Read Online The Guilty One by Sophie Littlefield - Free Book Online Page B

payment could save her from having to pass a credit check, a raft of paperwork that would probably include her social security number, driver’s license, other things with her name on them.
    Thirteen hundred dollars, if he kept the deposit, was still less than she would pay for a motel.
    â€œIt’s fully furnished,” Norris said. Now it was his turn to sound uncertain. “Linens too. Plates and cups, silverware, all that.”
    â€œCan I see it?”
    He grunted in affirmation, glaring at Pet until she shrugged and backed off. In her doorway she turned. “Good luck. I have to head to work. It’s the Coal Mine, on MacArthur. Come by if you can. If you want to. I’ll be there till closing.”
    She closed her door. If the apartment didn’t work out, this would all be over, this fragile stack of hopeful maybes. Maris wouldn’t be going to any bar then, to visit this strange new acquaintance. Probably she would give up and drive down to Alana’s.
    Alana. Oh no. As Maris followed Norris down the driveway, squeezing past his SUV, she stole a glance at her phone: three texts from Alana, but without her reading glasses she couldn’t read them. She stuffed the phone back into her purse: it would have to wait.
    The back door had a hand-lettered sign, a piece of wood sanded and painted, nice: 126B 1/2, in an old-fashioned type, gold on red.
    â€œUpstairs, that’s me, 126A. Front apartment, Pet’s, that’s 126B.”
    She saw Norris stiffen just as the smell reached her nose: garbage, rot, chemicals. He put a hand on the doorjamb and spoke testily over his shoulder. “I told you I hadn’t had a chance to clean.”
    Maris took a breath, squared her shoulders, and nodded. If it was too awful, she would just leave. She hadn’t given him any money yet. Still, she was curious now, she needed to see.
    Norris flicked a switch. The overhead fixture had a flickering bulb, lighting the main room weakly. It was both kitchen and living room, a big square space lined with pine cabinets on two walls, avocado green appliances, shredded curtains with an old-fashioned vegetable print blurred by dust. This was the house’s original kitchen, and Maris guessed it hadn’t been touched since the building was converted. In the sink were dishes—coffee cups and aluminum pots and a scratched nonstick pan with what looked like scrambled eggs crusted on it, patches of what might have been spaghetti sauce on the counter. A trash can with no lid, clouded by flies, the blackened skins of a banana resting on wadded plastic and crushed paper plates. Something coated the floor under her feet, both gritty and sticky.
    A small shape dashed by along the wall. Maris expelled her breath, and was glad she didn’t shriek. Back home, a mouse would have had her running for Jeff.
    Norris kicked something out of the way, a wrapper or trash bag. “If I’d had tonight,” he snapped, as if it was her fault.
    â€œLet me see the rest.”
    â€œNow hang on.” Norris paused again, barring her way through the passage to the rest of the apartment with his body. “Upstairs I have a new mattress and box spring, never used. I was going to set it up for the next tenant. You help me get it down the stairs . . .”
    Maris nodded once, noncommittally. Maybe. But she had to see the rest. Just how bad had it gotten, for the one who came before her?
    Norris snapped another light switch and let her pass. A tiny room led off the kitchen, barely wide enough for the single bed and old painted wood nightstand. A small square window over the head of the bed was strung with tangled metal blinds. The linens had been pulled most of the way off the bed, revealing a stained pink mattress, sagging toward the center.
    Maris knew that most mattresses, at the end of their useful lives, were stained. Even those belonging to the most meticulous. Her mother’s, before she