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Sara
I will not panic.I am healthy and safe and comfortable.
For now.
I sip my steaming tea and close my eyes, taking an enormous inhale, holding it, and then slowly and steadily releasing it. It’s not working super well because there’s still a moderate buzz of anxiety in my head.
I pick up my phone and open the screen to the photos of my new apartment I had taken less than half an hour ago. With each swipe, I lose my cool even more.
Mushrooms growing out of the drywall. Swipe. A bathroom that’s not sparkling white like the listing photo but is, instead, grimy and old. Swipe. The inside of the filthy refrigerator.
I can’t swipe anymore. I think a good, solid panicking is in order.
Sara
I HAVE A FUNGUS EMERGENCY.
Actually, it’s an entire apartment emergency!!!! HELP!
My messages shoot off via WhatsApp to my three best friends: Tessa, Emma, and Jade. The four of us moved to Europe for a year of chasing our dreams and, in my case, staying close to my daughter while she studies abroad.
Unfortunately, that year is not starting well. I helped my daughter, Zoe, move into her apartment in Munich, which was even worse than when I dropped her off at college at the start of her freshman year. She’s the one who suggested we both follow my best friends to Europe, and I’m so proud of her for taking a huge leap. While Zoe was excited, she was also nervous and clingy, which made it hard to say goodbye.
Thank god I flew to Paris for a weekend with my best friends after that. It was two days full of French pastries, dancing in nightclubs, and walking past amazing landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and the Seine River. We’re going to meet up every month for a weekend in a new city.
Then I went back to Munich, checked in on Zoe one more time, and was relieved to find her happy and settled in.
Things aren’t looking so great now. The cute little house that I rented in Baden-Baden, a German spa town, is not living up to its promises.
Tessa
I’m here! What’s your emergency?
Relief washes over me, and I’m so glad I have someone to talk to. Jade is at work in her new office in Madrid, and Emma, who’s living with Jade for a month, is out sightseeing. Tessa, on the other hand, is in Tavira, a coastal town in The Algarve of Portugal that’s popular with tourists and expats. She’s just moved into her new apartment too, but she works remotely, so I had hoped that she would be free to talk.
I respond with pictures that are worth a million words. When the three dots pop up, telling me Tessa is typing a response, I click the video icon and put my headphones on.
She answers right away, her face filling the screen as she puts her earbuds in. Tessa’s forty-two, one year younger than me, but it’s hard to tell because her golden hair hides her gray ones, and her heart-shaped face and fair skin are smooth and perfectly made up. She’s pulled her hair back to reveal simple diamond earrings and her earbuds in place.
“Hey,” Tessa says and then frowns at me. “Where are you?”
“I’m at a café,” I say and sniff. Just the sight of Tessa’s familiar face is making me well up. I know I’m having a crappy day when even seeing a friend digitally is emotionally triggering. I focus on the real problem: where am I going to live? “My apartment is horrible. Horrible, Tessa! There’s a huge water stain on the ceiling, and the bedrooms are much smaller than I thought. And the mushrooms! Tessa! I can’t live with mushrooms in my bathroom. I like to eat them, not live with them!”
“What happened to the apartment you were going to rent?”
“Thatwasthe apartment. Or, at least, I’m pretty sure it is. It’s definitely the same outside picture on the listing, and I spent a good fifteen minutes trying to compare the interior photos to reality and then another ten minutes arguing with the landlord, who conveniently doesn’t speak English. It’s much harder to argue in German when you don’t know German.” I highly suspect that my landlord does speak English, and he’s just being horrible.
Behind Tessa, I can see the trappings of her new apartment, which we got a video tour of a couple nights ago. I hear something in the background, and Tessa moves. A door opens, and another voice joins her.
“Hey, Sara, Luc’s here,” Tessa says. She turns to Luc, and I can see the edge of his face and his ruffled brown hair. To Luc, she says, “Sara’s having a crisis.”
Luc and Tessa met last weekend in Paris and hit it off. Technically, he’s her fake fiancé, but they’re so cute together, and now he’s visiting her in Portugal, so we have our suspicions that things aren’t as fake as Tessa claims. He’s white, French, and too charming for his own good.
While Tessa and Luc move around her apartment—it looks like Luc brought groceries—I discreetly blow my nose with the tissue I stuffed in my pocket earlier. “Am I interrupting your date?” I ask.
Tessa looks at him, and then Luc looks back at me sympathetically. “Put her on speaker phone,” he suggests.
