Page 10 of The Progressions

“Has anyone ever told you to go fu—”

“No-Kasia, you never used to talk to me like that. What put you in such a bad mood? You don’t think I’m funny anymore?” Cody asked me. He grinned. I didn’t remember ever thinking that he was funny, but I’d definitely thought he was handsome. I’d thought he was the best thing that had ever happened to me, too.

Not anymore. “Maybe I never said it, so let me tell you now to go—”

But again, I was interrupted, now by a bellowing horn. Cody went to the window. “Shit, I gotta get out of here. Until next time, No-Kasia.”

“Don’t call me that,” I said automatically. “What’s happening in the parking…no. Hold on,” I yelled, waving my arms as I ran outside. I certainly wasn’t trying to prolong the visit with Cody, who was backing out fast in his delivery van.

“You can’t drive in here! Stop!” But the three huge moving trucks I was hollering at went right past me without even slowing down and continued into our parking lot.

“They better hurry up,” I heard a woman say. “I’m not wasting my time with this shit.” I turned and saw her speaking into her phone and walking quickly in from the street. She wore tennis shoes instead of fur boots today, and her head was also bare of the fur hat. Instead of a long-sleeved, full-length unitard, she had on a bandeau top and little shorts, all in camo, and she looked so cute. She also looked like she’d accepted that it was summer even in northern Michigan, and she had dressed for it.

Shay Galton was back.

“Miss Galton!” I called to her, but she continued walking toward the condos without responding. Ok. I went to the first truck to confront the driver instead. “You can’t leave this here. How are you guys going to get out? How is anyone else supposed to use this parking lot?” I asked him. “The other tenants will be coming home from work soon and—”

He shrugged and walked away in the middle of that sentence. Now he was at the side of the trailer messing with a latch.

“No,” I said immediately. “No, no! Do not open those doors, because you can’t unload—” He opened them. “Ok, do not put down your ramp—” Too late.

I ran to the next truck and to the next, but I wasn’t the one paying them and they wouldn’t listen to me, the non-boss. So I went to Tyler Hennessy’s rental unit to find his girlfriend and make her understand.

She was in the living room, which was empty now of all our model-home furniture. “I’m at our new house!” she was saying brightly to her phone. “T and I are so excited to be here in Minneapolis together.” She talked for a while longer about what she was wearing and where she would be going next. Then she showed a bottle of serum that she was using to protect her skin against the cold weather, so she hadn’t totally accepted summer yet. Also, we were in Michigan.

I waited, trying to be respectful, but I got more and more anxious about the situation in the parking lot the longer she talked. Finally, she put down the serum and the phone and stopped smiling, and I stepped in.

“Miss Galton, you need to get those trucks out of here,” I stated. “You didn’t let me know that you were having them come today and they can’t stay like that, blocking everyone else.”

One of the moving men brushed past me with a large box. “Where do you want this?” he asked her, but Shay Galton went toward the bedroom, ignoring both of us. He shrugged and dropped it, but I followed her.

“Uh, Miss Galton,” I said. “As I emailed to Tyler Hennessy and as it also says in the lease he signed, we have specific times set aside for move-ins and departures. You needed to let us know forty-eight hours—”

“I’m peeing,” she announced, and I could hear that clearly because she hadn’t closed either of the double doors. In the other room, the guys continued to come in and out anddrop more stuff. There was definitely the sound of something breaking, and I also heard them laugh.

“While you pee, can you listen to me?” I requested. “Because I need you to tell those movers that they—”

She walked out and right past me, pulling up her top to cover her breasts as she did. Good grief, they were gorgeous! And why had she bared them to go to the bathroom? I shook my head and followed again.

“Miss Galton?Shay!”

She stopped when I said her first name. “Why are you still here? I’m going to call the police on you,” she told me, and walked outside.

“The police?” I went too but got waylaid by an angry tenant from the next building who didn’t like the movers talking outside his window, and also, he thought there were quarters missing from the jar of change he kept in his closet…by the time I arrived at the parking lot, she was at the exit to the street, which was already blocked by a car. It was her ride, I realized, because she opened the passenger door and then got in, and the driver backed up fast. They were gone in an instant, leaving me with a holy mess.

Because soon enough, more tenants did start to arrive, and they wanted to use the lot that they paid for in rent and mortgages. The movers had emptied one truck and managed to back it out onto the street, which meant that there were only two gigantic vehicles in the way. It was slightly better but still not great, because they blocked several aisles and even with our paltrynumber of residents, there still weren’t enough spots for them. I tried to deal with the tenants while hurrying along the rest of the move as much as I could. This was a moment when it would have been so great to have Iva here, but I couldn’t call her and make her come in to deal with the chaos. She was supposed to have been resting, after all, not standing under the sun on a blacktop and yelling herself hoarse.

I was in the midst of trying to assure a man from Building B that no, the parking lot would not be blocked forever and to please, please temporarily leave his car in the street, when a yellow SUV slowly turned into the already crowded space.

And it honked.

“Really?” I hollered at the driver. I stomped over and he put down the window. “These are your moving trucks!” I told Tyler Hennessy. “This is all your fault, so don’t honk.” After I spoke, I realized that it probably wasn’t the appropriate tone or word choice, but it was too late, now. “Hello and welcome home,” I added, to mitigate. I tucked my hair behind my ears and smiled.

He stared at me for a moment through his stupid sunglasses and rolled up the window. He then backed up, angling his car sharply, and parked in the flower bed next to my office.

“No,” I started to tell him, but one of the moving guys tapped me hard on the shoulder.

“Where do you want the casket? Once we put it down somewhere, it’s staying.”

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