Chapter 2 What The Landlord Wants

Lucas got home a little after six, and the first thing he heard through the door was Zuri's laughter, high and unguarded, the kind that only came out when she felt completely safe.

"Uncle Lucas!" That was Blessing, Comfort's youngest, singing the greeting even though he wasn't anybody's uncle by blood. Zuri's face lit up when she saw him in the doorway, but she didn't run to him yet — she was in the middle of "helping" Comfort's older daughter braid a doll's hair, and abandoning a task halfway was not something Zuri believed in.

"Evening, evening," Comfort said from her spot on a low stool outside her own door, shelling beans into a bowl balanced on her knees. Her three children and Zuri were sprawled around her on a mat, the day's homework forgotten in favor of the doll. "She ate small rice with the children. I hope that's fine."

"You didn't have to feed her too, Comfort."

"Ehn, one more mouth in this house, nobody will notice." She waved a hand like the matter was already closed, the way she always did, and Lucas felt, not for the first time, the specific weight of owing someone who refused to let you feel you owed them.

It had started three months ago, almost by accident. Comfort's second daughter was in the same nursery class as Zuri, same gate, same 2 p.m. closing time that no working parent in this neighborhood could ever actually make. Comfort picked up all four of the street's children most days — hers, Zuri, and two others — walked them home in a loose, chattering line, fed whoever needed feeding, and handed them back to their parents in the evening like nothing about it was remarkable at all.

Lucas paid her when he could. She always tried to refuse it and always, eventually, took it, because she had four children of her own and pride didn't fill anybody's stomach. But money wasn't really the currency between them, not the important kind. The important kind was that Comfort never once looked at him like a man who couldn't manage. She looked at him like a neighbor. That mattered more than she probably knew.

"Zuri," he called. "Baby, we're going home."

She looked up, considered whether the doll's hair could survive without her a little longer, decided it could, and abandoned it with the swift, total commitment small children brought to changing their minds. "Daddy!" She ran at him, and he caught her, toolbox still in one hand, and she buried her face in his neck the way she always did, like she was checking he was really there.

"Thank you," he said to Comfort, over Zuri's head. He meant it for more than the rice.

"Go and rest," Comfort said, already turning back to her beans. "Tomorrow is another day."

Their room was two streets over — one door, one window with a curtain that never quite closed all the way, one mattress in the corner. Lucas set Zuri down, and she immediately climbed onto the plastic chair and announced, with the gravity of someone delivering serious news, that Mr. Bear had been naughty all day.

"Was he."

"He didn't want to share his toys with Blessing."

"Sounds like Mr. Bear needs a talking-to."

"I already gave him one."

Lucas laughed — a real one, short and rough, like it surprised him coming out. Those were rarer than people would guess. He looked around the room out of habit, the way he did every evening, cataloguing what needed doing. The bucket under the leak in the ceiling was two-thirds full. He'd empty it before bed. The stove had enough gas for one more week if he was careful. The rice bag in the corner was lower than he wanted to think about.

He was mid-thought when the knock came.

Three sharp raps. He knew before he opened it who it was.

"Evening, Mr. Okon." Landlord Bassey had a way of standing in doorways like he was already halfway to leaving, like the visit was beneath him. He held a folded piece of paper, tapping it against his palm. "You know why I'm here."

"I know," Lucas said quietly. He glanced back — Zuri had gone still on the chair, watching, the way she always went still when adult voices got a certain flatness to them. She was too good at reading rooms for a child her age. He hated that about this life. That she'd had to learn it.

"Rent was due Friday. This is Tuesday."

"I have some of it now. The rest by the weekend, I promise you."

Bassey sighed like a man performing patience for an audience. "Mr. Okon, I like you. You're not like the others on this street, always shouting, always owing everybody. But I have a family too. I can't be running a charity."

"I understand."

"Do you?" Bassey's eyes flicked past him, to Zuri, then back. Something almost like sympathy crossed his face, quickly buried. "Weekend. Not a day after."

"Weekend," Lucas agreed.

The door shut. Lucas stood there a moment with his hand still on the frame, breathing out slowly through his nose, doing the thing he did now instead of falling apart — counting backward from ten, silently, until his face could be a father's face again instead of whatever it wanted to be.

When he turned around, Zuri was still watching him.

"Are we in trouble?" she asked.

He crouched down in front of her, the way he always did when something needed to be said properly, at her eye level, not down at her like she was small enough to lie to.

"No, princess. Grown-up stuff. Nothing for you to carry."

"You always say that."

"Because it's always true."

She studied him with the unreasonable seriousness only children have, like she was deciding whether to let it go. Then she held up Mr. Bear.

"He says he's sorry for being naughty."

Lucas took the bear solemnly. "Apology accepted."

That night, after the rice was eaten — Lucas's portion smaller than hers, same as always, and she didn't ask why anymore, just quietly pushed a spoonful onto his plate when she thought he wasn't looking — after her bath in water he'd warmed on the stove, after the story about the fox who found his way home that she asked for every single night without fail, Lucas sat by her mattress until her breathing went slow and even.

Then he did the math again.

He always did the math again at night, like maybe it would come out different the second time. Rent. The rest of it, plus what he still owed from last month. Zuri's school fees due in three weeks. The leak that needed a roofer he couldn't afford, in a ceiling that was slowly ruining the one mattress they had between them. Something for Comfort, too, even if she wouldn't take much — he'd think of a way to make it feel like a gift and not a payment.

He had four jobs lined up this week. If all four paid, if nothing went wrong, if nobody's pipe turned out to need a part he didn't have money to buy —

He rubbed his eyes.

On the small shelf above the mattress sat the one photo he'd kept from before. Ann, laughing at something off-camera, Zuri a fat, serious baby in her arms. He didn't look at it often. Looking at it cost something he couldn't always afford to spend.

Tonight he looked at it anyway.

"I'm trying," he said, very quietly, to a woman who couldn't hear him. "I don't know if I'm doing it right. But I'm trying."

The bucket in the corner dripped, slow and steady, counting out the night.

Outside, the city kept moving the way it always did, indifferent to one man in one room doing sums that never balanced. Somewhere across town, in a house with no leaks and no landlords, a woman he'd spoken to for less than five minutes was lying awake too, turning his name over like a stone in her hand, wondering why it wouldn't sit still in her mind.

Neither of them knew yet how soon their paths would cross again.

But paths like theirs — one bending toward loss, the other toward a hunger neither money had ever fixed — rarely stay apart for long.