Chapter 13: The Banks of the Ohio

We had five weeks, between that meeting in Des Moines and the date when I would have to renew the lease on the apartment in Kansas City. In the interim, the lease in Des Moines would expire and I would have to move somewhere. Doc Graham had explained that I had two weeks to decide on the job offers. In theory, I had my old job to go back to at the Star, but there was very little appeal for me in that.

The time was filled with a lot of research by both of us, as we sought to learn more about the two places. We were concerned about cold winters in Minnesota, something we didn't look forward to, not that Kansas City was exactly balmy during the winter months. Manketo was also smaller than Ashland, but it was relatively close to Minneapolis/St. Paul, some fifty miles or so to the northeast. Ashland, on the other hand, was further away from the hearest big cities, but the big cities included Lexington, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio, with Indianapolis and Pittsburgh just a bit further away. Ashland's location on the Ohio River, with West Virginia and Ohio just across the border, made it seem more centrally located too.

The deciding factor in the end was trivial perhaps, but neither of us had ever seen the ocean, and we would be within a few hundred miles of it in Ashland. We could take the highway west to Virginia Beach and Kitty Hawk or head southeast to Charleston or Myrtle Beach. Even Savannah, Georgia if we wanted.

Ashland, Kentucky it would be. I called John Stevens that night to tell him I was accepting the position.

"Ceferino, when we hire a manager, we give them a relocation allowance and housing assistance. Were you thinking of renting or buying?"

"Call me Cef," I said automatically. "I don't think I'm in any position to be buying, and with the wheelchair, I'm sure my options will be limited, so I'll appreciate any assistance I can get."

"Of course, I'd forgotten about the chair."

I appreciated the indirect compliment, and was even more appreciative of the housing assistance when I found out it included a rent subsidy for the first year. If I was able to take the time to find the right apartment at the right price, I might even manage to live literally rent-free for the coming year in Ashland. The moving assistance was less important, to me at least. I didn't have all that much I would care to take. The apartment in Kansas City came furnished, so I wouldn't be taking any of it with me. The big question was Becka, and the bigger question was when she would make the move. I would have to start the new job well before any date she and her mother would have picked for a wedding.

The five weeks became four, then three, and then I was on the road. Becka had answered the questions about when she would join me by announcing to her parents that she would not wait until the wedding to move to Ashland.

"I love Spider and he loves me," she told them over dinner in the middle of week three. "We will be married, and we will spend the rest of our lives together. I intend that the rest of our lives starts the day we move to Ashland."

She stared at her parents for a moment before adding, "Together."

Only the absolute guarantee that we would still be married in Kansas City kept their objections from being stronger than they were. Mrs. Anderra was a romantic at heart, I knew that already from the little time we'd spent together. She wanted to be talked into it. Mr. Anderra was a little harder. Becka was his little girl, and he wasn't too sure he was ready to give her up, whether it was now or later. In the end the sure knowledge that Becka would move with me with or without his approval brought him around.

We flew to Ashland two weeks in advance of my starting date and began apartment hunting. We were assigned an assistant, Greg, from a local realty office who looked at the paperwork from the company and told us that we needed to expand our hunt to include houses as well as apartments.

"In this market, you could afford a pretty nice home," Greg, told us.

"I would really prefer something within walking distance of the offices," I answered. "The wheelchair makes some options unavailable, and others less than attractive."

"Well then we'll concentrate on the upper end of the apartment market," he said thoughtfully. "That might mean something quite a bit larger than you were thinking."

"Push comes to shove, distance to work is the primary factor," Becka added. "We can overcome anything else.

"Too big might be an issue, but too small shouldn't be, not at the price range you'll be able to afford." Greg reassured us.

What it got us, after only three days of looking, was a loft a block and a half away on Winchester Avenue. It was the top floor of a partially renovated five story warehouse that had been gutted by a fire three years earlier. A developer was slowly renovating it from the top down. The loft space we rented took up almost a third of the top floor and included a very cool rooftop garden and patio that looked to be very nice in those hot, muggy Kentucky summers along the Ohio.

The walls were sandblasted and varnished brick, and the windows were floor-to-ceiling, eighteen feet high. There was a lot of glass. The space itself was almost completely wide open, except for the master bedroom section which included a very large bath, and a smaller but still spacious guest bathroom near the door. Access was via elevator, a large, somewhat bulky freight elevator that was a remnant of the warehouse days. Hell, it was big enough that I could've ridden in it wearing my Iron Man suit.