Chapter 11 - THE STORAGE UNIT REALITY CHECK: WENDY AND STEPHANIE’S TEMPER TANTRUM AMONG THE CARDBOARD BOXES
The climate-controlled corridors of Boulder Secure Storage smelled faintly of freshly cut cardboard, industrial carpet cleaner, and the quiet despair of people whose lives had suddenly been downsized into ten-by-ten metal enclosures.
Unit 412 sat near the end of the second-floor hallway, its heavy roll-up door currently pushed waist-high.
Inside sat thirty heavy-duty plastic storage bins, stacked neatly in rows, containing every single item of clothing, every pair of designer shoes, every piece of jewelry, and every pretentious art print that Luca, Wendy, and Stephanie had accumulated during their years of parasitic freeloading at Redwood Crest Drive.
Luca stood in the center of the concrete-floored unit, wearing his crumpled cabana shirt from the Miami trip, staring at the plastic bins as if they were ancient artifacts found at a crime scene.
Behind him, Wendy was pacing back and forth across the hallway, her designer heels clicking angrily against the polished concrete, her face mottled with purple rage.
“This is an absolute outrage!” Wendy shrieked, her voice echoing down the metal-lined corridor, causing a nearby renter to peek nervously out of unit 410. “I am a respectable woman! I cannot live out of plastic storage boxes! Where is the mahogany armoire? Where are my Waterford crystal glasses?”
“Mom, please, stop screaming,” Stephanie groaned, leaning against a stack of bins, massaging her temples as a stress-induced migraine began to pulse behind her eyes. “Screaming at the walls isn't going to make the mansion reappear. We are officially broke, homeless, and stuck in a storage facility because my idiot brother thought it was a brilliant idea to lock his multi-millionaire wife out of her own house!”
“I didn't think she would actually sell it!” Luca shouted back, turning around with his hands thrown up in defensive frustration. “How was I supposed to know she had a cash buyer lined up and waiting? She’s a new mother! She was supposed to be recovering from surgery, crying in a corner, waiting for me to dictate terms!”
“Well, she wasn't crying in a corner, was she?” Stephanie snapped bitterly. “She outsmarted you, humiliated us, and threw us onto the street while we were still tanned from Miami!”
Luca pulled out his phone, his thumb frantically tapping at the screen as he tried to call my number for the fiftieth time.
The subscriber you have dialed is not accepting calls at this time.
He tried calling my sister Evelyn.
Directly to voicemail.
He tried calling Phoebe Reed’s law firm.
“Thank you for calling Vance & Associates. Our offices are currently closed...”
Luca lowered his phone slowly, the final, crushing weight of reality finally settling into his marrow.
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We weren't just separated. We were completely, irrevocably cut off.
Without my corporate funding, without my credit cards, and without the roof of Redwood Crest Drive over their heads, Luca, Wendy, and Stephanie were nothing more than three expensive-looking beggars standing in a hallway of cardboard boxes.
