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[h1][color=RoyalBlue][b][center]FLINT[/center][/b][/color][/h1]
[h3][color=RoyalBlue][b][center]In The Neighbourhood[/center][/b][/color][/h3]

Flint carried his third box up the stairs and into the door marked “EENMITE INC.” followed by a young teenager carrying odds and ends.  Melodic bars from Tom Waits’ “Ol’ 55” hanging filling the hallways and hanging in the air; the turntable and collection of vinyl records being in the first box he brought up the stairs.  ‘You know they got music digitally now.’  The boy had said.

He knows.  He’s aware.  ‘Vinyl has a warmer growl to it.’

‘What’s a warmer growl?’ the boy had asked, whilst placing the box carefully where he was directed.

‘Tom Waits…’ Flint had answered with his weathered face’s approximation of a grin.

The boy went down to get more items from the U-Haul trailer whilst Flint began setting up the record player.  Carefully placing Closing Time on the turntable and gently dropping the needle, he waited until the music kicked in before going downstairs for the next box.  The pair crossed paths in the stairwell. ‘Hey!  This is—‘

‘Careful.’  Flint had warned with a furrowed brow.  ‘The first rule of this place is that nobody says shit about Mister Tom Waits.’

‘—pretty good, I guess…’ The boy had mumbled.  After nearly a dozen more passes, Flint could have sworn he caught the boy humming along to Martha.

After Flint brought up the last heavy box, he set to work on the door, chiselling at the black block letters with a plastic scraper.  The office had been unused since it was the administration for a small family run pest control business started by a migrant family with a tenuous grasp of the English language.  Something was lost in translation as “Seenmite” did not turn out to be a quality name for an American pest control business, and they also didn’t realize that “Inc” was a suffix reserved for those who maintained a corporate business structure – believing it instead to be purely aesthetic and “something good businesses call themselves”.  These were only a few examples of their lack of business sense, and whilst they were good at their jobs (when they could find business) there were also issues of safety violations.  Seenmite was swiftly shut down and the office had been vacant for 18 months since – as honest a statement of the state of disrepair the building was in as you could find.

Having finished shaving down the letters to change “EENMITE INC.” into “FLINT” he stepped back to assess his work.

A little lopsided, but the price was right.

‘So that’s the last of it.’  Flint dug into his wallet and pulled out a few wrinkled notes and handed them to the kid.  ‘Uhh… these are ones.’  He reached in further and pulled out some fives.  ‘You know, this is more than minimum wage for a pizza boy.’

‘Then dial yourself a pizza and get him to haul your stuff upstairs.’

Flint grabbed two tens and gave them to the boy.  ‘You know, time was I could have had a bunch of cops here moving all of my stuff in for no more than the cost of a carton of beer.’

‘So where are they now?’  

Flint turned over cold.  ‘Just take the money, kid… while it’s still on offer.’  The boy knew better than to look a gifthorse in the mouth, at least at this point.  He grabbed the paper and ran down the stairs, his house just a little down the street, leaving Flint standing in the doorway to his new office.