I look at the window.
Mr. Richards looks back at me from behind it.
He waves.
It's a very calm wave, the wave of a man who has been waiting patiently and has nowhere else to be, which is somehow worse than every other version of this confrontation I've been rehearsing in the shower for three months.
I stand on the sidewalk for one full second, thinking about all the directions I could walk that are not toward my front door. The bodega. The bus station. Canada. Somewhere with no extradition treaties and a reasonable cost of living.
Then I think about the crackers I don't have and the twenty dollars I do and the very hungry small person currently lodging a formal complaint against my ribcage, and I go inside.
Mr. Richards is sitting at my kitchen table.
I stop so hard the door nearly hits me on the way back. For a second, I just stand there with one hand still on the knob, because it is my kitchen table. My apartment. My stale cereal smell, my chipped mugs, my life, such as it is.
He’s my landlord, yes, and he let himself in with the master key, which is apparently legal with notice. Notice he gave in the form of three letters currently spread in front of him on the table. The same three letters I stacked on the counter unopened because reading them felt like a problem for later, and later kept refusing to arrive.
Mr. Richards is tall, silver at the temples, dressed like a man who irons even his opinions. Good shoes. Serious jacket.
He has opened all three envelopes.
“Miss Sullivan,” he says.
"Mr. Richards.” I put my purse down on the counter with more calm than I feel, which is none, I feel none. "I was just heading out."
"I know. I saw you leave." He folds his hands on the table. "And I came up to wait, because I think we've reached the point where waiting is no longer something either of us can afford."
I pull out the chair across from him and sit down because my legs feel as if they’re about to give way. My apartment always feels smaller when someone else is in it, like the walls remember they're not that far apart and decide to make a point of it. There's a mug on the counter I haven't washed. A stack of books I've been reading because they're free and they're the only entertainment I have left since I canceled everythingwith a monthly charge, which was a whole afternoon of small cancellations that felt like a series of tiny funerals.
"The rent," I say.
"Three months, Miss Sullivan,” he slurs, confirming that he’s already had his morning shot of whiskey and judging by the way he’s looking at me, maybe his whole weeks stash. "I have a mortgage on this building. I have expenses. I have tenants who need maintained facilities. I sympathize with difficult circumstances, but I am not a charity."
I open my mouth. Close it again.
I’d been rehearsing the speech for two weeks. The one where I tell him I’m pregnant and trying, I really am. That I just need a little more time. Another month. I have leads. I’m following up.
In that version, he softens. Says we can work something out.
But then he says, I am not a charity.
Not cruelly. Calmly. Like a fact. Like something settled long before I walked into the room.
And just like that, anything I might say next gets filed under pity. Pregnant. Alone. Trying so hard I’m tired down to the bone. None of it matters now. It all sounds like begging.
He’s already told me what he thinks of begging.
So I close my mouth.
And nod.
"I understand," I say, and my voice comes out level, which is an achievement I'll be privately proud of later. "I can't make up three months."
"No."
"I need to get my things."
"I'll give you until this evening. After that I'll need to begin the process of preparing the unit."