We moved to a new city and had been staying in a serviced apartment while our house was being fixed up and our belongings were arriving from our previous city and the two homes we had there.
I arrived at the new house to help the movers distribute the furniture and boxes to their correct destinations.
Next, I decided to go back to the hotel where we had stayed to see how much longer my wife's company had paid for us to stay there while we sorted out our permanent accommodation.
Returning to the new house, I had parked a few blocks away as parking closer to the house was at a premium.
Coincidentally, I ran into my wife who had found a parking space on the same block.
While I was helping collect a few things from the back seat of her car, we saw the caretaker of our new house riding down the street on a kick scooter carrying a ladder heading in the direction of our house.
When we arrived at the house, we entered through the gate to the back garden and saw the caretaker standing in front of one of the two stone oil collectors, turning some valves and dials.
He greeted us saying that he thought he had figured out what was wrong with the hot water heating system, that the problem was with the old oil collectors that had been installed and in use since Elizabethan times and required a complete overhaul and modernization that could take anywhere from a few days to a few months.
I told him I wanted to go inside and have a look around, mentioning I hadn't yet had an opportunity to see the house, but the caretaker politely reminded me that he had seen me there earlier helping the movers. I agreed but said that I had been so busy with the movers I hadn't taken the time to properly explore the house.
My wife came inside and told me that she would be staying at a colleague's house near school for the next few days so she could have a hot shower in the mornings before school and that I could stay in the house to supervise things and continue to sleep and shower at the hotel.
I asked her why we couldn't both simply stay at the hotel seeing how it was being paid for and she said she didn't want to seem ungrateful to her colleague who went out of his way to extend his hospitality to my wife by inviting her to stay at his house for a few days.
We walked through the house and I soon discovered it was filled with just about every delight I could have imagined: electric guitars, a stunning, black, vintage Rickenbacker bass guitar (upon seeing it, I told my wife it was worth at least four or five thousand dollars), a Noord stage piano, drum kit and all sorts of recording and music production gear.
Walking into the next room, there was brand new Harley Davidson Fat Boy standing in a corner that still had the original tags attached to the handle bars.
I asked my wife if all of the music equipment and the motorcycle belonged to the previous owners of the house who I knew had all been young men who had made their fortunes in the financial sector and she told me that they were but she negotiated to buy them as part of the deal for the house knowing that I would enjoying having them.
My wife said she needed to get over to her colleague's house to settle in and suggested I go back to the hotel.
As it was a pleasant evening, I decided to walk back to the hotel to get some fresh air and discover a bit of my new city.
As I arrived into the city center some minutes later, I noticed a woman I recognized as Debbie Hayward, an Hispanic woman from New York I had known when I was working as a bank teller at a savings and loan in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles back in the mid 1980s.
As I approached, I observed she was having a heated argument with a man I recognized to be her husband Bruce, who soon walked away in anger.
I walked over to the woman and asked if she was Deborah Hayward and she immediately recognized me and gave me a big hug.
Noticing tears in her eyes, I asked her if everything was okay and she said she just had a big fight with her husband and that they had just bought a new house in town and had disagreed about the furnishings she bought and the extravagant amount of money she had spent to furnish the home.
She then invited me to see her new home which was nearby.
We arrived at the home which was nothing short of palatial, with white marble floors and crystal chandeliers.
Just then, her husband arrived as some delivery men were bringing more things into the house.
Seeing the delivery men, Bruce became enraged and the couple went back to arguing and I quietly walked away without as much as saying goodbye.
It began to rain and I decided to take shelter in a café until the rain let up.
Sitting down at the only unoccupied table in the café, the waitress came over and set down a large frothy drink on the table in front of me. I said she must be mistaken as I had just sat down and hadn't ordered yet.
The waitress then gestured to a young attractive Asian woman who was sitting alone at a table near the window and said the woman had ordered the drink for me.
I lifted the drink and tilted it towards the Asian woman in a gesture of gratitude and she returned my gesture with a pleasant smile.
Then I woke up.
Comentarios