Front Porch Story

The guys had been on tour for the past three months, they were making a hell of a lot more money than they ever did before. They told us to move into a real apartment and out of "The damn squatter building," so that's what we were going to do today.
"Hey! I found one!" Lisea says excitedly as she flips through her segment of the newspaper.
"Where?" I ask looking over her shoulder.
"Center of Oakland, they have like ten vacancies so we can all move into the same building." She says as she circles it with her pen.
"I found one too, uptown though." Ana says as she passes me her part of the newspaper. "Did you find any?"
"Uhh, I think I found one uptown as well." I say waving around the newspaper."
"Where's the phone? I'll call the landlords now and see if we can see the apartments today." Ana says as she digs through the scattered sheets of newspaper.
"It's unbelievable, we're actually going to live in a real apartment, with rent and landlords and the right to complain about trivial problems with the bathroom sink." I say laughing. Ana had shut herself in her room, Lisea and I had a tendency to get into loud conversations.

"Alright, we can see the apartment I found at three thirty, the center-town one at three and the only time we can see the other uptown one is if we leave right now." Ana says looking at her watch.
"Going, going gone!" Lisea says as she tries to locate her shoes under the newspaper. We stumble out of the apartment when Ana realizes she left the keys to Mike's truck in back inside.
"Oh fuck." She mutters as we hear her stumbling about in the apartment.
"Ana, are you okay?" I call in after her.
"Yeah, fine." She calls out as she makes her way back out the door. "Let's go."

We pile into the pick-up truck and Ana takes her prided in seat as driver. After a fifteen minute drive we arrive at an apartment building that doesn't look much better than the squatter building we were living in now.
"I hope the other buildings are nicer than this one." I murmur as we cautiously walk away from the car towards the building.
"Hi are you Mr. Albright?" Ana asks as we approach a man in a cheap suit.
"Umm . . . .yessums, that's me . . . . .well you must be Anastasia, follow me." he stutters in between twitches.
"Hmm in-ter-est-ting." Lisea says as we follow him up the stairs.
"Oh I was hoping there'd be an elevator." I whine, mainly trying to bug Mr. Albright.
"Umm no elevator in this building m'am."
"He called you m'am." Lisea teases.
"Here we are, these five apartments are vacant. They're all the same, so let's just take a look at this one." He mumbles as he goes to unlock one of the doors.

As we enter the apartment the pungent smell of fish and cigarettes fill our senses.
"You know what, this place just isn't what we're looking for." I say as I grab Lisea and Ana's arms and practically run out of the building leaving Mr. Albright alone.
"That place is worse than the squatter building!" Ana says out of breath as we get into the truck.
"Let's just hope, the other building at least don't smell that bad." Lisea says as she appears like she's going to gag, "Tre's laundry smells better than that."
"I'll take your word for it." I mumble as I double-check the address of the next apartment building.

We drive to the location of the next apartment building, it was a definite improvement. The brick walls were graffiti-free and there didn't seem to be and pungent smells.
"Yay! Decency!" Lisea exclaims as we enter the building to find a woman dressed casually who walks up to meet us.
"Hi, you must be here to see the vacant apartments." She says in a friendly voice.
"Yeah." We say in awe of how much nicer this place was in comparison to the last place.
"Well, the apartments are on the fifth and sixth floor." She says as she leads us to the elevator. We follow intrigued to see what the apartments looked like. "They're basically all the same."
"Yeah, we figured." Ana say as the woman unlocks the door.
"Whoa! It's actually clean." I say looking around in the bedroom, kitchen, living room. It was so much bigger than the squatter apartment.
"Yeah, this place is great." Ana says checking the light switches.
"We still have one more place to check though." Lisea mumbles.

We drive to the final apartment building we had planned on visiting, it was okay but it wasn't as nice as the second one. It was very plain and boring and as Lisea so abruptly pointed out it had no elevator.

"I don't know about you two but, I want to go with the second place." I say as we get back in the truck.
"Yeah, same here." Lisea says as she sits relaxed.
"So we'll call Debra when we get back."
"Who?" I ask.
"The landlord."
"Oh, okay." I say embarrassed that I forgot the woman's name.

When we get back to our apartment Lisea and I head next door to the convenience store to get some boxes, while Ana volunteered to make the calls for the apartments.
"Guess what!" Ana says excitedly as we fumble into the apartment with a shit load of boxes.
"What?" I ask as I toss the flattened boxes into the corner.
"Debra said we can move in early next week!"
"Awesome, so we'll be moved in by the time the guys get back." Lisea says as she thinks about what the guys' tour schedule is like.

We started packing right away since we were moving in only a couple of days.