I opened my eyes at 6:30 a.m., bleary and confused. I was being serenaded with the crashes and shrieks of metal getting banged around, and my first thought was that the construction was extremely loud this morning. My second thought was to wonder why it sounded like it was right underneath me; as it turned out, it was. Northeastern employees were breaking down all of the beds in the uninhabited rooms. At 6:30 in the morning. On a Friday during the co-op cycle. That offense is punishable by death -- at least. We were luckier than the girl next door, who was sleeping and woke to some university buffoons walking into her room. My work day seemed destined to be as crappy, and I was getting discouraged during the second hour of retroactive tax auditing when I was stricken with a brain blast of heroic proportions. I will not bore you with the details, as I typically do in these writings, but here's the gist: I found the goddamn tax mistake. This left me with a triumphant feeling and temporarily unearthed a sort of Sherlock Holmes edge to my personality. I could have found Jimmy Hoffa if there had been more time to work with. We office folk were also entertained by an appearance by one of Mark's clients, a very reticent young man who had been involved in an auto accident. More accurately, I should say we were entertained by his father, who is a cantankerous, extremely Sicilian city official who never seems to stop to breathe. His son received a generous settlement offer, which is great because he was not seriously injured in the slightest; when Lori read him the offer, the father exclaimed, "That's not good enough!" and stormed into the room like a charging bull. He was placated before long, but it was an experience.
On the way out, I grabbed my first New York Times in a while at the Greek's convenience store. (Katie S didn't know his name either, and she worked here for years. Besides, "the Greek" sounds pretty gangster.) I headed to Curry immediately, where I met up with my mother and Ryan. I quickly packed up everything at Lauren's place -- miraculously, none of the things I'd left in the hallway for the week were stolen -- and she walked me out. On the way, we got to look at all of the rooms in the YMCA, since all the doors were propped open, presumably so that all the offending beds could be removed. This was probably the most offensive event of the week; every single room was at least twice the size of the one Lauren was occupying. It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to know that they screwed her intentionally, having lost the fight over her right to housing in the first place. Katie was gracious enough to let me store my things at her place, a neat little triple in West B with a window-wall facing out onto the corridor between B and C. Once this was taken care of, we were off for upstate New York once again. We stopped at Boston Market (ironic...) on the way home, the first time I've eaten there in years and years. My parents used to take me there after YMCA swim lessons now and again when I was a kid, and it's still as tasty as ever. It's strange, and delightfully full circle, that the day I returned there would also be the day I moved out of the Y. Ian was working at the Onion when I got home, so I crashed on the couch and watched The Green Mile with my father. I get tired of home very quickly when I'm sticking around, but my first few hours there are always refreshing.
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