Chapter 2

My ride with Milpitas Systems lasted through November. On December 1, I found myself no longer employed, for the first time in eight years. Merry Christmas. Because of my time with the company, I got six weeks' severance, and my rent was paid through December. Getting laid off in December was kind of a double whammy, though, because even in the best of times nobody's hiring during December. It was time for me to economize, which meant that I had to move out of Vida Libre, too.

I sold my BMW--for less than it was worth, of course--but the upside of that deal was that I was able to buy a used Honda Civic for less than it was worth, too, and used it to cover the valley looking for a new place to live.

My approach to finding a new apartment was to decide how much rent I thought I'd be comfortable with, then look to see what I could find in that price range. What I found were places in parts of town that I'd prefer not to live in, buildings that were coming apart at the seams, and older apartment neighborhoods with lots of Harleys parked on the street. I was feeling more than discouraged after two weeks of concerted looking and starting to get a stomach ache about the whole thing.

Returning home after yet another morning of fruitless searching, I was almost to the point of deciding that I was going to have to accept a living environment far less pleasant than I would prefer, and I was stewing about it so intently that I missed a turn and wound up temporarily lost in an older neighborhood in Santa Clara. In the process of getting my bearings, I turned onto a street that was lined with immaculately maintained residences. The neighborhood looked to be forty or fifty years old, and was a mix of duplexes and single-family homes, none of which were in visible need of paint or repair, and all of which had well-groomed lawns and landscaping. I slowed almost to walking speed just to look at the houses. Especially when compared with the apartments I'd been looking at, the houses on this street were mouthwateringly attractive.

On the front lawn of one duplex was a sign that read "Apartment for Rent." I stopped and considered. There was no way, I was virtually certain, that I'd be able to afford a duplex unit in this area any more than I could continue to afford Vida Libre, but I felt compelled to stop and ask. Perhaps I'd be able to return in better times. I parked, walked to the front door of the front unit, and rang the bell.

I don't know what I'd expected--maybe a grandmotherly lady or a paunch-bellied guy in a wife beater chewing on the stub of a cigar--but I know that I wasn't expecting the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. She was Vietnamese and small; when she opened the door, she was looking directly at my collarbones. I guessed her to be in her late thirties. She was wearing a pair of form-fitted Jordache jeans filled out with a perfect shape, a white Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled back, and a pair of black, low-heeled pumps. Half her gleaming black hair was behind her; half of it came forward over her shoulder almost to her waist. Peeking out from her beauty was the hint of an imp. Something inside me went clunk. I'd never had this kind of a reaction to a woman before. Ever. Not even when I first met my ex-wife.

It wasn't until she said, "Can I help you?" with amusement evident on her face, that I realized I'd been standing there mute for an embarrassing amount of time.

My mouth was suddenly dry. I cleared my throat, swallowed, and said, "Uh, yes. I mean, my name is Michael Wynn, and I'd like to inquire about the duplex unit for rent."

"How do you do, Mr. Wynn," she said, with bells around her voice. "I am Mrs. Nguyen. Would you like to see the unit?"

I nodded.

"Then follow me, please."

She stepped out of her door and walked across the porch. Her Jordache jeans were an absolute treat to walk behind.

She opened the door to the rear unit and motioned me in. It was more like a small house than an apartment, with two spacious bedrooms, a well-defined living room, and a kitchen with dinette area that looked onto the back yard. The yard was deep, with a large lawn flanked by flowerbeds and two orange trees; near the back fence was an unplanted area that looked like it might be used for a summer vegetable garden. It looked like a little piece of heaven to me.

"Why are you looking for a new place to live, Mr. Wynn?" Mrs. Nguyen asked.

I gave her the short version of having been laid off at Milpitas Systems and a need to seek less expensive quarters. I'd kind of hoped I'd be able to fudge being out of work; after all, what landlord wants to rent to an unemployed tenant?

"And what has brought you to my door?"

"Sheer chance," I said. "I missed a turn and just happened onto this street."

"Ah," she said.

Fully prepared to tell her that I wouldn't be able to afford her duplex unit, I asked Mrs. Nguyen what the rent was. The figure she quoted was roughly a quarter of what I'd been paying at Vida Libre. A place like this had to be worth way more than that. I'm sure I must have reflected more than a little surprise, but Mrs. Nguyen merely looked inscrutable. "Pardon me?" I said.

She repeated the same price.

"I'd like to take it, then," I said.

"Excellent," she said, as we moved to the door of the duplex. "You will have to fill out a rental application first, though."

Back in her unit, she handed me the form. "You can take it with you and either return it to me when you've completed it, or fax me a copy. Or you can fill it out here, if you wish, and I can start processing it immediately."

"I'll fill it out here, if you don't mind," I said. "I'll feel a lot better when I know where I'm going to be living next month as soon as possible."

Mrs. Nguyen handed me the form and showed me to her kitchen table. I sneaked a quick peek around. Her house looked quite thoroughly western, except for a good luck bamboo plant on the table in front of me and a small Buddhist shrine in one corner of the living room.

When I finished filling out the form, I handed it to her, and she said, "It should take me about a day to verify your information. I'll call you as soon as I have the results."

After good-byes, I drove back to Vida Libre and did little more than worry through the next twenty-four hours. I wanted that duplex unit so bad I could almost taste it, but I knew that my rental application form showed that I was unemployed with a history of only one previous rental. Although I was prepared to offer Mrs. Nguyen a year's rent in advance as a show of good faith, I had to admit that, on paper, I didn't look like a good prospect. Sleep that night was fitful, mixing dreams of Mrs. Nguyen's beautiful face, her long hair, and her formfitting jeans with images of me sleeping under a bridge.

Twenty-four hours virtually to the minute after I had handed the rental application to Mrs. Nguyen, my phone rang. After two fumbles, I got it to my ear.

"Hello!" I nearly shouted.

"Mr. Wynn?" a voice with bells asked.

"Yes," I panted, "this is Michael Wynn."

"This is Mrs. Nguyen." As if I didn't know. "I'm happy to tell you that your rental application has been approved. The unit is available now, so you can move in any time you like."

I'm not a religious person, but I cast my eyes heavenward with heartfelt thanks--and then made a moving plan on the spur of the moment. I was going to need the boys' help to lug furniture around, which would mean it would have to be during their Christmas break from school. December 27, I decided, would be my moving day.

"It would work best for me if I could move in on the twenty-seventh," I said. "Would that be okay with you?"

"I'll see you then," she said.

Christmas with the boys was drearier than it had been last year. Because I was going to be moving, I didn't set up a tree, and I didn't cook dinner because I didn't want to have a refrigerator full of food to deal with. We did a modest exchange of gifts and went out to eat. But I did secure the boys' promise to help me move--in exchange for pizza afterward and a trip to see Dude, Where's My Car the weekend following.

By the morning of December 27, I had all my books, clothes, kitchenware, and other loose items packed and ready to go. I rented a small U-Haul truck, picked up the boys, and we were on our way. It didn't take all that long to load my stuff into the truck, and by 2:00, we were pulling away. The Vida Libre chapter of my life had ended.

As I was walking out the door of the duplex to get another box from the truck, I nearly ran headlong into Mrs. Nguyen. Today she was wearing a sweatshirt, formfitting Calvin Klein jeans, and a pair of dazzlingly white Nikes. Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail. I felt that clunk inside again.

"You're here!" she said. "Can I help with anything?"

"That's really not necessary," I said, even as Mrs. Nguyen walked past me and into my unit. I was obligated to say that her help wasn't necessary, of course; of course, I was delighted that she might be near.

The boys were slumped on the couch, taking five before they started bringing in beds. "Oh, these must be your sons!" Mrs. Nguyen exclaimed.

"Yes, they are," I said, giving the boys a hand sign to stand up. "Mrs. Nguyen, I'd like you to meet my sons Adam and Jonathan; boys, this is my new landlady, Mrs. Nguyen."

"What handsome young men!" Mrs. Nguyen enthused, with a beaming smile. "You must be very proud of them. I would be so happy to have sons just like them."

The boys, who had turned beet red, were barely able to look up from their toes long enough to say hello to Mrs. Nguyen and shake her proffered hand. They scooted out to the truck for their next load, and Mrs. Nguyen went on into the kitchen. "Why don't I unpack and put away your dishes while you and the boys are doing the heavy work?" she said. Before I could respond, she was on her way out the front door, only to return moments later with a step-stool, go to the kitchen, and set about her self-appointed task.

The boys and I continued bringing in the beds, bedding, and desks. On one pass through, I looked into the kitchen and saw Mrs. Nguyen industriously washing the plates and glasses. "Why are you doing that?" I asked. "All the kitchenware was clean when it was packed."

"You had them wrapped in newspaper," she said, looking at me like I was the village idiot. "They need to have the greasy ink residue washed off before you can use them."

All I could say was, "Oh." They hadn't taught that in any of the classes I took.

We got all the beds and mattresses in, and got my room set up. While the boys began reassembling their bunk beds, I went to the kitchen to check up on Mrs. Nguyen. She was perched on tiptoe on her step-stool, stretching to put a wine glass on a top shelf. Just as I walked behind her, she let out a squeak and toppled backward--directly into my arms. My nostrils were suddenly filled with a delicate aroma of sweet spices, cinnamon and ginger and something exotic I couldn't identify. I caught her and lowered her to the floor, not in any hurry to release her from what was, for all intents and purposes, a hug. She didn't hurry to escape, either. "Ooooh," she said, looking up and back over her shoulder at me. "It sure was lucky that you were there to catch me." I let her go, resisting an urge to kiss the top of her head.

After the last box was off the truck and the final arrangements inside were being made, I called and ordered pizza, surprised that Mrs. Nguyen had accepted my offer to join us. I was even more surprised that she was able to achieve a rapport with the boys with seemingly little effort. It wasn't long before they were happily chatting with her as if she were an old friend.

When we'd finished the pizza, I thanked Mrs. Nguyen for her help, delivered the boys back to their mother's house, returned the truck, and drove my car back to my new digs. Utterly exhausted, I took a shower and hit the sack.

When I awoke the next morning, sore all over from my lifting and toting, I heard silence. Gone were the sounds of a hundred doors slamming and heels clicking as my nearest neighbors began their days, gone were the sounds of traffic from North First Street and the bells and horns of the light rail trains, gone was the roar of jet airplanes climbing away from the San Jose airport. It was delightfully quiet. I did not miss Vida Libre in the slightest.

I spent the better part of a week just puttering, finishing unpacking boxes of linens and books, and assembling bookcases and getting everything in order. For my part, the new year went by unnoticed; just another day. After I got settled, I felt that I had to establish some sort of routine for myself. The activities of selling the old car and buying the new, finding a new home, Christmas, and moving had occupied my attention after getting laid off, but now I had, quite literally, nothing to do. Between my severance package, a modest gain on the car exchange, unemployment, and savings, I figured that I could survive about a year of unemployment. I didn't have any idea what I might do if I found myself wholly indigent. Never in my life had I considered such a situation even to be possible, but all of a sudden I could see faint images of myself standing on the traffic island at a freeway entrance, holding a clumsily lettered cardboard sign reading "Homeless. Please help." I needed the routine to keep myself from dwelling on that image.

And so I established my schedule: first thing in the morning, I scoured the employment boards and sent out resumes wherever possible, no matter how unlikely the prospect of actually being hired might be; weekends, I scoured the newspaper want ads, looking not just in my field but in other areas as well, just in case there might be something I was qualified to do. When I'd finished my "job search," I checked my email. I was keeping in touch with several of my unemployed coworkers, my halfhearted attempt at networking; the boys and I often exchanged brief notes; Jeannine and I wrote to each other sporadically, primarily just news, such as it was. After email, I checked MSNBC for a quick look at what might be going on in the world, and then played a bit with a couple of Yahoo! Groups and newsgroups. With any luck at all, that kept me busy until noon or so. I then took my walk and did my calisthenics, and followed that with a light lunch. Then I read. Although my practice for years had been to buy paperbacks whenever one caught my eye, I got a library card as a cost-saving measure and made weekly trips to the library instead. I also found lots of on-line magazines, and read them, too. For some reason, I particularly enjoyed reading the amateur fiction.

It was raining absolute cats and dogs when I took Mrs. Nguyen my check for the February rent. She greeted me warmly. "Oh, hello, Mr. Wynn," she said with a smile. I handed her the check. "Thank you. Would you like to come in and have a cup of coffee?"

I couldn't think of anything I'd like to do more. I followed Mrs. Nguyen to the kitchen, where she filled two generous mugs. Today, her hair was loose down her back. She was wearing a shapeless sweatshirt, sweatpants that hugged every contour of her hips and thighs, and a pair of fuzzy slippers. "Delightful weather we're having today, don't you think?" she said.

Totally nonplused, I just looked at her, not having any idea how to respond.

"Gotcha!" she said, wrinkling her nose. Besides being beautiful, she was delightfully cute. "C'mon, let's go to the living room where it's more comfortable."

My eyes were immediately drawn to a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, which wasn't visible from the kitchen. On it were standard works of English literature, texts about literature and writing, and a large collection of both hardcover and paperback contemporary novels.

"Ah," she said, "you are surprised I speak your ranguage. But I was educated at San Jose State, not UCRA."

This time, I nearly goggled, and Mrs. Nguyen broke into laughter. "C'mon, Mr. Wynn, lighten up. You really have to learn to relax a little."

Mrs. Nguyen sat down on the sofa, kicked off her slippers, and folded her feet under her. I took a chair facing her. "I'm sorry," I sighed. "I guess my social skills aren't very good, especially when talking to a beautiful woman, and even more especially when that beautiful woman happens to be my landlady. I don't want to say something that's going to put me out on the street."

"Well, then," she said softly, "why don't you consider me to be your neighbor, or perhaps even your housemate. We are, after all, sharing a common roof. Why are you so ill at ease talking to a woman?"

"I guess the easiest answer is that I'm out of practice." I ended a short version of my married life and divorce by saying, "My experience with women as a divorcé is limited to one neighbor at Vida Libre. Things were different twenty years ago, and I haven't tried to catch up."