My Dog is Chelsea

One of the debacles you must face when you move across country in a car the size of a thumbtack is buying a bed when you arrive. Obviously, since your car is actually smaller than the smallest U-Haul trailer, and they won’t rent one to you anyway because your soft-top roof is an insurance liability, lugging a giant rectangular piece of foam and coils along I-80 doesn’t really work. So, upon arriving in the City Different (ugh, I hate that moniker), I set to work on buying a mattress.

The cheapest mattress I could find outside of the Goodwill (I have something against used mattresses — i.e. I don’t use them) was at the Denver Mattress Company. It was soft and plush and perfect — save for the $50 delivery fee. No way am I paying a quarter of what I paid for the actual bed to have it transported two miles down the road and into my room.

“But we’ll remove your old mattress,” the saleswoman explained.

“I don’t have an old mattress,” I said. “Can I put it on my car and take it home myself?”

“Sure, what kind of car do you drive?” she asked.

“A Geo Tracker. With a soft top.”

“Um, I don’t think so,” she said.

This is discrimination! I mean, I realize that my car is worth less than the mattress, but come on! It’s only two miles! “Well, my roommate has a Subaru — she’s out of town right now, but she’ll be back next week — if I borrow her car, can I pick up the mattress then?”

“A Subaru? Sure! No problem. We’ll even strap it on for you. And maybe — who knows — you’ll meet someone with a pickup truck before then.”

Admittedly, that was a sort of weird thing for her to say, but it is true that a lot of people around here drive pickup trucks. I signed the bill, shook her hand, and headed out to my twice-rejected car.

That was a few days ago, and I’m still sleeping on the floor. Specifically, on a pile of dog-fur-covered sheets that Chelsea has deemed softer than her own pillow. Since I live in an apartment complex with very thin walls and floors, I get to hear everything going on around me. I wake up with my head on the floor to the sound of my downstairs neighbors bickering over their bowls of cereal (I can actually hear the snap, crackle, and pop). Additionally, it is rather uncomfortable sleeping on the floor, and I have on more than one occasion considered Chelsea’s bed as an option. My roommate doesn’t come home until Wednesday, and even when she does, carrying a heavy mattress up a flight a stairs even between the two of us will be rather difficult. So from the standpoint of the carpet, Wednesday seems awfully far away.

The solution, I fear, is to pay the $50 and have it delivered — or to meet someone with a pickup truck. Coincidentally, just yesterday, at a rest stop a few miles south of Santa Fe off of I-25, I met a man with a pickup truck.

His name was Felix, he hailed from Albuquerque. He was at least 50 years old. He “ran” a construction company, he explained to me, but then later told me a very long story about how the boss’ sons engage in time theft.

“They come in at 10 and leave at 3 and say they’ve been there for their 8 hours. Well, I don’t think so, I tell them, I was there when you left! So I change their hours and they get pissed at me, you know, when they get their paychecks,” said Felix. “You know?”

I always seem to get suckered into conversations with old men who talk too much.

“Yeah, that sucks,” I said.

“So did you hear about the fires in Los Alamos about two years ago?”

I hadn’t, but I quickly learned all about them. I also learned that Felix was en route to some dirt road halfway between Albuquerque and Los Alamos where he was going to meet a guy to “pick up some money for a job I did.”

Anyway, while half-listening to the twenty minutes worth of lecturing, I started to eye his pickup truck. Hmm, I thought to myself, he talks a lot but he seems harmless. Maybe he’d like to help me with my mattress?

I was just working out how I would ask him when he asked me if I was married. Nevermind, I thought, the mattress can wait.

“I’m not married,” I replied (wrong answer, by the way, if you ever find yourself in this situation. In fact, I might start wearing a ring on my left hand to protect against such instances — not that a ring is a deterrent for many old, crazy blabbermouths).

“Oh, well, maybe we could get lunch sometime, I’m in Santa Fe a lot,” he said. “Maybe you could give me your number.”

Sheesh. “Um, I don’t know,” I hesitated.

“It’s just lunch!” he protested.

Yeah, a lunch full of boring stories and no plush mattress at the end. At least, a mattress was not involved in my envisionment of the meal. “Maybe if we run into each other again, we can have lunch,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “When we run into each other again!”

I said goodbye and returned to my Geo Tracker. When I got home, I found Chelsea curled up in a ball on my makeshift bed, next to a muddy paw print on my pillow.

It might just be time to suck it up and pay the $50.