Squatters

Olivia had recently returned to Bridgeport, Illinois after a year of living in Budapest and needed a place to live. She was tired of tugging at the end of her parents’ leash and wanted to choose her own path in life, at least for a while, to include paying for her own apartment. Her best friend Emma had been earning her own way since her junior year in high school, and her lease on her $300-a-month hotel room apartment was up at the end of the month, so the girls decided they should look for a place to rent together. They had plenty in common. They were best friends, they worked together in the same local deli, they were both 21, they both liked to party, and they were both broke.

On the last Friday night of the month, they decided to go to a party being thrown by their skater friends in a big Victorian house that was split right down the middle by one big wall. No one seemed to know much about the history of the home. At that point, it had degenerated into a run-down party spot, a crash house. There were always at least five different people living there, mostly guys, but couples would crash on one side of the wall now and then. Everyone in this tight little community lived to skate. Most of them had tattoos, and they loved punk rock, the Beastie Boys, Black Sabbath, and so on. They even threw small concerts in the back yard every few months. The house always smelled of cigarette smoke, pot smoke, and beer, but Olivia and Emma didn’t care because they thought the skaters were more creative, fun, and intelligent than most of the other guys they knew at the time.

As the night progressed, the girls learned that the owners of the Victorian had decided to sell the place, which meant that everyone would be moving out in a few days. The owners lived in another state, and given that the house was in a mildly distressed state, it probably wouldn’t be sold too soon. Olivia and Emma desperately needed somewhere to live, and they had no money for a deposit, much less a first and last month’s rent, so it just made sense to them to go ahead and move in there. On the second day of the following month, they broke open a window in the back yard and crawled into the basement. After cleaning themselves up a little bit, they unlocked all the doors and called a locksmith to come and change the locks. One arrived within hours and changed the locks immediately when they told him they didn’t want to be hassled by dangerous ex-boyfriends. Then, they called the utilities department to turn on the water and electricity. A utilities worker came over, wondered why the main line had a lock box on it, and then promptly dismantled the lock box, turned on the juice, and left.

Now that Emma and Olivia were safely ensconced in the house for at least a little while, they began fixing it up. It was a turn-of-the-century home that was once a decorative residence, maybe one of the first in the neighborhood, so they felt an obligation to restore it to a state of respectability as best they could under the circumstances. They started by fixing the broken window. Then, they polished the off-white porcelain walls in the bathroom, which had beautiful aging hairline cracks and a brilliant blue row about ¾ of the way up each wall. They tore up the carpet and found gorgeous wood floors underneath, which they polished to an elegant sheen. They scrubbed the kitchen and its gigantic, old-fashioned farm sink that took up half a wall. The stove was a noble old gas burner that featured intricate scrolls made out of heavy metal scripted along the back of a broad metal shelf. They liked the stove so much that although they didn’t cook much because they could eat at the deli for free, they always made it a point to make something on the stove once or twice a week. They threw away most of the furniture and pictures that were left there and redecorated with what they could cobble together from friends, family, thrift stores, and local garage sales. Then, they cleaned, fertilized, and mowed the yards and even planted a garden in the back yard.

For the first few weeks, the girls maintained a quiet lifestyle and usually kept the lights out at night. The houses in the neighborhood were built close to each other, and even though some of the neighbors must have known the girls were squatting, no one said anything, or at least they didn’t seem to care. The girls started having guys over. Emma was in lust with quite a few around that time: Darren, who was a private school rich kid rebelling against his parents, super good looking, always up for anything, and who could play a mean harmonica; Tim, who had gorgeous tattoos on his arms – full sleeves – but was also addicted to coke; and Joel, who could skate a half pipe as if performing an intricate ballet. Olivia preferred being more monogamous, hanging out mostly with Anton, who had come over from Ukraine as an orphan and was now bartending in Downtown Chicago.

After a few months, Emma and Olivia decided to have a party. They hired a live band, stocked the kitchen with a few kegs, and opened the doors for as long as anyone wanted to stay. Around 100 people showed up over the course of the day, and things got so lively that one of the neighbors decided to call the police in the late afternoon. Two officers arrived, told the girls to tone things down, and left without issuing anyone so much as a citation. Later in the night, the real estate agent who was trying to sell the property drove by and saw everything. He came back the next day and told the girls they had to leave. He didn’t report them because he felt sorry for them and respected the work they had done on the place, and he even gave them five days to vacate. The girls felt like they belonged in that area, though, and through the assistance of a kind woman across the street who also happened to be a realtor, they found a place two houses away and simply carried over everything they wanted to keep and actually owned.

The neighbors loved having Emma and Olivia around, and the girls equally enjoyed the year they ended up staying in the neighborhood, but eventually, Olivia moved in with Anton and then got accepted into the University of Chicago’s Slavic Languages and Literatures program. Emma married Joel, and they started up and ran a skate shop that gained some respect and notoriety in the area. Unfortunately, the big Victorian home in which they had squatted and from which they had been evicted did not fare so well. It went through several owners who only wanted to rent the place, and each subsequent owner did additional damage to the home without contributing any renovations. Finally, the house stood alone and neglected for two years, becoming an eyesore and financial liability to the community. In the end, it was demolished by the city for accumulated code violations. Emma and Olivia remained in constant contact with each other, and they sometimes reminisced about the old Victorian home, discussing it as if it was a kind old friend who, like many others they knew from those days, was no longer there to share in the conversation.