Chapter 34: Denied
The letter came to Cranmore on the ninth day, in a windowed envelope, addressed to Cassandra A. Mercer.
Ms. Prine put the post out on the hall table at four, sorted into a plastic tray, face up, where anybody walking past could read who was writing to whom.
I got mine at 5:33.
The envelope was from a company in another state whose name I had never heard, and whose name was not on the card at the laundromat, and was not Ivry.
Inside, one page.
Thank you for your recent application. We are unable to approve your tenancy at this time.
Then the required paragraph.
The decision was based in whole or in part on information contained in a consumer report.
Then the name of the agency, the address, the toll-free number, and the sentence telling me I had a right to a free copy within sixty days and a right to dispute anything inaccurate.
I have that right.
There was nothing inaccurate.
Behind the letter, stapled, was a single sheet headed RESIDENT SELECTION CRITERIA.
Someone had photocopied it so many generations back that the box borders had gone furry.
Income: three times monthly rent.
Mine was 1.6 times, and that alone would have done it.
Credit: minimum score, no open collections over five hundred.
I had no score at all, which I later learned reads worse than a bad one.
Rental history: twenty-four months verifiable.
I had eleven weeks in a facility with a house manager and a curfew.
Criminal: no felony conviction within the past ten years.
No exceptions listed. No individual assessment mentioned.
There is a box on that sheet, and the box is the whole of it, and everything above the box was already enough.
That is the part I want to be accurate about, because it would be tidier to say the felony did it alone.
I failed four criteria out of four. The record was only the one that could never improve.
I read the sheet twice on the hall stairs and then went and ate dinner, which was Wednesday, which is pasta.
On Saturday I walked to Ambrose Street to say it out loud, because I had already decided I would rather do that than not.
Ivry was on the pavement with a bucket, washing the glass of the street door.
He straightened up when he saw me and I knew from the straightening that he already had a copy.
He said, “You got the letter.”
I said, “I got the letter.”
He said, “It's not me.”
I said, “I know. It's the screening company and it's your insurer.”
He looked at me for a second, because people do not usually name the insurer.
He said, “You know how this works.”
I said, “I scan four hundred pages a day. I know how everything works.”
He put the sponge in the bucket.
He said the flat was going to a nurse's assistant with a co-signer.
I said that made sense. It did make sense. If I had been him and it had been my building I would have done the same and I will not pretend otherwise on a page.
Then he took out his wallet.
He said, “The forty-five. Take it back.”
I said, “The receipt says non-refundable.”
He said, “I'm saying take it.”
I said, “It's not yours to give back. You paid it to them.”
That was true and he knew it was true and he stood there with two twenties and a five in his hand.
I have thought about that money since. Forty-five dollars, that autumn, was a coat.
But if I take it, the receipt in my notebook stops being a receipt and becomes a favour, and a favour has a different shelf life.
I said, “Thank you. No.”
He put the wallet away and said, “Hell of a way to run a country.”
I said something back that I do not remember and it was not important.
Then he said, “Come back in a year with twelve months of rent receipts. I'll take you without the screener. My building, my risk.”
I said, “You'd have to write that down for it to be worth anything.”
He laughed once, went inside, and came out with the duplicate book.
He wrote, in the same hard pen: Ivry — 4B or equivalent — will consider C. Mercer direct, 12 months verified rent, no screener. Then he signed it and dated it and tore off the carbon.
I read it. It is worth nothing legally. It is not a lease and it is not an option and any court would say so.
I folded it and put it in the notebook behind the denial letter.
Then I walked the nine blocks to Kesler and let myself into the office with my own key and sat at the desk in the dark for a while.