The Influence(4)
Lita nudged him with her elbow. “Admit it, Rossie. Not a bad place to stay, is it?”
No one had called him “Rossie” since he was a kid, and hearing it now made him feel old.
“It’s nice,” he admitted.
Despite his initial reservations, Ross enjoyed the weekend. He thought he’d be bored, but while the pace of life was slower than in Phoenix—much slower—it was relaxing. Besides, Lita and Dave had DirectTV and internet access, so it wasn’t as though he was completely cut off from the real world. Monday morning, as he prepared to depart, he actually felt sad to be leaving.
Lita poked her head through the open car window as he was about to go. “Promise me, if things don’t work out, if you run out of money, if you don’t find a job before your benefits expire, if you just need a place to clear your head, that you’ll call. I’m serious. Your shack will be sitting here waiting. And, as you can see, we have plenty of room. It’d be good for you.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I had a great time. And I appreciate everything you’ve done. Both of you.”
“Promise me,” she repeated.
He smiled at her. “I promise.”
TWO
Ross kept his promise—and much sooner than he’d intended.
Despite the state of the economy, despite all of the personal setbacks of the past year, he’d honestly thought he had a shot at getting hired by McDowell Industries, an aerospace firm based in Houston. They’d accepted his resume two months ago, and while he hadn’t been called for an interview, the personnel director had phoned himself and assured Ross that he was on the short list. So it was quite a blow when, the day after Halloween, he received a generic rejection, a one-line email notifying him that the position had been filled.
The unexpected news caused him to take stock, and Ross decided that if he was going to take advantage of his cousin’s offer, he should do so sooner rather than later, while he still had money coming in and could pay some of his own expenses, before he became a complete leech and freeloader. The prospect still didn’t sit well with him, but being able to contribute made it a lot more palatable, and in the back of his mind was the idea that he could get some sort of part-time or seasonal job in the area—manual labor or a service position—that would enable him to pull his own weight.
At least he didn’t have a huge debt hanging over his head. Another supervisor, Alex Yoon, who’d gotten laid off the same time as Ross and who had also not yet found employment, had been using his credit cards to see him through the past year. Now they were all maxed out, and he couldn’t even make the minimum payments. A financial advisor had told him that the only option left was personal bankruptcy.
Ross was not in that bad a shape.
Yet.
He informed everyone of his decision several weeks prior to implementing it, hoping it would spur his parents and his siblings to help out somehow. But they only congratulated him, as though moving into a shack out in the middle of nowhere was the equivalent of finding a great new job. He shouldn’t have expected anything different, and it was his own fault for thinking his family might actually give a damn, but the reaction still left him feeling angry and disappointed.
As it happened, he didn’t have as many personal possessions as he thought he had. Friends helped him move the furniture to a storage unit, along with a couple of boxes of books, games and CDs, another couple of boxes filled with pots, pans, plates and kitchen utensils, and several garbage sacks filled with various odds and ends. In his car, coming with him, were most of his clothes, a few books, his laptop, a small microwave, his toolbox, a lamp and some necessities that he knew Lita’s guest house didn’t have. After dropping a condo key off at the realtor’s, he met his friends at Roundtable Pizza, where he bought them what was either a late lunch or an early dinner—“Linner,” Trent dubbed it—and unlimited pitchers of beer to thank them for their help.
“When’re you coming back?” Patrick asked.
Ross shrugged. “When I get a job, I guess.”
“So…never?” Alex said.
They all laughed, but underlying the humor was a depressing truth, and a sense of melancholy pervaded the proceedings after that, no matter how hard they tried to ignore it. Eventually, everyone left, and Ross drove out to Chandler to spend the night at his parents’ house before hitting the road in the morning. They’d made up the couch for him but had not gone to any extra effort to make his final night a special one. It was Saturday, so his mom baked meat loaf, the way she always did, and it was as bad as he remembered. He ended up eating mostly side dishes, white bread and creamed corn, just as he had as a kid. Neither his sister’s family nor his brother’s had been invited over to say goodbye, and after dinner he sat in his parents’ living room while his mom and dad watched Jeopardy and then a CSI rerun and then went to bed.