By Margo Orlando Littell

At four the next afternoon, Robin drove to 1118 ½ to collect Anne Sackett’s delinquent rent. She was desperate. Anne was in violation of her lease, and Robin was in the legal right here. That didn’t change the mortifying fact that she had to chase the money down.

Robin knocked and waited, knocked and waited. She went around back to peek in the kitchen windows—where she saw the faucet running, water gushing over the lip of the stopped-up sink. She sprinted to the front and let herself in. The floor from the kitchen into the living room was flooded. The linoleum in the kitchen was curling at the corners. The living room rug squelched under her shoes.

“Oh shit. Oh shit—” She raced to the kitchen, splashed through a quarter-inch of water to get to the sink, and shoved the faucet closed.

With the water off, the apartment was quiet. She kicked away a few sodden pieces of trash—paper towels, toilet paper rolls. Only then did Robin register what Anne had done to the countertops. Every inch of Formica was covered in junk—shower caps, plastic forks and spoons, Diet Coke cans, bottle caps, empty milk jugs, countless plastic combs in every color of the rainbow. Robin tried to work free a comb, breaking off its pink handle. Everything was super-glued.

All other evidence of Anne was gone. No pictures on the wall, no furniture in the living room. She’d planned to leave.
Through the thin dividing wall of the duplex, Robin heard Sister Eileen moving around. Had she known Anne was leaving? Had she watched her load a truck, drive away? Was water, at this moment, seeping into her living room? If it wasn’t, it would be soon, killing another month’s rent.

She said a prayer of thanks after finding a broom in the kitchen closet, and she swept most of the standing water out the back door. She plunged her hands into the frigid water to yank the rags out of the drain and emptied the sink. She cracked open the windows, though the air was too cold to help much. Then she stood there, in the middle of the wet kitchen floor, cold water creeping through the seams in her shoes. In Mount Rynda, she’d been a capable person—able to manage a home, raise a child, organize fancy events. Now she was helpless, as if she’d been dropped naked into the wilder¬ness and told, simply, Survive.

She called her only friend: reviled landlord Tom Frost.

“Be there in ten,” he said.

From Anne’s window, Robin watched him pull up in a Range Rover, as out of place in Four Points as a limousine. He spotted her from the porch and gave a half wave before she opened the door.

He put an arm around her, gave her a squeeze. “Sorry you have to do this on your own. I’m glad you called. You okay?”

She shook her head.

“Alright. It’s alright, Robin. Let’s just see what we’re dealing with.”

That we, that suggestion of shared determination, brought Robin back to herself. She nodded, too grateful to speak.
When they entered the apartment, Tom gave a low, terrible whistle. He set down his tool box and strode across the sodden carpet, his boots leaving soggy prints.

“I’m so sorry to call with this,” she said as she followed him to the kitchen. “I have no idea what to do here. And I can’t afford to leave it empty.”

Tom’s attention was on the countertop. “Have to say, it’s a first for me, the super-glued junk.” He snorted. “These fucking people.” He thumbed at the teeth of a bright blue comb. “It’s all gotta come out. Even if you could scrape it off, you’d strip the Formica. This lady knew what she was doing. Any idea why she did it?”

“None. She seemed perfectly nice. I think she must’ve had some issue with Ray.”

“Well, we’ll never know,” he said. “Might not be any reason. Some people are plain batshit crazy.”

“What do I do, Tom? I need a tenant.”

“Don’t wait on the listing,” he said. “Get it into the paper tomorrow, post to the rental boards. Let the calls go to voicemail till you’re ready. Trust me, I’ve seen worse. What you’ve got is some water damage and some ruined counters.” He took a notepad and a Bic from his tool box. “Gonna give you a punchlist,” he said. “You follow it, you’ll be ready for tenants next week.” He dashed off a few notes and tore out the sheet for Robin.

“That can’t really be all.”

“What else are you thinking?”

“Fresh paint, new overhead fixtures—”

Tom lifted his tool box. “I’m gonna stop you right there. Listen. This is what we deal with. You can never predict who’ll end up screwing you, but someone will. There’s no room for charity. Don’t waste your money on improvements, alright?”

Robin nodded.

“Good,” he said. “Final piece of advice: don’t get hung up on specifics once the tenant calls come. Get a month’s rent in hand, and get ’em moved in. Hang in there, honey. You can do this.”

Later, as Robin showered under the hottest water she could stand, she thought about what Tom had said. There was a moral here somewhere, the very opposite of what she’d teach her own child, but one she’d have to live by if she wanted to survive in a world that had no room for trust, its only promise the one that came with cash delivered on time. Believing anything else would bring disas¬ter to her and Haley. Robin tried to stiffen her spine, square her shoulders, but the day had taken its toll. She slumped into the steam.

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Margo Orlando Littell grew up in a coal-mining town in southwestern Pennsylvania. Her first novel, Each Vagabond by Name, won the University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize and an IPPY Awards Gold Medal for Mid-Atlantic Fiction. She lives in New Jersey with her family.