Chapter Two
Archer
Night off, which means it's just me, a bathroom faucet that's been dripping since sometime last month, and enough quiet to hear myself think for once.
I've got the wrench out, the shutoff valve closed, the old washer sitting in my palm looking about as tired as it feels when the phone buzzes on the counter behind me.
Unknown number. Nine forty on a Tuesday, which around here means either Simon, my boss, calling to not really check in, or somebody who dialed a digit wrong.
"State your business."
"Oh, I'll state my business."
That's the whole warning I get. No hello, no wrong number, no is this even the right person, just straight into it, a full sprint out of the gate, something about a thirty-day notice and zero warning and a word I haven't heard outside a courtroom, unconscionable.
I open my mouth to tell her she's got the wrong guy, wrong everything, and she plows straight through the sound of me breathing in to speak.
I close my mouth again. Fine. Let her run herself out.
Wrench still in one hand, I lean against the sink and let it happen. "I have autopay," she informs me, as if I've personally accused her of something. "I have a spreadsheet. Color-coded. Rent is blue, I never miss blue, I have never once in my life missed blue."
I grunt, mostly to slow her down, and it backfires because she takes it as agreement and keeps going.
Something about a roommate named Vicky, and a Danny, and a forwarding address pending, and by the time she gets to leaving reviews on multiple platforms written by a woman with a marketing degree and nothing left to lose, I've set the wrench down on the counter, quiet, like it might interrupt her if I move too fast.
"I got laid off today," she says, dropping it into the middle of her own tirade like she expects me to do something with it. "From a very good job. With a title."
I don't grunt this time. I've learned that lesson already.
She keeps going, something about the timing being insulting, something about wanting it noted in a file about her, the file where she is correct.
Her voice cracks on the last part of a sentence, and something in my chest does an unwelcome thing in response, a hitch I didn't ask for and don't have room for tonight, standing in my bathroom with a dead faucet and a stranger's whole week landing on me sideways.
Then she gives me a deadline. Tomorrow morning, exact figure, or a lawyer who works for spite.
And she hangs up.
I stand there holding a dead phone to my ear for a solid three seconds, waiting for irritation to finish arriving. It doesn't finish. That's the part that bothers me.
The faucet's still dripping. I look at it like it's responsible for some of this, then set the phone down on the edge of the sink and go back to work, because that's the sane thing to do, the closed-question thing to do.
Wrong number. Not my problem. Somewhere out there, a landlord's about to have a very bad morning, and it won’t be me.
I get the new washer in. Get the valve open again, test it, and watch the drip stop for the first time in a month.
Should feel like something, fixing a thing that's been broken this long.
Mostly what I feel is a woman's voice still going in my head, blue rent, the file where I'm correct, a crack in her voice she probably doesn't know I heard.
I pick the phone back up before I've decided to.
Correcting a mistake. That's all this is. Somebody ought to tell her she just spent four minutes building a legal case against a man who fixes his own faucets and doesn't own a single rental property, before she wastes tomorrow morning doing the same thing to whoever actually holds her lease.
I dial the number back.
Two rings, then a click, then a voice that isn't hers, isn't anybody's, really, just the flat, professional cadence of a recording. "You've reached Maya Reyes, Senior Marketing Manager. I'm unable to take your call, but if you leave a message—"
Senior Marketing Manager. Recorded some other week, some other version of her life, before whatever happened today took the title away and left her yelling at strangers about spreadsheets instead.
I don't leave a message. I hang up before the beep, which is its own kind of coward's move, and stand there in my kitchen holding a dead phone for the second time tonight over the same woman.
Fine. She's screening. Smart, given the day she's had. I still don't love it.
I dial again.
This one's out of principle now, if I'm honest with myself, which I try to be even when it's inconvenient. She interrupted my night once already with somebody else's grievance, and the least she can do is pick up long enough for me to hand the problem back to its rightful owner.
Same two rings. Same recording. Senior Marketing Manager, still unable to take my call.
The beep comes before I've decided what I'm going to say, which means what comes out isn't exactly planned.
"This is the guy you yelled at for four minutes about a spreadsheet.
" I let that sit a second, hear how it sounds, decide I don't care.
"Wrong number. I'm not your landlord; I don't have your file, and I definitely don't have the deposit you think I'm sitting on.
You might want to actually dial the guy next time.
Hope the eviction thing works out." A pause longer than it needs to be.
"For what it's worth. The blue rent thing. Solid system."
I hang up before I can hear how that lands, because there's no way to hear it; it's a voicemail, but some habits don't care about logic.
I stand in my kitchen for a minute, phone still in hand, waiting on nothing.
She won’t call back off a voicemail like that.
Nobody would. I've just left a woman I've never met a message that's half correction, half compliment on her spreadsheet, and there's no version of that where she hears it tonight and it goes anywhere at all.
Text is cleaner anyway. Less room for either of us to say something we'll regret.
Me: Wrong number. Not your landlord. Figured you'd want to know before you lawyer up over nothing.
I send it and set the phone face down on the counter, which is a habit I don't examine too closely, the setting-it-down-face-down part, like there's something in me that doesn't want to watch it not light up.
It doesn't light up.
I go back to the bathroom, admire the faucet not dripping for a minute, because a job finished clean is still a job finished clean regardless of what else is going on in a man's night.
Rain starts up somewhere past ten, the kind that comes in sideways this high up, tapping the windows like it's got somewhere to be.
I check the phone twice in the next hour, which is twice more than I've checked a phone in longer than I want to think about, and both times it's as quiet as the first.
Makes sense. Woman's had a night where an unknown number calling twice and leaving a voicemail reads as a debt collector. I'd screen me too.
Still. There's a version of tonight where she calls back, hears the voicemail, laughs at the blue rent line the way I halfway meant her to, and something in me that's been quiet a long time gets to not be quiet for five more minutes.
That version doesn't happen, not yet. I know that by eleven, when the rain's settled into a steady drum and the cabin's back to its usual size, and I'm sitting in a chair I built with my own two hands, listening to weather instead of a phone that isn't going to ring.
I don't delete the number. Didn't plan to; wasn't going to pretend otherwise, even to myself.
Seems like a waste, deleting a number attached to a voicemail somebody's going to want an explanation for eventually, whether tonight or not.