She asked if I could help her move.
Which, while not #1 on things I never want anyone to ever ask me, is certainly in the top ten.
I bit my tongue on the first response that tried to escape my lips and asked instead, "When are you planning on moving?"
What I should have said was 1) "No." or 2) "Why are you moving?"
See, the question was being asked by a woman that I had known maybe all of five months, and not all that well over the course of those five months.
She was a bright woman that I had met playing trivia and had initially appeared for all the world to be a nice, normal human being.
She was also a former beauty queen - a real, live beauty queen, the type that win scholarships to good colleges.
And she had actually used the scholarships she won to acquire a couple of advanced degrees.
But I digress.
She replied to my question of when with the coming Saturday, and then added, "I'm already out of my apartment - everything's in a storage unit, and I don't have much to move, just boxes of clothes, shoes and books, and the mattress and boxspring - I sold all the furniture already."
That did make the proposition a little more attractive. She had been living in a three story walk-up, on the third floor, so I made the mistake of responding with, "I don't have anything going on Saturday, so I guess I can help. What time and where?"
"The storage unit is right down the street - probably two miles from your house. I have a U-Haul rented and if you can meet me at the rental place around 8:00, we can get the truck and drive over there, load up, and get everything to my new place before noon or one."
This commitment was made on a Tuesday so I had plenty of time during the week to back out with a real or imaginary excuse, but I did not.
I'm an idiot like that.
Saturday morning I was at the address she had given me for the rental place just before 8:00. She arrived ten minutes after. All the paperwork was in order so all we had to do was get the keys and go. The clerk did require a copy of my driver's license though, which I obliged, but after that we made our way to her storage unit.
The storage unit was medium size, maybe 8 X 10, and it was filled with pretty much what she described - though there were a whole helluva lot more boxes of books than I expected. The books (and binders, lots and lots of filled binders) were her doctoral thesis and proofs - she had earned a Ph.D. at a fairly prestigious West Coast university almost 20 years ago, and had kept every word she had written, as well as every source she had cited, as if she was going to be challenged to provide evidence for it sometime.
Still, even with all the heavy boxes of books, we had the truck loaded within an hour. In my head the thoughts went along the lines of, "Great, now that we're loaded up we'll go someplace for breakfast, then head over to her new place, unload quickly, get lunch, then take the truck back and be done."
See, she had explained almost everything about the move to me back on Tuesday when she first asked for my help - we would meet up at the truck rental place and pick up the truck, leaving both of our cars at the truck rental place. We would drive to the storage unit together, then get some breakfast somewhere, then go to her new apartment where we would unload everything. After getting some lunch somewhere we would return the truck to the truck rental place, give them back the keys and pick up our cars, then go our separate merry ways.
Except I had failed to ask an extremely important question, which was, "Where is your new place?" I had just assumed it was somewhere in the area, at worst maybe 20 or 25 miles to the north or south of the storage unit, in one of the new large apartment complexes that seemed to be sprouting up everywhere, but primarily to the north and south of Denver proper.
The unexpected answer was served up like a greased slider. I had just pulled down and locked the roll-up door of the small box truck when she said, "With any luck we'll get to Rocky Ford before noon."
"Rocky Ford? You're moving to Rocky Ford? Why are you moving to Rocky Ford?' Those words spilled out of my mouth like a plate of tater tots falling off a table.
"New job - couldn't stay at my old job, not with him still working there. Plus it's closer to my parents place in Los Animas, but not too close."
Once again I choked back my desired first response and simply answered, "Okay, but let's go somewhere for breakfast first - I'm starved."
She agreed to that and off we went to the Breakfast King, a nice little greasy spoon that wasn't too far away and right off I-25.
Yep, I'm an idiot like that.
As most people know driving a long distance with someone can be a challenge at times, especially if that person is someone you don't know particularly well. There is always the risk that the person will be uncomfortably quiet or worse, an incessant talker. There is also the risk that the person will have horrible taste in music.
Breakfast was quick and pleasant, and we were southbound before 10:00. Rocky Ford is a two and a half hour drive from Denver at best so her prediction of a noon arrival was probably not going to hold up.
For the first few minutes we drove along in a comfortable silence, but then she started talking about how she was excited to be starting a new job and how great it was going to be living once again in the area she had been raised.
Not all that bad as far as conversational subject matter goes, but then she started to get a little melodramatic about how much she would miss the friends and coworkers that she had gotten to know over the past few years that she had lived in Denver.
Then the conversation took an even more melodramatic turn and for the next couple of hours I politely endured the entire history of her life with the man who had been the impetus for the move, how he had seduced her with his charm, manipulated her with false promises, took advantage of her naivete, etc., etc.
I just nodded my head and uttered occasional uncommitted agreement to various points she stressed about how bad a person he eventually revealed himself to be as the minutes and miles dragged on under the governor regulated accelerator of the rental truck.
Because I'm an idiot like that.
I probably will never again drive that agonizingly slow from Denver to Rocky Ford, or at least I hope I will never again have reason to drive that agonizingly slow from Denver to Rocky Ford.
When we arrived at her new apartment (second floor, stairs only) I insisted we unload the truck before getting lunch, and even with the challenge of a switchback exterior staircase, was able to get every box and the mattress and boxspring out of the truck and into her apartment in half the time it took to load it all.
Both of us were a bit exhausted so we both sat down on the floor of her new unfurnished apartment and rested while finishing off bottles of cold water. After a few minutes she stood up and said she knew of a great little restaurant close by where we could have lunch, but she wanted to take a shower and change clothes before we went there.
She looked at me sitting on the floor and said, "You can join me in the shower if you want " and turned and made her way down the short hallway, pulling off her shirt as she walked.
I sat on the floor and watched her until she disappeared into the bathroom, leaving the door wide open. I listened to her shoes falling to the floor as she removed them, I listened to the zipper of her pants as she unzipped them, and I listened to her pull them off. I heard the shower curtain pulled aside and the water bursting forth from the showerhead.
Then I got up and walked over to the small kitchen area and set the empty water bottle down on the counter. I pondered the possibilities, eventually deciding my best course of action was to stop digging the hole any deeper and to just stay in the kitchen and wait for her to finish and get dressed. It was going to be a long drive back to Denver the way things stood already, no need to complicate it further.
Because I'm and idiot like that.
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