I pressed the lease agreement against the screen door again so he could see. It was about a hundred degrees on the front porch of the small in-law apartment. The air-conditioning from inside was bleeding through the screen door and evaporating on my face. Somehow that just made it seem hotter.
The man inside my apartment glanced at the paper, then squinted at me like I was some bizarre piece of modern art. Through the metal screen he looked even uglier than he probably was—heavyset, about forty, crew cut, features all pinched toward the center of his face. He was bare-chested and wore the kind of thick polyester gym shorts only P.E. coaches wear. Use small words, I thought.
"I rented this apartment for July fifteenth. You were supposed to move out by then. It’s July twenty-fourth."
No signs of remorse from the coach. He looked back over his shoulder, distracted by a double play on the TV. He looked at me again, now slightly annoyed.
“Look, asshole," he said. "I told Gary I needed a few extra weeks. My transfer hasn’t come through yet, okay? Maybe August you can have it."
We stared at each other. In the pecan tree next to the steps a few thousand cicadas decided to start their metallic chirping. I looked back at the cabby who was still waiting at the curb, happily reading his TV Guide while the meter ran. Then I turned back to the coach and smiled-friendly, diplomatic.
"Well," I said, "I tell you what. I’ve got the moving van coming here tomorrow from California. That means you’ve got to be out of here today. Since you’ve had a free week on my tab already, I figure I can give you an extra hour or so. I’m going to get my bags out of the cab, then when I come back you can let me in and start packing."
If it was possible for his eyes to squint any closer together, they did. "What the fuck—"
I turned my back on him and went out to the cab. I hadn’t brought much with me on the plane-one bag for clothes and one for books, plus Robert Johnson in his carrying cage. I collected my things, asked the cabby to wait, then walked back up the sidewalk. Pecans crunched under my feet. Robert Johnson was silent, still
disoriented from his traumatic flight.
The house didn’t look much better on a second take. Like most of the other sleeping giants on Queen Anne Street, Number 90 had two stories, an ancient green-shingled roof, bare wood siding where the white paint had peeled away, a huge screened-in-front porch sagging under tons of red bougainvillea. The right side of the building, where the in-law’s smaller porch stuck out, had shifted on its foundations and now drooped down and backward, as if that half of the house ad suffered a stroke.
The coach had opened the door for me. In fact he was standing in it now, smiling, holding a baseball bat.
"I said August, asshole," he told me.
I set my bags and Robert Johnson’s cage down on the bottom step. The coach smiled like you might at a dirty joke. One of his front teeth was two different colors.
"You ever try dental picks?" I said.
He developed a few new creases on his forehead.
“What—?"
“Never mind, " I said. "You got moving boxes or you just want to put your stuff in Hefty bags? You strike me as a Hefty-bag man."
“Fuck you."
I smiled and walked up the steps.
The porch was way too narrow to swing a bat, but he did his best to butt me in the chest with it. I moved sideways and stepped in next to him, grabbing his wrist. If you apply pressure correctly, you can use the nei guan point, just above the wrist joint, in place of CPR to stimulate the heart. One of the reasons Chinese grandmothers wear those long pins in their hair, in fact, is to prick the nei guan in case someone in the family has a heart attack. Apply pressure a little harder, and it sends a charge through the nervous system that is pretty unpleasant.
The coach’s face turned red; his pinched features loosened up in shock. The bat clattered down the steps. As he doubled over, clutching his arm, I pushed I through the door.
The TV was still going in the main room—a washed-up Saturday Night Live comedian was guzzling a light beer, surrounded by five or six cheerleaders.