time, I wasn't alone and was able to sic her on Sue or her folks.
This trip, though, it was a bit hard to avoid her, since we were pretty much sitting outside her door for eight hours during moving day. The first time she emerged from her apartment, she didn't even see us; but that's because she marched straight into the Curren apartment and started talking to the movers. I was dying to hear that conversation, but Sue, who had stood slack-jawed as the woman strode past her in the hallway, wasn't going to countenance anything that would slow the movers down. After her double-take, she walked into the apartment and asked our visitor, "What are you doing?", which, after over 33 years of marriage, I know is translated, "Are you nuts?" The woman replied that she was just checking on things, and Sue said, "Well they're really busy right now; they don't have time to talk," and ushered the woman back into the hallway. Our friend asked if the Currens had left any draperies behind, and once Sue had put that notion to rest, she began to hear all about where this lady came from, where her sister lived, why she didn't like peas, how cold her apartment was, and probably a lot more that I missed because I was sprinting down the hallway.
Eventually this lady apparently filled up her dossier on us and moved onto other pursuits; we noticed her throughout the day going into other nearby apartments without knocking. No shots rang out, so I'm guessing either she was expected or the other tenants thought the place was haunted.
At about 6:00 pm, I started to get a little nervous... it was obvious that the movers, who had probably already logged more mileage on the apartment property than getting there, still had some hours of work ahead of them, and I was thinking that one of the tenants or staff might want to shut us down. I was willing to do almost anything to avoid that, including pretending to be visiting the lady across the hall, or claiming that the Russians had promised to use pruning shears on my fingers if they encountered any more delays. But nobody said anything. It dawned on me later that at a senior apartment, everybody's probably in bed by 6:00.
At 8:45 pm, while his partner wheeled the last item out of the apartment, the other mover announced the job was over and had me sign the paperwork. He made it clear, via a combination of broken English and banging his shoe on the countertop, that this was supposed to be a small job, and that he was losing money on the deal. I assured him that I had already talked to the moving company and let them know that I was okay with any additional hiking charges they wanted to assess. He wanted to know if the destination apartment building was going to present a problem for his truck. I started to point out the obvious: that any apartment building other than one built on a salt flat was going to present a problem for his truck. But, as with the car-transport guy, I had a rare burst of common sense; even I didn't want to aggravate someone who could decide to offload the goods at high speed over a long stretch of road. Instead, I let him know that by the time he got there, we'd have things figured out. I could tell this filled him with great confidence.
The day was finally over. I crashed a champagne bottle against the truck as it pulled out of the parking lot, and then Sue and I crashed back at our hotel room. The next day we turned in the apartment key and waved goodbye for the last time to the Lakeland Presbyterian Apartments. As we left, the celebration party was already starting to spill out into the parking lot.
After a day of rest, we got on a plane and headed back to California. As we lifted off, Sue and I realized that this was probably the last time we'd see the state of Florida. And we learned that FAA regulations prohibited dancing in the aisles.
The next journal entry, scheduled for sometime before the close of the decade, will chronicle the move's completion. Don't worry... it's a happy ending.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton