Integrity: Chapter 6
Though we spent a lot of nights together from that point on, we lived separately for most of the summer. I continued to think about how to make our lives together. Cindi had still not chosen a major, though she would have to give it more thought before the fall, since many departments required a decision by the beginning of the junior year. But the fact remained that I was not sure what she would do after she finished, or whether she would contribute much to our income. I had to move forward without assuming she would.
So I had a talk with my employers, the apartment owners. Again, honesty paid off. You see, I told them I might have to seek other employment soon. I wanted to give them ample opportunity to find a replacement. Instead, they had an offer for me. They had an apartment complex nearer Cindi’s campus.
While it was largely rented out to students, there was a more expensive group of apartments in the complex set apart from the cheaper student apartments. In short, they were dissatisfied with the job that the manager was doing there, and were ready to let him go. In contrast, they were very pleased with how I had been running things, and they were willing to make me a nice deal in order to keep me.
The current manager of that complex was given one of the student apartments to live in. The owners offered me one of the better apartments, plus a covered parking space, if I would agree to manage both complexes. The pay they offered was almost three times what I made managing just the one complex in the center of town. It still wasn’t a fortune by anyone’s standards, but it was a start.
It didn’t take long to move my things into the new apartment, a two-bedroom suite with almost twice the square footage of my other place, with much nicer carpet, bigger windows, and a cleaner kitchen. It was a place good enough to share, and I was soon sharing it. Cindi moved in, and, when she wasn’t too busy with her studies, actually helped me with my management duties. It was wonderful, as always, having her company.
The second bedroom was her study room. We slept together every night, and lived, in my mind, like married people. To others, I’m sure, we appeared to be the normal cohabitating couple, but it’s often hard to tell the difference these days. We shared our love in every way now; our sexuality was a natural extension of the love and friendship we’d developed together, and it was an enormous relief to share it.
The covered parking spot went to Cindi’s car. Managing the complex nearer to Memorial Park, I hadn’t needed one, and had found it best to do without. Now, when going back to do work on that complex, I usually did so when Cindi was free and could drive me there. If not, I could make the trip in a half hour, and was used to trips twice that long. Life has a slower pace when you don’t have a car, and, for years, that had suited me just fine.
Now, however, it was a little more difficult to maintain that slow lifestyle. I was paid three times as much for a good reason. There was almost three times as much work to do, and half-hour bike trips really cut into my schedule. It was good that she could reduce my workload a little, both by driving me back and forth and by helping when she had time.
We shared a lot. I would read her textbooks while she studied other subjects. I read most of them, in subjects including economics, literature, psychology, and sociology. Sometimes, if I was current with her reading, I’d help her think about her assignments, comment on her papers, and, when I could, give pointers when she was stuck. But, by and large, she did her own work, and I couldn’t help her with her French at all. I never really aspired to learn a foreign language.
We were a team. Our job was to make a life together, and we were off to a very good start. I would have gladly done all the work just to have her around, but she was honorable, and contributed materially to our livelihood by helping with my work. We had come together through mutual respect of common values, and those same values kept us strong. It really seemed perfect at the time.
Our only real time apart was when she was in classes or study groups. And, if she needed to unwind with her fellow students after a long, hard week, I didn’t begrudge her that. She always called if she was going to be late, and never drove home impaired. In general, she was never more than 15-20 minutes’ bike ride away, and I could drive home with my bike in the back of her car.
I only did that once or twice before renewing my driver’s license. Fortunately, I never got into trouble. I don’t like breaking laws, but I did it only when it was clearly the lesser of two evils. In my years of getting around on my bike, I had let my driver’s license expire. But, since I hadn’t forgotten how to drive, it was a simple matter to get it restored, and it made life easier.
