Looking for a new home always involves complicated emotions. On the one hand, there seem so many possibilities. On the other hand, it takes time and energy, and one has to see a lot of poor, discouraging places. And in our case there were so many great things about our old place to compare to.
Our first day out was ill-omened. One place was expensive, and ugly. Another was spendy yet loveably quaint—but far too small. And another was the right price but both ugly and small. Moreover one of the cities we had been considering simply wasn’t going to cut it—it was like Land of the Yuppies. We had hoped for something a little more urban.
The second day we thought we’d try the drive from Loyola to Lake Villa to see how long a trip it would be for Katie should we live in Chicago proper. The primary problem with this plan was that, even should the trip be short enough (it wasn’t), East Rogers Park didn’t look like the kind of neighborhood where we’d want to live either. A little too urban.
Evanston had everything we wanted. Beautiful apartments in vintage buildings at prices that at least fit the appearance, in a city very like Portland. We saw perhaps a dozen or more places in Evanston, fell in love with two of them, but ultimately had to face the fact that the drive was still too far.
Landlords are at once the most interesting and more frustrating part of the hung. One guy kept talking up his place like a dodgy used-car salesman, obviously exaggerating the details of features we were standing there looking at, as though he could make his fabulations true by speaking them. Another guy hardly talked at all, just moved to a new room every time we followed him to the previous one as though to avoid us. When he did speak, he told us how a friend of his rented to a Chicago Bear (a football player, not an angry highway driver) who left the place looking like he had been throwing free weights at the wall, and therefore he (the landlord) now always required a security deposit. I couldn’t help looking down at my modest physique in ironic critique of his concern. Yet another guy sounded like he had a porcupine stuck in his throat, all hoarse and grating, though otherwise healthy-looking.
The most interesting landlords turned out to be the ones we chose. For some reason. They have a strange habit of saying they will call and then not calling. Yet, so far, whenever they say they will do something, they do it. Eventually. My theory about the husband—call him, oh, Gonzo—is that he just doesn’t like to talk. Ask him a question and he gives a brief, impatient answer as though to say, “Yeah, whatever you want. Just leave me out of it.” This would be a great trait in a roommate, but not in the person who actually owns the place and can withhold your deposit.
I’m not sure yet about the wife—let’s call her Drisella. Drisella is a short, wide-eyed lady with thin, dandruffy hair who can’t seem to look in one direction for more than a second and a half, so sometimes she’s talking to you but you’re not always sure right away. To their credit they’ve been very accommodating and friendly, but they just won’t communicate with us, which doesn’t gel well with people who intend to make careers of studying people and language.
The trick then will be to figure out how to manage our managers. What seems to work moderately well is to leave a message with them stating what we would like, then to wait a week, and usually they will just do it without saying they plan to. It’s not ideal, but it gets the job done. I sometimes think I should bring up this communication gap to Gonzo, but I’m worried he’ll say, “Yeah, yeah, whatever you want,” and I’ll never hear from him again.
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