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he said in his ad it would only take one. I figured out in about 20 minutes I was in way over my head, but I truly didn’t understand how deeply in trouble I was until the end of day one when I looked out on his front lawn and saw all the crap I had piled out there under the idea I would figure out the hauling it away part later. BIG MISTAKE. I was out there until four in the morning piling it all in various loads in the trailer I borrowed from my uncle to drag behind my car. Paul kept telling me it was fine and that I could just do it the next day, but I was trying to be professional and stuff.
Starting the next day Paul was almost always outside monitoring that part of the operation, somewhat helpfully suggesting it was time I fill up the trailer and get some stuff out of there. “’Bout a full load, I think,” he would bellow above the swirling jets of luxuriousness. I don’t think he was even looking my direction when he made his declarations, but it was hard to know for sure since he also wore sunglasses 98 percent of the time – even inside the house. We slowly but surely developed a rhythm to our relationship, and at the same time I really started to figure out what I was doing. By the end of the second week I had the system I still use today in place right down to strategically packing the trailer according to each item’s final destination.
Near the end of the job, when I had what I estimated was about two days’ work left but in reality was another two weeks, I finally felt comfortable enough with Paul to ask why exactly he was relying on someone else to do this work. I never saw him leave his house. The only people who ever visited were the mailman and the guy who delivered Paul’s groceries (also arranged via online ad). I never heard the phone ring. He never seemed to talk about anyone who was alive. He clearly had the free time. Wouldn’t it have been far easier to do it all himself, saving him money and also giving him something to do? He laughed when I put the question to him like that.
“Little lady, let me tell you something about life,” he said as he turned down the hot tub jets so I could hear him. “We humans have different stages we go through. Some are happy. Some sad. Some full of people and