The landlord, Mrs. Bane, had cataracts thick enough to miss the healing wound on my neck. She moved through the world by memory, fingers trailing along walls she’d touched for decades. The apartment sat above a defunct print shop, barely three hundred square feet of water-stained walls and temperamental plumbing. But after the deadbeat motel, it felt palatial.
“First month plus deposit. No pets, no parties,” Mrs. Bane had recited, her words carrying the rhythm of repetition. She’d held out her hand for cash, fingers closing on bills with practiced accuracy.
I signed the lease as Rhea Thornback and felt reborn. Not because I’d changed my identity - I hadn’t, despite the forged documents still hidden in my bag. But because for the first time in weeks, someone expected me to exist beyond the next sunrise. A lease implied future. Staying. Building rather than running.
The studio came furnished with castoffs from previous tenants. A couch that listed to the left. A table with one short leg I fixed with folded newspaper. Despite the filth radiating off the air mattress, it had looked promising for the night.
The first thing I had done the morning after moving into the studio was to get rid of the couch. I was sure it was infested with god knows what, but it also had stains that were unquestionably bodily fluids you didn’t want to touch. The next had been the air mattress. I had survived a night on it, but it reeked and I had barely kept my dinner down that first night.
With little money to spare I knew I needed a job and that was what I had spent my days and evenings doing as I walked across the town.
The real estate office had been advertising for weeks before I gathered courage to apply. Wayne Garrett Real Estate occupied a narrow storefront between a liquor store and a payday loan outfit, the holy trinity of Millbrook commerce. Wayne himself was a throwback, pushing sixty, wearing suits that remembered better decades, maintaining an office that still used filing cabinets. He’d interviewed me over coffee that could strip paint, asking a few questions about my past.
“Can you type? Answer phones? Deal with difficult people without committing murder?” His humor was dry as week-oldtoast, delivered with the flat effect of someone who’d seen too much to be surprised by anything.
I’d nodded to all three, though the last one felt optimistic some days. The fresh scar on my neck had drawn his gaze once, but the town somehow specialized in not asking questions that didn’t have profitable answers.
He’d hired me on the spot, desperate for help managing properties nobody else wanted. Trailer parks on the edge of town. Efficiency apartments that redefined the word “efficiency.” Commercial spaces that had been “For Lease” so long the signs had become landmarks. The pay barely covered expenses, but it came with priceless gifts, a reason to wake up, a schedule that imposed structure on chaos, and human interaction that didn’t involve cash sliding across motel desks.
“Start Monday.” Wayne had concluded our interview, already turning back to paperwork that looked older than me.
Normal felt like a costume that didn’t quite fit, but I wore it anyway. I learned to answer phones with false cheer, to show apartments with enthusiasm I didn’t feel, to process applications for people whose desperation echoed my own. Wayne’s office became another kind of shelter, fluorescent-lit and coffee-scented, where I could pretend my biggest concern was whether the copy machine would work today.
My days developed rhythm. Wake at six, shower in water that ran hot every third day, dress in thrift store professional wear that almost fit. Walk twelve blocks to work because I couldn’t afford a car. Type listings for properties that would never sell. Answer calls from tenants whose problems ranged from brokentoilets to broken lives. File paperwork in cabinets so old they might have been historically significant.
Lunch came from the bodega next door, the same sandwich every day because routine felt safer than choice. Afternoons meant showing apartments to people who looked like extras from my former life, tired, desperate, grateful for any space that would have them. I recognized myself in their careful hope, the way they touched walls like testing reality.
Wayne paid in cash every Friday, bills counted out with the solemnity of a sacrament. I’d walk directly to Mrs. Bane with rent, then to the grocery store for another week’s worth of survival. Ramen. Crackers. Apples when I could afford them. The kind of diet that kept you alive without quite letting you live. I had almost reached for a packet of cigarettes but my wolf had growled from beneath my skin and so I left them as it is.
My evenings belonged to silence and the studio’s peculiar sounds. Water pipes that sang operatic scales. The couple upstairs whose footsteps followed patterns I learned to predict. Sirens that marked Millbrook’s approximation of nightlife.
Dinner was canned soup heated on a hot plate, eaten while standing at the window overlooking the alley. Campbell’s chicken noodle, store brand tomato, whatever was on sale. I’d watch the night shift workers heading out below. Nurses in scrubs, security guards with flashlights, delivery drivers checking addresses. The invisible army that kept the world running while everyone else slept. I envied their purpose, their somewhere to go. My own schedule ended at five PM sharp, leaving too many hours to fill with nothing but thoughts I’d rather avoid.
The studio apartment felt smaller after dark. Four walls, one window, a bed I had bought from a flea market, barely a flea market, that creaked with every movement. I’d counted water stains on the ceiling, reorganized the three dishes I owned, anything to avoid thinking about the past.
Now, three months into my new existence, I sat in my studio counting days since the last time I had truly felt happy and fighting the growing need to take revenge on Damon Kildare.
***
The morning started with Wayne already at his desk, sorting through the same stack of papers he’d been shuffling for three months. The Henderson property file, the Riverside eviction notices, the commercial lease that no one would ever sign. His movements had a ritual quality, like he was maintaining order against chaos one document at a time.
Marcy, the other agent who worked Tuesdays and Thursdays, had called in sick again. Her voice on the answering machine carried the false rasp of someone practicing their cough. We both knew she was interviewing at the Century 21 two towns over. That left me to handle both phone lines while Wayne pretended not to notice the extra work.
The first three calls were standard. Complaint about noise from the unit above. Someone wanting to break their lease early, willing to forfeit the deposit if we’d just let them go. I handled each with the efficiency of someone who’d learned that caring too much cost energy I couldn’t spare.
Around ten, Wayne cleared his throat. Not the usual productive clearing that punctuated his paper shuffling, but the kind thatsignaled an actual conversation was coming. I braced myself, fingers stilling on the keyboard where I’d been updating listings no one would read.
“Your folks must miss you.” He didn’t look up from his files, giving us both the mercy of avoiding eye contact.
“We all make our choices.” The deflection came automatically. I’d gotten good at implying answers without giving them.
“Speaking from experience,” he continued, finally looking up with eyes that had seen too much, “some bridges are better burned. Saves everyone the trouble of pretending they might hold weight again.”
“Is that why you stayed in Millbrook?” I asked, surprising myself with the question.
A smile ghosted across his face, there and gone. “Millbrook doesn’t judge. That’s worth something when judgment is all you’ve got waiting elsewhere.” He pushed back from his desk, joints popping with the movement. “Besides, someone’s got to rent apartments to people who’ve got nowhere else to go. Might as well be someone who understands the situation.”
His kindness felt dangerous. Kindness always came with questions attached, with expectations of reciprocity I couldn’t afford. But Wayne seemed to want nothing beyond acknowledgment that we were both refugees in our own ways, managing properties for other people who’d run out of options.
