Chapter 33: Unit 4B
The corkboard in the laundromat at Pell and Halvard had eleven cards on it.
Two for lawn work, one for a car, one for a puppy, four for rooms, and three for apartments.
I read that board every second Saturday while my wash ran, standing with my hands in my coat pockets.
The card said: STUDIO, 4B, AMBROSE ST. $795 + UTILS. NO SMOKING. CALL IVRY.
Seven hundred and ninety-five was more than I could carry.
I could carry it if the halfway house programme fee stopped, which it would when I left, which is the point of leaving.
Four hundred and three dollars a month back in my hand, against seven-ninety-five out.
It did not work. I did the sum on the back of the laundromat's own receipt and it did not work and I called anyway.
I called from the wall phone at Cranmore, first time I ever used it, block booked from six-forty-five to seven.
A man answered on the fourth ring and said his own name as a question. “Ivry?”
I said I was calling about 4B on Ambrose.
He asked if I was working. I said yes, at Vega Bail Bonds on Kesler.
He said, “The bondsman? Marisol?”
I said yes.
There was a pause I could not read, and then he said Saturday at ten.
Ambrose Street is nine blocks off Kesler, over a dry cleaner and a shop that sold phone cases and repaired screens.
The entrance to the flats is a separate door, painted brown, with four buzzers and three names.
Ivry was sixty-odd, heavy through the shoulders, in a jacket with a folding rule in the pocket.
The stairs are steep and turn twice.
4B is the back, top floor.
One room, eleven feet by seventeen, measured by me with two paces and a correction.
A sink, a counter, two rings on a hob, a wall cupboard with a door that did not sit flush.
A bathroom with a shower over a half-bath and a window of frosted glass painted shut.
A radiator under the window.
Wood floor, painted grey, worn back to bare in a path from the door to the sink.
The window looks over a yard with bins and, past the bins, the back of the buildings on Kesler.
From that window, if you leaned, you could see the roof of the office I worked in.
I did not lean.
I stood in the middle of the room with my bag against my leg and worked out where a bed would go.
Against the far wall, under the slope, with the head to the left of the radiator.
There was room for a bed, a chair, and a table if the table was small.
Ivry said, “Heat's included. Water's included. Electric's yours.”
I asked what the average electric was on the meter. He said forty in winter, twenty in summer, and he did not have to think about it, which meant he knew.
I asked about the cupboard door and he said he would rehang it.
I asked when it was free and he said the first.
Then he said, “You want it?”
I said yes.
He took an application out of the folding-rule pocket, folded in four, and flattened it on the counter with his hand.
One page, both sides.
Name, employer, income, two references, previous address.
Previous address is the line that ends most of these and I wrote Cranmore House and the dates.
At the bottom: HAVE YOU EVER BEEN CONVICTED OF A FELONY? with a box.
I ticked yes. There is only the one box and it does not care what year it was. Then I wrote in the margin, because there is no space provided: vehicular homicide, plea, sentence served, released, on parole supervision, officer's name and number.
I wrote the officer's telephone number from memory. I had it because I had written it in the notebook.
Ivry read the margin standing up, holding the paper at arm's length the way people do.
He said, “Six years.”
I said, “Six years.”
He said, “You do the whole six?”
I said, “Yes.”
He put the paper down and said, “There's a fee. Forty-five. It's not mine, it's the screening company.”
I had forty-five. I had exactly sixty-two dollars, and forty-five of it was for a coat before winter.
I counted it out on the counter in fives and ones because that is what I had.
He wrote me a receipt out of a duplicate book, pressed hard, tore off the top copy and gave me the carbon.
The carbon had the date on it, the address, the words APPLICATION FEE — NON-REFUNDABLE, and his signature.
I read it, folded it, and put it in the notebook.
Then I walked down two flights and out onto Ambrose Street and stood on the pavement for a minute doing arithmetic about a coat. It was the fourth of October and the mornings had already turned.