Zoe continues to work with her figures. She could cut back on her cigarettes and eat more at Murray’s. She should be able to come up with $180 left over. One hundred eighty. It sounds like so much, but—
“You going to stand there, or you going to come up and take a look?”
Zoe jumps, her cigarette tumbling from her fingers into the gutter. Pay stubs and figures disappear from her vision, and she focuses on the person who appeared out of nowhere. A brown grocery bag is in her arms.
“Excuse me?” she says to the wild-haired woman she saw in the garden five days ago.
“I’ve seen you here three or four times now. Guessed you were checking out the neighborhood. You must’ve figured out by now that we don’t have any roving gangs around here—a couple folks whose cheese has slid off their cracker, but that’s about it. So, you ready to see the room?”
Zoe thinks the old lady’s voice doesn’t match her attitude. She is assertive, almost snippy, confident in a crazy, old-woman way, but she is smiling, and her voice is soft, lyrical. It reminds Zoe of a bird.
“Is it your room?”
The old lady snorts. “My house. So I guess it must be my room, too. Here. Let’s go.” She shoves the bag of groceries into Zoe’s arms and starts walking. Zoe follows.
“But I really don’t have time….” Zoe tries to turn her wrist so she can see her watch, but the groceries prevent her. What is she doing? “Ma’am?”
But the lady keeps walking. Down the sidewalk, up the drive, around to a side walkway, finally stopping at the bottom of a narrow stairway that hugs the side of the garage. She raises her foot to the first step and turns to Zoe.
“Has its own entrance so you can come and go when you want—you keep crazy hours?”
Zoe hesitates, trying to decide. Is midnight crazy on a weeknight? She doesn’t think so. Weekends are different, but she could change that.
“No, not too crazy.”
“Too bad. I’m up all hours—never could keep a schedule.” She chuckles, and takes another step up.
“Wait!” Zoe stops her. “Shouldn’t I find out how much first? That is, what you’re asking for the room?”
The lady turns, and combs her wild corkscrew wisps back with her fingers. “Two hundred a month,” she says.
In an instant, Zoe feels the heavy, stale air of the hallway sweep over her and sees rumpled, dirty sheets. She smells the cold, never-eaten eggs in the kitchen and the sweet stench of burgundy-stained glasses drowning in soap bubbles. She knows she needs to say something, but no words come.
The lady slaps her hand on the stair rail like she has just remembered something. “Leastways, that’s what I was asking, but seeing as I haven’t had any takers, I’m having a blow-out sale—today it goes for one-fifty. That includes utilities and a plot in the garden.”
A sale? One-hundred fifty? That would leave her with thirty dollars to spare. A finger of wind ruffles Zoe’s hair and she smells the autumn crocus breezing up from the garden.
Four
The lady rummages through her pocket for the key. “I still have a few things in there, but I can take them out if they don’t ka-nish with your ka-nash.” She slides the key into the lock, and the door swings open. Zoe steps inside. The old lady takes the groceries from her arms and sets them on a small half-circle table next to the door. “This is it,” she says.
Zoe’s arms prickle. She turns, trying to take it all in. A dull ache grows in her chest. It is not for her. It is too much. A real room with real floors and walls. A room for sleeping and reading and dancing and…in her imagination she has pictured the room, but she has never seen herself in it.
Her shoes squeak as she turns on the polished wooden floors. The room takes up the whole space over the garage. On the opposite wall is a jukebox showing signs of age, parts of its chrome grill mottled with black and green splotches, with real 45s lining the back, waiting to be pulled forward by a poised mechanical arm. Next to it is a bed, a large four-poster with wood so dark it is nearly black, like the old oiled pews at Ruby First Baptist. The mattress is white-tufted bareness, waiting for someone…someone to cover it with a spread.
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Her eyes continue to scan the room. A large-paned window that looks out on the street and driveway fills the room with shafts of late-afternoon light. A deep window seat with a hodgepodge of worn, colorful pillows lies below it. To the right is an old wooden dresser, the same coffee-black color as the four-poster bed. It holds a large brass clock in the shape of a panther, the time ticking away across its belly. The clock is reflected in the ornate carved mirror behind it, so two panthers creep in unison across the dark dresser. The reflection in the mirror draws Zoe’s eyes to the ceiling for the first time. She leans her head back to take it all in. It is deep indigo blue, like a rich velvet blanket to keep everything underneath safe and warm. It is as deep and dark as the Ruby sky on a moonless night. She can barely see faint luminescent spots scattered across the blue expanse. Stars, she thinks. This crazy, corkscrew-haired lady has painted stars on her ceiling.
She lowers her gaze and continues around the room. In the corner, to the right of the entrance is a makeshift kitchenette, obviously new and added on. It has a tiny refrigerator, a small sink with a narrow tiled counter, and a huge wooden hutch that holds a hot plate and a coffeemaker.
“What do you think?” the lady asks.
She wants to say it is magnificent. She wants to run over to the bed and jump up and down on the mattress like a ten-year-old, reaching up to touch the ceiling and the stars and screaming and laughing, I will take it, I will take it, but she knows she needs to say something else.
“It’s nice,” she says. “Why are you renting it out?” She is glad her words come out calm and even, like she has done this before, like she knows what to ask when she doesn’t.
The old lady’s eyes meet Zoe’s, and for the first time Zoe notices their color—clear light amber with flecks of faded green. “Fair question,” the lady says as she pulls a package of red licorice from the grocery bag and rips it open. She offers a strand to Zoe then takes one for herself. “My tax man suggested it. Said it’s a way to ‘defray costs,’ a fancy way of saying it will help make ends meet. Guess he’s right. The damn house has been paid off for years, but taxes and licorice keep going up, and Social Security doesn’t.”