Tenants
I got a rookie job at the local newspaper in the next town over. For my first order of business, I needed to find some place to stay. I found a house on Craigslist that had an open room at a low rate. The job wasn't going to pay much, so I went to see it.
I got to the house on West Avery and knocked on the door. A middle-aged woman answered it. Her name was Mary. She was happy to see me, and started rattling off the information and the rules of the house. It was all very normal. The house was two stories, and the bedrooms were on the second floor. The tenants were mixed gender, but all adults. I was fine with that.
We walked through the first floor while she pointed out where all the rooms were. Then we headed up the stairs. The double doors led to the master bedroom, which was hers. There were two renters' bedrooms on this side of the house. Jerry, a musician. I was told to yell at him if he was playing music too loud. Paula, a waitress at the local diner. She was a single mother, and Mary often took care of the baby boy.
We walked down the hall to the other side of the house, where the bathroom and two more bedrooms were located. One bedroom door was open, and though there were not many items inside, I could see that the bed had been slept in, and a few books lay scattered on the desk. Mary opened the other door, saying this was my room.
The room was small, holding only a bed, a nightstand, and a desk. The bed was made, and the nightstand had an alarm clock. It would do splendidly. I didn't need much. I said I would take the room, and then we talked duration. Before we went downstairs to sign the paperwork, I asked Mary who lived in the other bedroom. She looked annoyed, as if she had already told me. I couldn't remember another name. Yes, that was right, she had. She had told me that there were four people in the house, I would make five. She must have been counting the baby. I shrugged, and we went downstairs.
My job sucked. Little did I know that starting at the bottom rung of the ladder in journalism meant getting coffee and sharpening pencils. Well, in these days it wasn't pencil sharpening anymore; it was dealing with the printer, the copier, and the fax machine. I must have smacked that copier a dozen times in the first week. I learned exactly how the boss and his three senior journalists liked their coffee. I learned how to trick the printer into thinking that the toner was fine. I mopped the floors. I cleaned the bathroom. I was not writing.
Every day, I came home exhausted. Every day, I passed the other tenants in the hall on our way to the bathroom, on our way out of the house. We didn't talk. We didn't have much to say to one another, we were so different. We had different jobs, interests, lives. Nobody ate in the house, or if they did, they ate in their rooms. The kitchen sat unused.
Every day, the door across the hall from mine would be closed during the night, and open during the day. Hadn't Mary said no one had the last room? But there had to be, for whoever it was definitely slept in the bed. It was different every day. Maybe she had meant the other person wasn't a tenant. Mary could have a teenage son who spent half his time with his father. There were plenty of stories I could make up about the mysterious roommate.
It turned out to be a girl. I woke up earlier one day and caught a glimpse of her on the way to the bathroom. I went to work that day feeling elated that I finally had an answer for something which had eluded me for weeks.
I learned from Paula that the girl's name was Sara. The wannabe rock star Jerry had no comment. He barely paid attention to the other tenants, so he didn't even know Paula's name. He probably didn't know my name either.
Eventually, I got ahold of her. I found her one night on the roof. I was afraid she was going to jump. I stayed with her all night, just talking. I learned that she was a student at the college. Eventually, she told me she had never planned on jumping, but I had caught her on a down day, and she was glad to have met me.
Sara was gone most of the day, but when she did come back to the house, she spent a lot of time on the roof. There was a spot just outside her window that she climbed to every night to look at the stars. She said it helped her concentrate. I believed her. I joined her there one night and kept coming back. She said a previous tenant named Evan used to come here and showed her how to climb to the spot safely. I asked her where he was now. She didn't know. He was gone, and I had his room. I asked the other tenants about Evan, but only Mary remembered him as a quiet boy.
I spent a lot of time with Sara. My job sucked, and it was nice to have someone to listen. Her schoolwork load sucked, and she liked the distraction. I learned that she liked to cook, but hadn't done so since Evan had disappeared. I convinced her to make a feast, helping her buy all the ingredients at the grocery store. I convinced the other tenants to stay home that evening.
We surprised them that night with a superb dinner. Sara had outdone herself. Mary smiled and chatted happily for the first time since her husband's death. Paula's baby was well-behaved, and she was able to tell us that Little Joe was her sister's baby. Even Jerry was thankful for the food and respite, and he talked excitedly about his upcoming gig. Sara described her dream to be a chef. It seemed that I had done right, and Sara had escaped her shell. The walls she had put up since Evan had left had finally crumbled down.
I wanted to write. I had never been so inspired. Everyone had a story. And it was worth listening to. We needed to be nice and friendly to our neighbors or we might never get the chance to hear it. They might simply move away like Evan. Or this young girl might have jumped had I not found her in time.
I grabbed one of the journalists to tell him my ideas. It wouldn't be a real article, so I had to make it as interesting as I could. This was a test of my speaking skills. He grunted and critiqued and sometimes smiled.
"Who are you talking to?" The boss looked quizzical as he neared us. What? Doesn't he know who he hired? I had been working here for months. I wanted to say something, but I didn't know what to say.
The journalist scratched his head. "I'm not sure," he said, looking around frantically as if he might find something to explain the reason for not working. He spotted the notes he had written. "What's on West Avery?"
The boss grew startled. "There was a house on that street that burned down a while ago. Four adults and one child died in the fire." His voice changed to a tone of sadness. "One of the guys used to work here. Afraid I never got to know him."
Author's Note
Wrote this after I woke up from a dream. Apr 2013.
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