I pull into the empty spot designated for apartment 203, right next to the idling Goodwill truck.
“You’re early, Pat,” I say to the driver once we’re both out of our vehicles.
He nods. “Our first run didn’t take as long as I thought it would. Which unit is it?”
Pat follows me up the stairs while his helper opens the back of the large box truck. Stopping in front of the door, I pull a key out of my bag. “This is me.”
He nods again and heads back downstairs. It takes me a couple of tries to get the bolt to unlatch; lack of use has made it stubborn. Just as I’m turning the knob, I hear the thump, thump of the metal dolly bouncing up the stairs.
I hold the door open as Pat and his helper struggle to get the dolly through the narrow frame.
“Where do you want them?” he asks.
Glancing around the empty apartment, I say, “Just put them in the middle of the room.”
I eye the first stack of boxes, each filled with the items I’ve spent the last four days picking out. Things Pat has been storing for me in that box truck until I was ready for him to bring them here. Things that I will move to Ryan’s house on Saturday. Things I will say I’ve owned for years rather than days.
It takes two trips to get all the boxes upstairs. I pull five twenties out of my back pocket and hand them to Pat. This is not a service Goodwill offers, but for a slip of cash, he was more than happy to help.
The guys are almost out the door when I ask, “Oh, did you bring the extra boxes?”
Pat shrugs and looks back to his helper, who says, “Yeah, they’re in the back of the truck. Want them up here?”
If either of them thinks this is strange, they don’t let on. “No. You can leave them on the sidewalk in front of my car.”
I follow them back outside. As they unload the stack of flat cardboard, I walk to the back of my car, where I retrieve a small black bag from the cargo area. I thank them again as they climb back into the truck. There are only a few things left to take care of.
The layout of the apartment is simple. Front door opens to a small living room with a kitchen against the back wall. A narrow hallway leads to a bathroom and bedroom. Beige carpet meets beige linoleum meets beige walls.
In the kitchen area, I unzip the black bag and remove four menus from nearby restaurants and three pictures I printed from the kiosk at CVS of Ryan and me, plus seven magnets to hold each item in place on the refrigerator. Next, I grab the assortment of condiments and pour half of each one down the sink drain before lining them in the door of the refrigerator. Moving to the bathroom, black bag in tow, I pull out the shampoo and conditioner then pour half of each down the drain like I did with the condiments, before putting the bottles on the edge of the tub. Unwrapping a bar of Lever 2000 soap, I set it on top of the drain in the sink and turn the water on, rotating it every few minutes until the logo is gone and the edges are dulled, then drop it into the small built-in space on the shower wall. Toothpaste is last. Starting from the bottom, I squeeze a portion out but leave a glob or two on the rim of the sink, just like I do at Ryan’s house, even though I know he’ll fuss about it. Leaving the cap off, I drop the tube on the counter near the faucet.
Last stop is the bedroom. I pull out an assortment of wire and plastic hangers, the last items in the bag, and space them out on the empty metal rod. Back in the small living room, I scatter the neat pile of boxes around until the floor is littered with them. I pick two boxes, one filled with books and one filled with an assortment of old perfume bottles, and pull them open. The box with books is easy to unpack so it’s only a minute or so before I have several small piles next to the box as if I haven’t gotten around to packing them yet.
The perfume bottles take a little more time. I move the box to the small kitchen counter and unwrap the four on top, setting them down on the Formica surface. The light from the window hits them just right, and the thin, colorful glass acts like a prism, shooting rays of blue, purple, pink, and green around the dingy room.
Of all the shopping I did this week, the perfume bottles were the hardest and, surprisingly, the most fun to find. It’s a fluke, really, that I even needed to search for them, but after running across a Facebook post Ryan was tagged in, I knew this was just the sort of item I needed to “collect.” He had gotten his mother one for her birthday last year. It was an Art Deco piece, a ball of etched glass wrapped in silver and adorned with small, mirrored squares, and looked exactly like the type of gift Jay Gatsby would have given Daisy. It was beautiful, and from the smile on her face, she loved it.