A man sits in a double-parked car with a sign in the window reading,
Room
625
The sign attracts attention. A room for rent at the rate of $625 a month is a steal. The rental market in, near, and around the city is a sustained explosion.
People will approach the car, point at the sign, say they’re interested.
If the person looks twenty-five or older, the man, without looking up, will state coldly, “Six twenty-five a week,” knowing the person will walk immediately away.
If the person looks younger than twenty-five—regardless of gender, race, height, eye color—the man will look up at the person, register mild surprise and confusion, glance at the sign, and then scrutinize the sign, and then, smiling, look back at the person and explain that, no, he is picking someone up from a nearby hotel, and the person he is picking up is in Room 625.
The person, embarrassed and crestfallen, will say something along the lines of “Oh, I thought—okay, sorry,” The man will then say, “Wait, but you know, my aunts live together a few miles from here, and they have a room they’re renting. I don’t know how much they’re asking. You may not want it, either, because it’s got just a small bathroom with a shower stall, no bathtub.”
A person interested in renting a room, of course, does not expect a dedicated bathroom. This talk of a dedicated bathroom lacking a bathtub only deepens their interest. The man gives them a house address.
When the person arrives, the man says, “My aunts don’t get around too good. I have to show the room. But if you want to rent it, you need to talk to them. They need to meet you.” Making it harder makes it better. Hearing this, the person will want the room more. The person will say, “Fine.” The man will show them the room.
It is a room with its own entrance on the side of the house, a cramped kitchen, and a tiny bathroom with a shower stall. The fact that the bathroom is just as he said it was—small with only a shower stall—burnishes his credibility. After looking here and looking there, the person will ask at least one question. They will want the room. Other than to confirm the monthly rent at $625, they will not have questions or need to ask questions. But they will make up a question, because they will believe that not asking questions will flag them as a person who can be taken advantage of.
After this question, the person will say, after one or more pauses, in sum or in substance, “I’ll take it.” The man will say, “Okay, when did you have in mind to start renting?,” and the person will say, “Like, now?” The man will say “Wilda said it’s only available starting Wednesday, Wilda is one of my aunts, but you’re saying you want it now?” and the person will say “Yes.”
The man will say, “All right, You need to meet the aunts anyway. Maria’s nice, but Wilda’s the one that matters. Don’t bring up the fact you want to start earlier than Wednesday. Let me work that out with her. Because she likes things simple. So you don’t want at the same time that you’re meeting her to start talking about move-in dates, okay?”
Making it harder makes it better. The person will nod agreeably and will follow the man around to the back of the house and up the malnourished stairs that climb the building’s rump and through the door and the foyer and a hallway and the kitchen and another hallway and into a funny little den with what looks like carpet on the walls, which the man will smack playfully like he wants the person to feel the carpet on the wall, a room where there’s no Wilda and no Maria.
The man will stop and turn and, looking at the ceiling, will yell “Wilda!” and again “Wilda!” And he will stop and listen and nothing. And he will say to the person, “You have a higher voice, maybe she’ll hear you” or “You have a deeper voice, maybe she’ll hear you” and sometimes for the why not of it he’ll say “You have a higher and/or deeper voice, maybe she’ll hear you.” And invariably the person will try: “Wilda!” “Wilda!” And the man will join in, nodding for the person to continue as he does, so that both of you are yelling “Wilda! “Wilda!”
And then the man will shake his head sadly and say, “I don’t think she’s coming.” And this is about when the door that was activated to close by a carpet-concealed button on the carpet wall that the man smacked on the way in, the door that has been closing quietly on its hinges, will now settle into the door jamb and lock with a ringing thud. Which is when you will notice what is happening and look at the man in terror. “What’s happening?” and/or “What do you want?” and/or “What the fuck?” is what you will say now. The man will ask, “Do you have an aunt named Wilda?” And you will say no. And he will shake his head, his arms hanging at his sides, and say “Me, neither.”
Then the man will take in a deep breath, and exhale forcefully, like an executive before a big meeting, and will say “Do me a favor. Hand me that rental application, would you please?” The man will point at a knife on the undershelf of a coffee table that you didn’t see before. You will stare at the knife. Maybe you’ll feel sure there is nothing in the world you won’t do before doing that, maybe you’ll calculate whether this is an opportunity and how best to capitalize on it. “That there is the rental application,” he will say gently. “Hand it to me.”
You may refuse to pick it up. If so, the man will later remind you of this discourtesy and make you to understand it was this rudeness, your own rudeness, that was to blame for all that is happening.
You may pick it up and hand it to the man. If so, the man will reward you by giving you half—the cold half.
You may pick it up and try to use it against him. This, so far as the man is concerned, is the best outcome of all. Making it harder makes it better.
George Choundas is a Cuban- and Greek-American and former FBI agent with work in over seventy-five publications and two award-winning collections: of stories titled The Making Sense of Things (FC2, 2018) and of essays titled Until All You See Is Sky (EastOver Press, 2023). He is not the singer whose voice can be heard insistently singing “Food Emporium, Food Emporium” after every lyric in the supermarket chain’s radio commercial jingle. Or is he?
Image: commons.wikimedia.org
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Heavy Feather Review 