Next Door Hater (Love Under Lockdown)

Filled up and feeling better, I started up the old Volvo, surprisingly on the first try, and went to see what the future held. It was amazing the optimism a good meal could induce.

There were two cars when I got to the duplex, one on each side. I wasn’t sure what my mom was driving at the time, which made it a bit of a guess. At the very least I knew she was home.

Going for the side with VW Beetle, far more Mom’s style, I pulled up beside it, each of the driveways surprisingly wide, I went to try door number one, keeping my heart light and my thoughts positive. Particularly in terms of hoping the duplex was nicer on the inside than the outside. The outside looked a bit of a wreck, even if it wasn’t a good idea to judge a book by its cover.

The cracked paint on the door chipped of and fell away as I knocked. At least some of it, anyway. Through the cracked window in the door, held together and kept from getting worse with strip of bright green masking tape, I could see Mom approaching.

“Oh, hey Honey,” she said, still half asleep.

“I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Oh, no, I haven’t been to sleep yet. I was getting on that.”

“Sounds like a good idea.”

“Not until I show you around first.”

I was given the ten-dollar tour, Mom’s background as a museum guide making the progress making the process more enjoyable than it had any right to be. Aside from the several spots where the plaster in the wall separating the two sides of the duplex had fallen to the carpet, the place wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. Still several steps down from where we’d been living when I’d left for college, but it was still four walls and a roof. Everything seemed to work well enough, which was always a plus.

“You’re in here,” Mom said.

It looked just like my room at my old place. Everything I hadn’t brought to college set up just as it had been. Mom was big on consistency. It was how she coped, even if it did seem a bit odd. We all had our oddities and crutches. Like me and my copious caffeine. I was hardly one to throw rocks.

“Will this work okay?”

“Um, yeah, Mom, it’s great, thanks.”

“No problem, sweetie,” she replied with an affectionate squeeze.

I wasn’t going to cry, I refused to cry, I was supposed to be an adult. I couldn’t go all squishy about coming home. Otherwise, I might never be able to leave again when college started again. There were few greater enemies to progress than comfort.

“I’m on night shift again, but I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

“Okay, Mom.”

Mom kissed me on the forehead and went to bed. If the holes in the walls didn’t bother her, I decided they wouldn’t bother me either. They were mostly in the hall anyway, had there been one in the bathroom that would be different story but as far as I could tell the bathrooms and bedrooms were on opposite ends of the building, giving them four solid walls. I’d just have to be careful walking to my room after a shower.

The more I thought about it, the more the duplex seemed fine really. The situation certainly could have been a lot worse, particularly given the circumstances. If nothing else, I would have time to work on the projects I’d not found time for while at school. Brenda was right, being an adult could be awesome, with the right attitude.

Hope sprung in my heart for the possibility of good things, and with it bloomed a sudden feeling of creativity. It was still there, just as I’d left it. There was no reason to think it wouldn’t be, it had just been so long, I could no longer be sure it had ever existed at all. To be fair, it could have all been a very vivid dream. There was certainly evidence in that direction. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d woken up thinking I’d done something I actually hadn’t. It had seemed too good to be true, and I’d almost convinced myself it was.

It wasn’t my first attempt at either a novel, or a screenplay. Posterity would never fully record how many attempts had come before, leading up to the moment, but when the idea struck, I knew it immediately. Not only the potential the idea had, but also its application to both a book and a movie.

Ideally, they would be written at the same time. Each making up for the short-comings and filling the gaps left by the other. Not only accommodating for different sensibilities when it came to enjoying art, but also creating a holistic approach, best enjoyed together.

Not a case of adaptation, which had failed so many times before, at times spectacularly, but collaboration. Each part, novel and film, complimenting and building on the other. The ultimate tribute to the influence of both my parents, and their influence.