Tomorrow we leave.
“I wish we hadn’t come.”
“Why is that?”
“Because this place has been every thing I thought it would be but better and I don’t want to go back to nine to five and I don’t want to have to deal with laundry and grocery shopping and office bullshit politics being a normal person again. I have a proposal due in three weeks and I haven’t even really started it. I was supposed to be working on it while I was here. Supposed to be emailing the team with ideas. That was the only way I could get Hopkins to sign off on my vacation. I sent him like one half-assed idea the second day and then I sort of gave up, gave into this place.”
“Yes, it was a bit of a distraction.”
“ It’s more than that…I want to live here.”
“Woah, “ I hear myself saying, “I get what you mean. I mean, this place is incredible, but we can’t just move here. We’re not nineteen anymore. I have a job. YOU have a great job. Both of them are back home.”
“Don’t you want to write your books?”
“Of course I do.”
“Write them down here. Get a job down here and write. You really want to grow old in some HOA- controlled bedroom community in freaking Nebraska, re-cycling the same “Intro to Novel Writing” class over and over until you retire.”
“Tenure and full benefits,” I remind her.
She shrugs and turns back to her lunch, but I know from experience that this conversation isn’t over with.
Our dinner in The Garden District feels more like a funeral reception than the highlight of the week it was supposed to be.
We had managed to snag a reservation at Commander’s Palace and they’d sat us by the west facing window, so that we overlook the cemetery across the street.
Past that we can see the apartment building where F Scott Fitzgerald supposedly wrote his first novel.
Remembering that bit of trivia isn’t helping us feel any better about having to leave in the morning.
The taxi ride to the airport is much less interesting than the ride had been driving in. I imagine that is pretty much the case for most vacations.
The plane is crowded and by the time we land in Dallas for the connecting flight, I have a cramp in my leg from being jammed in my seat.
A week later, in the outer sleeve of Ruth’s suitcase, I find a real estate brochure and glance through it.
It’s a snow day so I’m at home, puttering around and doing laundry.
On a whim, I sit at the computer and look up house prices in our area.
The difference would pay for moving expenses.
Fortune favours the brave, I tell myself.