Original fiction · Chapter 2 of 2
The Room Behind the Dryers
“My mother didn't write the check,” Rob said when he came in. “I did.”
He arrived with a bag of sandwiches and no appetite. He pulled out the extra chair by the change machine and sat with his coat still on.
The property manager hadn't stopped taking rent from Aunt June's account. There hadn't been enough in it. In her last winter, she'd paid for a new water heater and four weeks of snow removal, then got behind on the lease. Rob had covered what he could. The receipts in the back room went back years. The newest one was real too, but the check had been returned. Rob hadn't told me because he was sure he could replace the money before anybody asked.
“Why hide the notice in a dryer?”
“Because I heard your car pulling in.” He looked down at the sandwiches. “I know how that sounds.”
What I remember about the next five minutes is the dryer buzzer. It kept going off. We kept talking anyway.
The eviction notice named a sum far larger than one month's rent. We spread the receipts out on the folding table and asked the property manager for a rent ledger. She sent it the next morning. Several payments had been entered under the address of a vacant unit two doors down. The payment references on June's receipts matched entries for that unit. Rob had made the first mistake by sending a check he couldn't cover. The office had made a different one, month after month, and nobody had lined the two stories up.
The property owner agreed to pause the process while his bookkeeper reviewed the account. He came by two days later. I'd only ever seen his name on a letterhead. He was the sort of man who folded his coat over the back of a chair before sitting down, even when the chair was plastic and the room smelled of bleach.
He said the incorrect entries would be moved and the balance was smaller. Then he asked what was behind the yellow door. I had left it open.
Alma looked up from a pair of school trousers she'd been hemming. “There are three people ahead of you if you brought something.”
The owner laughed and then looked startled that he had. He used to bring his work shirts here, he said. June always charged him the price posted on the wall, even after he bought the building.
Rob and I worked out a repayment schedule with him. The new lease took a few weeks. It included the back room this time, under its own line, with enough detail that nobody could pretend they didn't know it was there. We still close the front doors at eight. Two nights a week, a small lamp burns behind the dryers until ten.
Alma asked me whether I wanted June's brass key back. I told her I had another made.
She put hers away. Then she gave me the trousers and showed me the uneven stitch I had put in the first leg.
“Start there again,” she said. “You've got time.”
