The Page the Landlord Never Read

Mildred Nolan had changed out of her yellow vest into a church cardigan and had Brandon with her, since it was Saturday, with a coloring book. Virgil Dillard stood by the mailboxes in a clean shirt, hands folded in front like an usher. Tina Okerlund had brought a box of day-old rolls, because she could not make herself come empty-handed. Lorna had come with 4 folding chairs from the library and set them out in the hallway in a row, and old Lowell Pickett sat in the first of them with his hat on his knee and his eyes closed, looking like a man who had been there since before the building was built.

Mrs. Janssen, from the second floor, who owned the cat, had come down in her housecoat with the pink paper she had received 2 days before. “He gave me one too,” she said to me. “I’ve had Muffin for 8 years. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to be trouble.”

“You’re not trouble, Ruby,” Mildred said. She said it in her crossing guard voice. “We’re all in a hallway.”

Walt stood at his door with Bishop sitting square against his left leg in the harness. He had on his good gray jacket, the one he wears to tune at funerals. He had combed his hair with water.

“How many?” he asked me softly.

“Seven. Counting a boy with a coloring book.”

“Is anybody making a face?”

“No,” I said. “They’re all just standing there.”

“Good,” my brother said. “That’s the right thing to do.”

At 10 exactly the front door opened and Todd Brandt walked in with his clipboard.

He took two steps into the hallway and stopped.

I will say this for him. He did not turn around. He did not reach for his phone. He stood in his good boots on the worn tile of the building he owned, looking down a hallway of quiet people in folding chairs, and I watched the confident man go out of his shoulders.

“Good morning,” he said. “I’m, uh. I think I have the wrong day.”

“You have the right day, Mr. Brandt,” I said, and I came out of my doorway with the folded page in my hand. “This is the walk-through.”

He looked at them one at a time. He seemed to be counting faces, the way you count heads when you drive past a church parking lot and realize it is a funeral.

“Are these your guests?” he asked me.

“No,” I said. “These are the people who walk the route.”

“The route.”

“The route Bishop takes my brother on every day. Elm to Second. Past the barbershop and the bakery and the library, and the crossing at the school.” I put the page into his hand. “I told you I’d bring something for you to read. This is it.”

He took it with the same careless hand he had used to give Walt the pink notice. Then he glanced down at it, and I watched him begin to read. He read the heading. I saw his lips move on the words assistance animals. He read the first line, and then the second.

“This is for emotional support animals, isn’t it?” he said. “I’ve had a lot of trouble with those. I had a tenant last year claim a ‘support dog’ and that animal tore up $4,100 worth of carpet and subfloor. I got nothing for it. I can’t have that happen in this building.”