Move-In

 “The attic. You’re sticking me in the f*****g attic.”

   I had to admit that Stefan’s room was pretty dismal. It consisted of a cot, a ‘closet,’ if you could even call it that, and two miniature double doors in the wall that could be used for storage.

   “Well, we hadn’t exactly planned on a third person,” Avery said. Nobody could deliver a sting with a smile quite like Avery could.

   “Babe,” I whispered, touching her arm. “Sorry, man.”

“Hey, it’s cool, maybe it’ll help fuel creativity or something,” Stefan said. “I call one of the spares as my editing room.”

   “Uh, no, that’s the workout room,” Avery said.

“We can take turns or something,” I said pointedly to her.

  “I’ll write it in the chart,” she sighed.

“Oh, the chart. Are you also charting when we breathe, cough, sneeze, and go to the toilet?” Stefan said.

   I laughed.

“Funny, but I know what pigs you guys are,” Avery said. “Nothing will get done without it.”

   “That’s right. The world will stop spinning! The birds will stop singing!” Stefan mocked. His cell phone pierced the air and he picked it up. “ ‘Allo?” He began jabbering away as he walked out.

   “Is that Turkish?” Avery asked.

“Farsi,” I said. “And you’re going to hear a whole lot of it.”

   We went downstairs. She sat down at the table and compulsively straightened a napkin. “I really don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

   “Well, it’s a little late now, his U-Haul’s here complete with movers from Istanbul,” I said, fanning my face with a flyer from the Boston Globe.  It was unusually hot for May in the city, but moving in during a heat wave wasn’t as bad as moving in during a rainstorm. Either way, I was exhausted from loading not only my stuff but Avery’s into our new place. I didn’t even want to think about setting up the Internet, cable, or even unpacking.

   The door swung open and three guys speaking rapid-fire Farsi followed Stefan into the room. Avery and I smiled and said hello as Stefan introduced us to Omer, Kerem, and Nadir. I noticed Avery giving Kerem a second look and smirked at her, as if to say Busted. She rolled her eyes at me and tied her dark blond hair into a messy bun.

  “No, not the ponytail,” I whined.

   “It’s a hundred degrees,” she said. “I can’t wait to chop it off.”

“Yeah, you were joking about that, weren’t you?”

   “I’m helping needy children!”

“You’re always helping needy children.”

  “I’m helping needy hairless children,” Avery said. “And I’m not going to sacrifice charity just because my boyfriend has a hair fetish.”

   “I do not have a hair fetish,” I protested. “I just think women look better with long hair.”

   “I agree,” Kerem said as he swaggered past.

“Hey, Jack, we were just talking about how we needed to have a party here soon,” Stefan said. “Like, that little balcony and that little lot out back would be perfect for a barbecue and some pong or something.”

   “I’m fine with it,” I said.

“Great, we’ll get evicted our first week,” Avery muttered so softly only I could hear it. Now it was my turn to roll my eyes at her.

   “Damn, I need a cigarette,” Stefan said. “Okay, ciggie break! Don’t worry, Avery, we’ll go outside.”

    As they went outside to smoke, Avery got up to unpack the cutlery and said, “I thought he was trying to quit.”

  “Babe, that’s what they all say.”

“Aren’t you going to help?”

   “No. I’m tired. And don’t give me that look! Who carried all of your freaking luggage? How can any one person own that many clothes?”

   “They’re for the fall.” Avery was the only woman I knew who bought her clothes a season early, and I had two sisters.

“What are you, Grad School Barbie?”

    “Ha ha,” she said. “Hilarious. By the way, you need to jazz up your wardrobe a little too. I’ll bet the other med school students don’t consider owning two shirts and various khakis an outfit.”

   “That is an outfit.”

“Let’s not argue while I’m wielding knives.”

   “Yeah yeah,” I said. “Hey, let’s go out.”

She turned around and looked at me. “Are you kidding?”

   “Well, what I really feel like doing is having a nice cold Heineken and watching the game. Since we have neither beer nor a television let’s go to a bar and find one.”

   “What, we’ll just invade our landlord’s duplex?”

“It’s Boston! We can go to Cheers or something,” I said.

   “You can have a nice cold Enviga and watch me unpack instead.”

“Seriously, Avery.”

   “Seriously, Jack! What are we going to do, just leave the place and our stuff with a bunch of strangers?” she hissed.

   “They’re not strangers. Stefan’s our roommate, and I think I had orgo lab with Omer.”

    “Oh right, you’re BFFS then.”

I knew why she was being so weird, although she would never admit it. Our tiny town of Regan, about two hours upstate, had two stoplights and no foreigners. Apart from my adopted Chinese cousin, the first exposure I had to international people was when I started at Boston University, as I was sure it had been for Avery.  She wasn’t racist or xenophobic, but she didn’t like unknowns. And Stefan was definitely a big wild card.

   Most of the international students tended to cluster together. But Stefan, who’d lived on my hall freshman year, had always been friendly. We had little in common: he studied film at the College of Communications while I slogged through biology at the College of Arts and Sciences. Nevertheless, even though our paths didn’t really cross, he never failed to greet me with a big smile and a “Hi, Jack” whether he was flanked by other Turkish people or the swarms of women whom he seemed to magnetically attract. Maybe it was a Turkish thing to be so gregarious or maybe it was just Stefan, who was always smiling, laughing, or joking around. He was the embodiment of the expression “life of the party.”

   He turned from someone I’d say hi to in the halls to a classmate our final semester of college just a few short months ago. I still had a general education requirement to fill and found myself sitting next to Stefan in Contemporary Sufism. The class was a complete joke, and Stefan and I upheld the quality of the class by alternating sleeping arrangements through our lectures. I’d sleep for one class while he’d take notes, and he’d sleep the next class. It was the only way to get through a second semester senior year class, especially when I had been accepted into BU’s medical school last fall.

   One day as we were walking out, Stefan asked me about plans for ‘next year’ and I told him about my acceptance.

   Instead of making the usual congratulatory statement, he just looked at me, nonplussed. “So you’re here for four more years?”

    “Yup.”

“By choice? You didn’t apply anywhere else?”

“Well, I got into a few other places, but BU seems like the best choice,” I said.

   “You grew up here, huh?”

“Well, in the same state.”

   “Wow,” Stefan said, pausing to light a cigarette. “I can’t imagine staying in the same place for my whole life.”

    “You didn’t grow up in Turkey?”

“I went to high school at Harvard Westlake out in L.A.”

   “Wow,” I said. That explained why his accent was faint.

“I loved L.A.,” Stefan said, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “But…if UCLA hadn’t rejected my a*s, then you wouldn’t have a Sufi partner, huh?” He clapped my shoulder.

   “Exactly,” I laughed.

“Cigarette?”

  “No thanks.”

“You’ll be a good doctor,” Stefan said. “Hey, let’s get dinner, yeah?”

     “Okay,” I said. I didn’t have to meet Avery until nine that night, and I usually just grabbed a quick bite on Thursdays before heading to the library.

   So as we ate at Lucky Wah, the deliciously greasy Chinese food down the road, and shot the s**t.

   “Where else did you apply?” Stefan asked through a mouthful of Lo Mein.

   “Um, basically everywhere,” I said. “I got really lucky, only Harvard rejected me.”

   “B******s.”

I laughed. “Yeah. But everything else turned out good, Miami, a couple Caribbean programs, …actually UCLA.”

   “All warm weather places,” Stefan said. “Yet you stayed at BU.”

“Well, it would have been good to try something different.”

   “Why stay, your family?” Stefan said. “Or girlfriend?”

I grinned as I dug into my chicken with cashew. “A combination.”

   “Girlfriend! You’re still dating that chick?”

I nodded.

   “Jeez. Where’s she at again?”

    “She’s in Sargeant.” I said, naming the school of physical sciences. “So what are you doing? Film school? Job?”

   “I am starting my own company,” Stefan said. “My own film company. Making documentaries. But,” he sighed. “I have parents and such wanting me to get experience with such and such before I start my own endeavors. So I’m working at a TV station. Unpaid. This summer.”

     “Where at?”

“Jamaica Plain.”

  “That’s where I’ll be living.”

“Yeah? You got any extra room?”

  And that was how two became three. Avery basically had conniptions for two weeks. It had thrown a huge wrench into the plan she’d been plotting since sophomore year: I would graduate and we’d live together off campus while she finished her first year of grad school. Of course, she hadn’t brought up the plan in its entirety until senior year, but the careful hints she’d dropped every other month for three years definitely gave me a clue where she was going. Truthfully, it seemed that when I got accepted into BU she was more relieved than happy for me. Relieved that the dream future she’d constructed could finally materialize. 

    I hadn’t planned on having a roommate, but we did have a spare room that we may have had to sub-lease eventually. And with the addition of Stefan, I felt relieved. Once I moved in with Avery, that would officially make us…old. After all, after almost five years and an apartment together, where else could you possibly go but the altar?

         So Stefan was a great buffer. I didn’t care how much he annoyed Avery. I needed him here. The thought of having just one bedroom with the two of us and a joint mailbox wigged me out, but at least I had a friend up the stairs, and a fun one at that.

  “Jack, seriously, I could really use your help,” Avery said, looking exhausted. So we set up the kitchen and everything and finally decided to turn in at midnight. Stefan’s friends had left but he was still on the balcony, talking on his phone.

   “It’s like we’re married or something,” I joked as we got into bed together, feeling weird. This was my room. Our room. Our bed.

   “Huh, buddy, there isn’t any jewelry on my finger,” Avery said, tapping her left hand with her right.

   “Don’t start.” It was imperative to stave off that conversation. I reached over and kissed her bare shoulder, reaching under her shirt to touch her stomach, but she slapped me away. “Now? You were just whining how tired you were.”

     I turned away from her. “If you want to get a head start on marriage, this is a good way to go.”

     “Jack, I can barely move. We need to rest up so we can get up early ‘cause the Internet dude’s coming. And we need to go grocery shopping, get cleaning supplies, it’s like an endless list of things to do.” She sighed.

   We. We. We.

“Sweet dreams.”

“ ‘Night,” I said, realizing that there was nothing about my new life that was just mine anymore. And I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.