I remind myself that I’m a fiction writer now, no longer a journalist reporting on non-fiction.
If the improbable happens, it’s time for me to take notes and use it for raw material for my characters and their situations. But dare I challenge my characters the way my husband and I’ve been challenged? Will anyone believe what’s happened?
We’ve been in Delaware for over a month. After staying in temporary housing, we thought it might be a great idea to take a short-term lease while we waited for our house to sell. With the mortgage rates going up, houses were not selling as fast as they had been just a few months ago.
As we looked at apartments for the first time in over twenty years, we didn’t find many choices. Very few apartment complexes offered short-term leases. One leasing office we entered had three people glaring at us. Had we affronted them by asking for a six-month’s rental?
When we finally found a complex with reasonable rent and we viewed a model apartment, we felt hopeful. But they wouldn’t have the apartment ready for several weeks until the renters moved out, and they cleaned it for us.
The big day finally arrived! We had agreed to pay extra for a washer and dryer in the apartment. The carpet was new, and the apartment newly painted. We signed the eighteen-page (yikes!) lease and initialed in many places. The leasing agent handed over keys to the third-floor walk-up (no elevator), as well as a sheet for us to fill out to note items needing fixing. We hurried to the building to see our sort of new, temporary home.
Opening the door and crossing the broken wooden threshold, our reactions were disbelief and disgust. The washer and dryer were broken and dirty. The new carpet was there, but so were dirty fixtures, dead bugs on kitchen cabinet shelves, a broken balcony sliding door that wouldn’t close, and broken thermostat. There were too many items to fix to fit on the form she gave us. We took pictures.
Horrified, we scrambled back to the leasing office, where we spoke with the leasing agent and maintenance manager and showed them the pictures. The maintenance manager accompanied us back to the apartment. She offered to tear up the lease as it was certainly not a move-in ready apartment.
We should have taken her up on her offer, but she said she could have everything fixed by five o’clock. We agreed to that and went shopping for a bed and a few furnishings.
By the time we returned from our expedition, it was after five and no one was around. Although the apartment was cleaner, the door fixed, and other things attended to, it still wasn’t completely fixed. They had not replaced the broken washer and dryer, or fixed the thermostat. The apartment stairs were rickety and felt dangerous after about fifteen round trips up the steps.
We stayed, but called the after-hour emergency repair service, which first said they’d be out to attend to the dysfunctional thermostat. No heat, A/C, or a fan. They didn’t come. When we called back, they said that the repair was not on the list of authorized repairs.
Hunkering down for the night, we did our best. The next morning, a cockroach greeted us in the kitchen sink. My desire to deal with that was minus ten on a scale of one-to-ten.
That night the temperatures plummeted to the 40s. No working heat, but luckily, one of our purchases was a warm comforter. We woke up on that Sunday morning, agreed that we didn’t want to stay. They had our cashier’s check, and we had no heat!
And then my husband looked out the bedroom window. Vultures were attacking a bag of garbage from the open dumpster in the parking lot–with our car parked three spots from them. They were enjoying breakfast, but we lost our appetite.
We resolved to get out of the lease and began loading our possessions in the car. It took two trips to load everything and return to the extended stay hotel we’d left two days before.
Hurrah! No vultures and roaches. Working heat, A/C, and fans, furnished, plus free breakfasts.
(PS We were lucky. After drafting a memo asking for a refund of our money, we didn’t need to send it. They gave us back our check.)
The silver lining: the many trips up and down the stairs were better than an exercise routine. I lost three pounds that weekend.
May you never have grief of this sort!
Warmest regards,
Shelley Sommers
PPS A Vision of Home, Book 3, is now with my formatter, Joanna. We’re launching A Vision of Home, in the Louisa’s Vineyard Series by the 2023 holidays. Louisa and Will face challenges in their efforts to find a home, but not exactly like I had in real life. ShelleySommers.com
If you haven’t caught up with the other Louisa’s Vineyard Books, Louisa’s Passion and Will’s Secret, head over to Amazon to get your e-books or print books. Please let me know what you think once you’ve read them! Thank you for reading!