Milo Simpson ’20
Sesquicentennial Teddy Rooke has A Problem. It’s a tiny little thing, he swears, and no harm’ll come of it. (His head buzzes with an endless procession of one-five-zero is divisible by one two three five six ten—it’s normal. It’s all quite routine.) There’s nothing to be done, so why waste effort trying to change things? They’re just numbers, and Teddy likes numbers, those ones especially. He has community college to attend (and a major to actually decide on), and a job to pay for the rent and schooling. He doesn’t have time to worry about trivial things like numbers. Not a big deal. The apartment he’s looking at near campus has two bedrooms and a living room–kitchenette combo immediately upon entry through the front door. Its windows look out on an intersection and a brick wall on either side of the building, which is all right, Teddy supposes. The view isn’t ideal, but the kitchen comes furnished with a modest set of appliances, which are fairly nice and recent to boot. The lowest the landlord is willing to go for rent, however, is a full fifteen hundred dollars a month. As nice as that number is—divisible by one-fivezero—that’s too much for Teddy to afford by himself. His brother’s a freshly promoted detective making a full sixty grand yearly, and he lives in his partner’s house, which was paid off in full something like a decade ago—so, discounting his half of the grocery and utility budgets, Bryan has plenty of money to spare. He’s always fussing about Teddy’s health, despite having the more dangerous career. He’s always taken up a bit of a parenting role, Teddy supposes. He’d consequently be perfectly glad to pitch in on the cost of the apartment for his little brother, but the idea of that leaves a sour taste in Teddy’s mouth. It hardly seems fair to just take that kind of money, even if it’s from his mother-henning brother. So he does what any college student in need of an apartment within a reasonable distance from campus would do: he calls for a roommate to split the rent, and, to his surprise, he actually gets responses to the ad he posted on the school’s message board. The third candidate catches his eye. Mikey’s a nice guy who doesn’t seem to do much, so they move in without much fuss and get along just fine. 8
