The Sound of Broken Ribs(2)

“You try to have a good day.”

What the fuck was that? Who said something like that after telling a woman she was suddenly homeless?

Belinda took the folded papers into the kitchen with her. She tossed them on the dining room table and made a pot of coffee. She sat down with a mugful, blowing steam. For several minutes, Belinda stared at the bunch of papers. Then she retrieved her cell phone from the bedroom where it was plugged in next to the lamp on her nightstand.

No missed calls. Not that she’d expected any. But what she couldn’t figure out and was maybe not really that important at this late stage was why Nancy Flotte—their elderly landlady—hadn’t called her. Dan took care of the bills, but if something had happened with their rent checks, surely Nancy would have called. Surely.

She tried to pull up Nancy’s number by using the search function on her phone but the device informed her that there were zero results for the name Nancy. She tried searching for “Flotte”, but was welcomed with the same “no results” message. She cycled through her entire contact list—which wasn’t much, maybe forty people from her family and job, emergency contacts and the like—but couldn’t locate her landlady’s number.

Confusion settled like a tangible weight on her chest and shoulders—the precursor to one of her infamous panic attacks. She took several deep breaths before snatching the eviction papers from the tabletop. She unfolded them, her chin cocked up and away as if there might be something particularly foul folded into the package. Perhaps a load of bullshit.

She refused to read what was written on the thrice folded sheets. Instead, she scanned the text, hunting numbers. She came upon Nancy Flotte’s name, which was followed by legal jargon in the vein of “hitherto referred to as the Landlord” and found Nancy’s address and phone number on the next line. She punched in the seven digit number and pressed send. The electronic lady on the other end informed Belinda that an area code was required in order to connect her call. Belinda growled at her own stupidity. The area code before the number was obviously different from her own. She was making stupid mistakes because she was rattled. She needed to calm down. There was a perfectly simple explanation for this nonsense. Cussing under her breath, she dialed all ten numbers and listened as the phone rang in her ear.

“Hello?” asked the aged voice of her elderly landlady.

“Nancy?”

“Yes?” Nancy’s voice was pleasant enough. Either she didn’t know who Belinda was, or this was all some terrible joke of which Nancy had not been let in on.

“It’s Bee.”

“Who?” Nancy chirped.

“Belinda Walsh? Of 1420 Haversham? My husband Dan and I—”

“Oh. It’s you.” Nancy’s tone switched from pleasantly curious to one of angered disgust with such a smooth transition that Belinda at first didn’t know how to respond.

My God, it’s true. We’re actually being kicked out of our home.

“Nancy, I’m confused. I was just visited by a sheriff’s deputy who served me with eviction papers. What’s this all about?”

“Nice of you to finally return my calls. Sad that it took involving the authorities to make you do so though. I have no problem calling off my dogs, so to speak, as long as you pay your back rent and late fees, and reimburse me for the eviction costs. I truly don’t have the time or patience to be looking for another tenant, so as long as you make good and settle your debts with me, I see no reason why you can’t stay.”

“Nancy, I’m sure our rent is paid. I have receipts from you saying as much.”

“I’m sure that you do not. I might be old, Mrs. Walsh, but I am of sound mind. You cannot get over on me because you think I might be senile. Even if I had made a mistake, my accountant would not have, and he has informed me that you’ve not paid the rent due at that property in over five months. I’ve called you and your husband Daniel multiple times in the past ninety days, almost daily, in fact, but you’ve neither answered the phone nor returned my calls. The last I heard from your husband, you’d changed your number. I haven’t been able to reach either of you since.”

“Changed my number? My number hasn’t changed. I’ve had the same number for the past three—no, four—years.”

“Your husband told me you’d lost your phone. I only remember so clearly because I had to have my granddaughter show me how to delete your old number from my cellular phone and add the new one. Damn this technology these days. Moves too fast for me. Anyway, you’ve not answered the new number and, as you know, I live out of state. No way I could’ve justified driving over four hours just to knock on your door and find you hiding in my house.”

This isn’t your house, you old bitch. It’s mine.

“I have receipts, Nancy. I can scan then and email them to you.”

“You can send a picture text with your phone, I assume?”

“Yes, I can.”

“You may do that then. I’d like to see these receipts.”

“I’ll need to hang up to do that.”

“Very well. I’ll call you back once I receive the pictures… Although I’m sure they do not exist. I cannot imagine my accountant and I both screwed up so horribly.”

She ended the call and sat the phone on the table.