Double Rent

"Do you remember when we used to live in this city?"

"Of course, I miss that time and the cat we adopted, who then ate our internet cable."

"Yes, I still can't believe she did that. We were without internet for a whole week. I miss that time too."

Now Lisa and I were back in the city, visiting a friend. It was dark outside, close to midnight. We were just passing over a bridge where the lights were glowing, making the street so yellow and timeless, and at the same time making you feel like the present is all that matters. Well, that should be the feeling when you are not the one driving, but I had only got my driving licence a month ago, and Lisa knew all the stories about my driving lessons, so it's safe to say she probably did not want to be in this car with me right now. She doesn't have a driving licence, so she had no other options. Neither did I, but I wasn't going to tell her that.

We were just finishing crossing the bridge, and we both knew exactly where we were.

"Lisa, look at the apartment. The lights are on. I wonder who is living there now. Do you think they are uni students, like we were, or maybe a couple? Maybe a family?"

"Who knows, but I would like to find out. I hope it is someone who drives the neighbour crazy, as she did with us."

She used to knock on our door, claiming our water was flooding her ceiling, which was not true. We checked and tried to help her, but she didn't seem to understand anything we did, and eventually we stopped trying to explain. At least when we had friends over, they would knock on her door by mistake instead of ours, which we quietly considered a victory.

"So would you like to find out who is living in the apartment now?"

"What do you mean? We have to get to Amalia."

"I know, but we have time, plus it is three more hours until we get to her place, a break will help. Maybe whoever is living there will come out of the building, and we will see."

"You and your ideas. It is midnight. Why would they come out? I am surprised they are not sleeping." But I said yes anyway.

"Ok, Anda, park the car. We grab a coffee and wait on the other side of the street, and see if someone comes out of the building."

It was close to midnight, and she wanted a coffee. Not that I was surprised, it was very normal for us.

"There is like zero chance of that happening. The people living there now are not just going to decide to come out in the middle of the night."

"We can try anyway. It will be nice."

"Anda, park the car."

"I will try my best to park the car."

And somehow I managed. We walked to the nearest gas station, the only thing open at that hour, got a coffee each and stood on the other side of the street, looking up at the building.

"We should get a wine, as we used to, and play Ligretto."

"Lisa, I am driving."

"I know, I was just saying. It would have been nice to have Ligretto with us at least."

"To play here? On the street?"

"Yes, why not?"

We were sitting there, and after five minutes, they turned the lights off. Maybe they knew someone was watching them, or of course, it was midnight, and they had to sleep. Who knows, maybe they had just finished a movie and gone to bed, as tomorrow they had school or work. We used to do that so many times. Once we decided to watch Casa de Papel and lost track of everything, and by the time we noticed, it was five in the morning and the sun was already coming up. We went out on the balcony, decided we needed to eat first and then went to sleep. Sometimes the nights would disappear entirely like that, swallowed up by conversations that went from philosophy to complete nonsense, until one of us would notice the time and remember we had classes in a few hours.

"That was fast. We can go now."

"Yes, at least we got a coffee."

"A coffee we did not need. Let's go."

But how did we end up here? To make sense of any of this, we need to go back to where it all began, because this story did not start with a coffee neither of us needed. I was finishing my last year of university studying computer science, and Lisa was finishing her master's in arts. We were living in a place we were shortly going to be kicked out of because they had decided to close it for the summer, and as we were both finishing our studies and wanted to remain in the city, it made sense to find a place and move in together.

We started looking and found a place we liked. The good thing was that it was really close to where we had been living before, so moving in should have been relatively easy.

It was moving day. We met the landlord, he showed us the apartment, then sat down on the couch and started speaking on the phone. No idea who he was talking to, but he seemed angry and was occasionally yelling, which, in my head, was not the best way to make someone feel welcome. We exchanged a look that said everything and started carrying the bags and boxes up, thinking that maybe in the meantime, he would leave.

There was no lift, only stairs. We had a lot of boxes, and the landlord showed no intention of helping with either, and by the time he finally finished his call, we were thinking, well, surely he will leave now; he had shown us the apartment, what else could he possibly need. We waited to see if he would say something. He did not, just sat there and watched us carry everything up. Maybe he was tired, but pardon me, he could have rested somewhere else.

I was going down the stairs to grab the last box when I passed Lisa on her way up.

"Is he still here?"

"Yes," I said, genuinely confused.

"What does he want? He already gave us the keys, showed us the apartment, we discussed the deposit and everything."

"I have no idea."

When we finally got everything up, Lisa turned to him, very polite on the outside, but I knew that look; she was bursting inside, and she gathered every bit of patience she had and said:

"Is there anything we need to do?"

He looked around the room. Slowly, genuinely considering it. I hoped he was asking himself why he was still there.

"Everything ok," he said.

And then he left.

"That was strange."

But that was it. That was our life now for the next two years. Lisa turned that apartment into an art studio, paintings covering every wall. We also had a corner where I set up an office, we had bikes, but that is a story for another time, and later a cat and a fish. It was a small place, but full of life, laughter, games, tears and core memories.

"Lisa, let's go back to the car. By the time we reach Amalia, it will be morning."

"If we make any more stops, yes. Amalia will understand. We can say it was traffic."

"Yeah, she will totally believe there was traffic in the middle of the night."

"We should go past the universities. We can stay in the car, you do not need to park again."

"It is on our way anyway, so let's do it."

"It will be like when we did Night of Museums and walked the entire night from one museum to another because it was free entrance, even though it was raining so hard. This time we just drive past, from the apartment to your university, my university."

"To your university, where you played so many pranks on your colleagues. Let's go."

We went that way and said nothing for a while, until I broke the silence.

"Do you remember the last day we moved out of the apartment, and how we both just left for different countries after that? Do you still enjoy your life there?"

"Yes, I love it. You?"

"Yes, but the day we moved out, though. The rent."

We both started laughing.

We were both moving out at the same time, which sounds like it was planned but was genuinely just coincidence, and there was so much to sort, the bags, the boxes, the bikes, the paintings, everything that two years of a shared life becomes when you have to carry it somewhere else, and we did all of it, but the last thing was the rent.

Now, here is the thing about both of us. We are the kind of people who always do the right thing, at least that is what we thought. For two years, it had worked perfectly: every month, we talked about the rent, split it, and sorted it out together, but for the last payment, something shifted. Neither of us mentioned it, and so both of us, separately and quietly, without telling the other, did exactly what we always did.

I went to the landlord and paid the rent for both of us. He took it and said nothing, and then Lisa went and paid the full rent too, without saying anything to me, and the landlord took it both times like it was completely normal, which tells you everything you need to know about him. While we are at it, neither of us got the deposit back, because the landlord said we had broken the glass stove and the deposit needed to cover it, which was in fact true. The cat had knocked a glass of small stones off the shelf directly above the stove, and the fall was enough to crack it, but since we were not allowed to have a cat we said nothing about how it happened.

Two months passed the way they do when life quietly fills itself up without asking permission. We stayed in touch when we could, messages and sometimes calls, enough to know the other one was still there, until one day we decided it was time for a proper call, jumping between topics the way you do when you finally have time, talking about the accommodation in the new countries, how the moving went, everything, and then somehow the rent came up.

"Not sure if I told you, but I paid the last rent before I left."

I went quiet.

"What do you mean you paid the last rent?"

"I met with the landlord and paid the rent."

"What? I did the same thing. I met with the landlord and paid too."

"Really? How did we not talk about this? So that means he took the rent twice."

"That is so our landlord."

"I am glad he is not my landlord anymore. Now I have another one, somehow even crazier."

"Well, that is life."

"No, I am going to leave him a bad review." I went to his page that same evening and left one. His page was already full of them. I added one more.

We were still laughing about it now, many years later, still in the car, still on our way to Amalia, the city behind us and the night ahead.

"The people who have to deal with him now are going to need good luck."

"Good memories though."

I tightened my grip on the wheel. "Tell me, how is your life now? How are your kids, Ana and Darin?"

She smiled softly, as if the question itself was too big for a simple answer.

"Where do I even start?"

"From the beginning. We have two hours until Amalia."