Merriton

“God Dammit, Kevin! Open this door!” Randy pounded on Kevin’s door. He could hear movement within the apartment, but Kevin wouldn’t come to the door. “I’m going to get your landlord to open it!” Sierra called, “Please, Kevin! Open the door or Randy will make me pretend we’re serving you with a warrant.” They heard the lock click, but Kevin didn’t open the door. Randy looked at Sierra, turned the door handle and they both walked in.

Kevin’s belongings were neatly packed into boxes. They were stacked in a pile three wide, four deep and three high. Randy immediately calculated: thirty-six boxes plus one. Kevin was heading back to sit on a box by the window. “I got your voice mails and emails and SMS. You’re early.”

Randy started talking. “We read the Valleywag article and immediately hopped on a plane back here.” Kevin nodded. “Six hours.” The room was quiet. Sierra looked at all the boxes. “Did you KNOW they were going to fire you?” She pointed at his belongings packed up. Kevin looked at his neat handwriting on the brown cardboard. “No. I was moving to a bigger place. I had no freakin’ idea.”

Randy pulled out his Treo and started fiddling with the buttons. Kevin and Sierra watched him as he silently touched a couple of things on his screen and then waited. He touched the screen again and brought the phone up to his face. “Yes, I need to rent a U-Haul… One way… No, it’s pretty far away, do you have anything? Can you hold it for me? I’ll be there within the hour.” Randy turned to Kevin. “You’re moving to Merriton.”

Sierra and Kevin simultaneously questioned, “What?” Kevin started explaining how he had signed a lease and he had to stay in San Francisco to get a new job, but Randy just held up his hand. “Listen, Kevin. What they did to you was shitty. It’s even shittier that they announced it the way they did using Valleywag like that. I’m sure right now that the first thing you want to do right now is to prove to everybody here that you are better than that. You want to prove that you’re smart and good and that Zerbitz made a mistake in firing you. That’s the worst thing you could do right now and I’m not going to let you do it. You’re coming to Merriton.”

Kevin started to protest again, but Randy silenced him, “Don’t you remember what you told me about Merriton? About how it was the best thing for me and that it was going to heal me and I was going to come back better than ever? Don’t you remember what you said?”

Kevin nodded. Randy questioned, “Tell me. What did you say?” Kevin repeated in a singsong voice that revealed that he didn’t believe he meant a word of it, “Mt. Zen is gonna heal you. All you do is code there. You’ll come back with something great to sell.” He drew out the word sell to last three seconds. Randy screamed at him, “No! That’s NOT what you said! You said that my moving to Merriton was great because you’re going to come every weekend and go skiing!” Randy smacked the wall several times with his hands. The vibration from his wall-smack caused the skis to loose balance and fall to the ground in a noisy clatter.

Sierra and Kevin were silent at Randy’s anger. Kevin looked at his skis, splayed all over the floor. It was quiet and uncomfortable. Randy felt embarrassed that he had lost his temper. Sierra quietly asked Kevin, “Give me the number of the new place and I’ll get you out of your lease.” Kevin stood up and handed Sierra a pile of papers and sat on his box again, directing his stare at the skis. Sierra stepped out of Kevin’s small, but empty apartment.

“Dude, where’s your furniture?” Randy didn’t expect to find Kevin’s apartment so empty and forlorn. He expected Kevin to be watching movie after movie on his television and eating ice cream. Far too much ice cream for Kevin’s small form to handle without weight gain. Instead, Kevin looked almost skeletal. Kevin continued to stare at the skis. “I sold it.”

Randy looked around. “Even the hand chair?” Kevin followed his gaze. “Yeah, even the hand chair. With this new place, I was going to be all legitimate and tasteful and stuff. I had it all picked out and everything. Lucky thing I didn’t buy it yet. Looks like I’m going to have to survive on my IKEA money for a while.”

Sierra walked back into the apartment. “Okay, I got you out of your lease, but I need to write up some paperwork for both of you to sign. Is your computer packed?” Kevin lead her to his laptop sitting on the kitchen counter. The article from Valleywag was still on the screen. She closed the window and opened Word. “We need to go to a copy shop to print this up and then I’ll take you over to the apartment. Randy, I’ll drop you off at the U-Haul place and you can pick up the truck.” She added below her breath, “Don’t worry, Kevin. They’ll go back to picking on Jason Calacanis soon enough.”

Even though it had been Randy’s decision to move Kevin to Merriton, Sierra took care of the details. Randy and Kevin followed her orders without argument and soon the three of them were once again in a U-Haul, on a twelve-hour trip away from San Francisco.