In a diary entry that's already written, Randy leaves the Waco motel shortly after the Branch Davidian Compound goes up in flames. He catches the first bus out of town a little freaked out; it takes him to Austin.
I have decided to stop running and settle down. I have decided to identify what I've been doing as running and stop doing it. I have decided to die in Texas. It's better than Florida, and well, can we just stop talking about San Francisco...? I thought I would come here and get a job, but come to find out I'm not hirable. Anita works at The New Yorker now and she says she can get me some freelance work, but I don't know if I even need that now. I met with a counselor at the AIDS Services office and things are turning around. I'm gonna sell my life insurance policy that Charles bought for me years ago; I can get on Disability and draw a small check from Social Security every month; and I even got a little money from Mona for life insurance she had through the motel cleaning company she worked for for most of her life. It's enough to pay off most of my credit cards, so she didn't make me rich but she did make me thankful.I found a small apartment, furnished and bills paid, a garage apartment, a few block from the motel I was in when I first arrived, so it was an easy walk to my new home. Four walls, a double bed, a desk and two chairs, a small kitchen and bathroom, two window unit air conditioners, red gingham curtains on the other ones, even a book shelf with books that I don't think I would ever read -- self-help books, historical romance novels -- and a couple by Stephen King that I already did read in tenth grade.
There are windows on three walls. The A side wall is across from the front door. The desk and closet are on that wall, the window over the desk faces the street, 15th Street. I have a good view of the two-story house across the street. There are two front doors, so I'm assuming there are two apartments downstairs, and the metal staircase up the right side makes me think the house has three apartments. I saw one man going into one of the front doors but no other life so far, but I've only been here two days.
The B side wall looks down over a one-story house, which must have lots of bedrooms because there are always lots of kids going in and out. College kids, boys and girls paired up, naturally, making lots of noise, naturally. The window on that wall is at the foot of my bed. They stay up later than I can, running around half-naked, laughing, making me wish I could stay up later. Maybe with time I'll be able to get more on their schedule.
The C wall is technically the front of my apartment because that is where the staircase and front door are, but it's on the back side of the garage, facing a small yard of weeds, a pecan tree, the alley and the back yard of the house across the way. It's a tiny little house, painted purple with black trim. The yard is decorated with colorful flags, small square flags (blue, white, red, green, yellow), not like state or country flags, more like boating flags, I guess, several strings of them, some smaller, some larger, attached from the house to the tree or to the clothesline pole. It's like a carnival.
The clothesline seems to have different laundry on it every day, one day white, the next day tie-dyed dresses. There are several bird feeders hanging from poles and from the spindly tree limbs, and bowls of cat food and water around the back door. It looks to me like a tragedy waiting to happen. Unfortunately, I guess, I can't see this view very well because the C wall window has one of the air conditioners in it, blocking my view except for the top of the rusty tin roof and the sky. There is a window in the top half of the front door, but I don't think I'll be drawn to stand there waiting to see the tenant -- the dresses on the line, not to mention the unmentionables, make me think it is a woman living there, a crazy old lesbian hippie!
The rest of the C wall is the bathroom. There is a small wrinkled-glass window over the shower-tub, but it has been painted shut. It's just as well, I guess. The bathrooms in the motels I've been living in lately have all been nicer than this one. Even the bathroom in the trailerhome I grew up in was nicer, cleaner, more organized, but this one is mine and that makes it better in my mind.
The D wall is windowless. The bathroom takes up half of that wall, the kitchen takes up the other half, and that's where the builder decided to put the kitchen cabinets and the nook for the refrigerator. The house that originally claimed this garage is on the other side of the D wall. Maybe it was intentional, the solid wall, to give a bit of privacy for the house dwellers from the garage apartment tenant.
The rest of the A wall has a smaller window over the kitchen sink, giving another perspective of the house across the street and the smaller, nicer one next door to it. But this window is out of the way and will probably prove useless in my upcoming peeping-tom habit.
The kitchen is fine. Four-burner stove, large refrigerator, smaller a/c built into the wall in the top front corner; double sink, extra deep, lots of cabinets which are mostly empty and will probably remain so. I think I would probably use the kitchen more if it had a microwave oven, but for $325 bills paid I've got no complaints. Anita shit her britches when I told her that! She wanted to know if there are gangs or sofas on front porches or cars on blocks or pit bulls roaming the neighborhood with their teats dragging the pavement. The long-term residents of this neighborhood seem to be poor and black, but I believe it's safer here than Hell's Kitchen, or even the fancy parts of Park Slope -- and a helluva lot cheaper!
There's a huge cemetery half a block from me, and I guess that might be a deterrent to some, but it's huge and ancient and beautiful. I think I'll be spending some time there soon. And I mean before I kick the bucket!
The only thing missing from my home sweet home is paper and pen. I've only got a half dozen pages left in this notebook, so I reckon I'll have to find my way to an office supply store or a Kmart or something like that soon.
