Rent Hike

Magali and Diego

Magali frowned. One of the workmen had left his big shoe print on her wall. Every time they came to work in the apartment, they left some mess behind for her to clean. They had finally finished installing the new countertops; for a whole week, Magali had been unable to use her kitchen. She and her husband had to take their sons to Mercado Central every night for dinner. She never thought she’d come to the point where she couldn’t stand to look at another pupusa.

Before the countertops, the workmen had come to 2601 Stevens Avenue to put new carpet in the hallways. Magali and her family had to spend an entire weekend cooped up in the apartment, waiting for the glue to dry. The sconces in the hallways were new too. Magali thought they looked cheap, but management called them an “upgrade.”

Magali grabbed a spray bottle and scrubbed the big ugly foot off of her wall. When she was finished, she lifted the plastic that covered her counters so she could get a look at the new granite. It was pretty. Black with little silver flecks. The new tenants would enjoy it. She ran her fingers over its cold, smooth surface. The old countertops were made of wood, knife-scarred and cherry popsicle-stained. For ten years, Magali had been careful to cover the crescent-shaped burn mark that a previous tenant caused when they took a pan off the flame and set it directly on the wood. Some stupid kids must have done it. One of the maintenance people saw it and tried to blame Magali for the ugly moon tattoo until she showed them photos from the day she moved in. 

Every day for ten years, she had prepared a big pot of yellow rice with peas to serve alongside pollo empanizado or bistec a la Mexicana. The old countertops had purple stains from the sweating pitchers of agua de jamaica that she brewed to serve on hot days. Traces of masa flour were embedded so deeply in some of the knife slashes that Magali couldn’t get it out no matter how hard she scrubbed. 

She could see her reflection in the surface of the polished granite. That’s all the new people will see, she thought. Their own faces.

“Hola, mi amor,” Diego said as he walked through the apartment door. He kissed the velvety spot underneath her ear the same way he’d done every day since they were newlyweds.

“You remember Ramon Cespedes?” he asked.

Magali nodded. She pulled down the plastic and waited for him to grab an end so he could help her fold it.

“He is getting back together with his mujer. He says we can move into his house.”

“A house?” Visions of tomatoes exploding from terra cotta pots and grapes crawling along a wooden fence flashed across Magali’s mind. Just as quickly, her enthusiasm faded. “Ramon has gotten back together with her five times already. We won’t be there a week before he asks us to move out.”

“Ramon wouldn’t do that to us,” Diego insisted. “And anyway, it hasn’t been five times. Four at most.”

“It is a lovely house,” Magali conceded, remembering the wide porch and the willow tree in the front yard. The kitchen was twice the size of the apartment, with a separate little room for storing rice and flour and canned vegetables.

“We go all the way back to Chiapas, me and Ramon,” Diego said. He took the folded plastic sheet from Magali and set it next to the door. “The boys are getting too big for apartment life.”

“I just wish we didn’t have to go,” she sighed. She rested her head in the curve of his neck. She felt his arm encircle her back. 

“Quizás es una bendición disfrazada,” he whispered. Diego had wanted to leave the apartment for a long time, but their small savings had only grown a little bit at a time. Too many people he’d known had bought houses only to lose them. Of course, he’d never imagined that this little apartment would be the home he’d end up losing.

Magali didn’t answer. The apartment didn’t let in very much light and sometimes the hallway smelled like burning plastic. Occasionally, screaming from the apartment below kept them all awake at night. Still, after ten years, it wouldn’t be so easy to leave the keys on the counter and walk away forever.

Berit

Berit lived across the hall from Magali and Diego. When she received the note from management -- the one that said she’d have to start paying double her rent in 90 days or move out -- she put her fist through the sheetrock. She should’ve known that all the “improvements” -- the countertops, the carpet in the halls, the sconces -- were for somebody better than her. 

When she’d called to complain about the crackheads in the apartment next to hers, management hadn’t done a damn thing. It wasn’t until after they started renovating that they finally started taking her seriously. After all, they couldn’t risk having drug addicts puke on the pristine new rugs. 

It was September when Berit noticed that the building was slowly emptying out. The crackheads were the first ones to receive an eviction notice. Then, the couple downstairs whose blowouts brought squads to the building every weekend quickly packed up and disappeared. Berit thought that management had finally wised up and was just cleaning house, but when she realized that no one new had moved into those units, a nervous feeling began to calcify in the pit of her stomach. 

One afternoon in late October, Berit arrived home just as one of her neighbors struggled to get her mattress through the front door. Berit dropped her backpack on the sidewalk and grabbed one end of the mattress. After they set it down inside the U-Haul, Berit asked the girl why she was moving.

“I was late with the rent, so they kicked me out. The weird thing is, I always paid on the 5th of the month because that’s when I get paid. They knew that. They never cared before.”

Berit felt a chill. 

“Where are you moving to?”

“I found a place in Fridley,” the girl replied sadly. “It’s across the street from a strip mall. It has a Subway and a Dollar Tree, so at least there will be something to do.” 

After the U-haul drove away, Berit picked up her backpack and went for a walk down Nicollet Avenue. At the Black Forest Inn, flowers spilled over the sides of Bavarian-style window boxes. A few doors down, families crowded into Quang for bubble tea and pho. At Marissa’s Panaderia, brightly-colored pastries glowed in their display cases. Outside of Marhaba, a large white tent took up most of the space in the parking lot. Inside, Muslim families feasted after a long day of fasting. 

Berit tried to picture herself in Fridley, buying Subway sandwiches to take home and eat in her apartment overlooking the freeway. The lights of the avenue blurred as tears filled her eyes. She pulled out her phone and dialed the number of a friend who worked in a city councilwoman’s office.

“Jory, it's Berit,” she shouted over the hiss of a bus’s hydraulic brakes, “did you get a chance to talk to her?” She jammed a finger in one ear so she would be able to hear over the thump of a car stereo. 

“Berit, can we talk about this later?”

“Just tell me! Did you talk to her or not?”

“Talk to her about what?”

Berit bit the inside of her lip. “The rent hike!”

“Oh, that,” he said. Berit thought she heard soft music in the background, the chiming of silverware on china. Oh, that. Oh, THAT. Berit had spoken with Jory about the rent hike at least twice and both times he’d promised that the city councilwoman could -- would do something about it. Oh, that?! “I’m sorry, Berit. She said there’s nothing she can do. Everything they’re doing is completely legal.”

“But she campaigned on affordable housing!”

“I’m sorry, I really have to go,” he said, and then the line went silent. She dialed his number again, and this time it went straight to voicemail. 

“I will NOT move to the suburbs!” Berit screamed. She shoved the phone into her pocket. 

Svetlana and Clarence

When the elevator worked, it always had a different smell: cigarettes, body odor, greasy takeout, stale vomit. When it didn’t work, the car stalled between floors and the doors didn’t open at all. It reminded Svetlana of the building she’d grown up in on Moscow’s outer edge. That 12-story pile of Stalinist concrete stood at the end of the Zamoskovretskaya metro line; when she was a student at the Moscow State University, it took her an hour to commute each morning and another hour back at night. On those long rides home, all she could think about was her future in America, where people had houses and lawns and could go around town in the comfort of their own cars.

Now that the new carpet had been laid, the elevator was finally fully repaired. As she rode up to Clarence’s top-floor apartment, Svetlana couldn’t help but think about the time the elevator screeched to a halt halfway between floors, trapping her and poor Clarence inside. Clarence gripped the sides of his wheelchair and shouted something Svetlana couldn’t fully understand, something about the Viet Cong. When she finally managed to calm him down, he explained that he thought he was “back in the tunnels.” It took almost two hours for the fire department to arrive and get them out.

When she reached the apartment, Svetlana found Clarence sitting in front of the TV watching the Weather Channel. Most of his boxes were already packed. Svetlana had been trying to get Clarence to move even before the rent hike. He had COPD from decades of smoking and spinal lesions from Agent Orange. A man in his condition needed to be in a building with an elevator that worked. It was the rent hike that finally convinced him it was time to go. The increase would eat up his entire SSI check. 

“How do you feel today?” she asked as she put her stethoscope into her ears so she could check his vital signs. 

“A little better,” he coughed. 

Svetlana was the only home care nurse that Clarence actually liked. He went through four of them before she came along. All of the other ones had reminded him too much of the way his family had been when he came back from the war. 

They just didn’t get it. 

Svetlana was different. Nothing ever seemed to surprise her. She’d listen to his stories about napalm with an expressionless face, then counter with her own stories of Chechen civilians whose lungs had been turned inside out by Russia’s vacuum bombs. One of Svetlana’s University professors had helped her get a job with the Russian Red Cross after she received her certification. 

“I see you’re ready for the move,” she said as she jotted down his pulse and his blood pressure. Clarence responded with a grunt. Svetlana smiled. He only grunted like that when he couldn’t think of anything to complain about.

Clarence had lived in the building since it was new. He was discharged honorably from the 1st Cavalry Division in 1969. He moved back in with his parents, who were living in a rambler in the suburbs then, for about three weeks. Listening to his father go on about how proud he was of Clarence for earning a Bronze Star made his skin jump like it was being hit with droplets of hot oil. When his mother talked, her voice sounded just like Hanoi Hannah chirping away over the VC’s radio waves.

He left early one morning while they were still asleep and signed the lease for apartment 5A at 2601 Stevens Avenue later that day. Back then, the canary-yellow bathroom tiles gleamed and none of the faucets leaked. The whole place smelled like fresh paint. He spent the first few nights asleep on the floor, his face buried in the soft, clean carpet. 

Magali and Diego

“Corazon, I don’t think we have any choice. Did you see the way that woman looked at us when we told her we had kids?” Diego said one night as he and Magali pulled back the covers on their bed.

“They can’t reject us for having kids. That’s illegal here.” The two boys were asleep in their small bunk-beds in the bedroom next to theirs. Their room was no bigger than the one they’d seen in the apartment earlier that day.

It’s really more of a den, the realtor had said as she showed them the second bedroom. She’d smiled when she said it. Magali noticed the spot of waxy pink lipstick on her front tooth. Her chiffon blouse looked expensive.

“She said they had twelve applicants for that apartment. They can discriminate all they want.”

“I just don’t think moving into Ramon’s house is a good idea. Ella le mandará freir espárragos, como siempre. Then we’ll be in the same place we are now. I’d rather find something that is ours.”

Magali closed her eyes. She heard Diego mutter, “This was ours.”

As Diego drifted off to sleep, Magali stared at their bedroom window. She always kept the curtains closed because it looked out onto the Dumptser in the parking lot. 

Berit

In the hallway, Berit ran into the nurse who took care of the old man who lived upstairs as she was leaving.

“Are you alright?” Svetlana asked. It always surprised Berit that the nurse’s accent sounded slightly more British than Russian.

“Fine,” Berit answered. 

“You’re sure? You look upset.”

“It’s just how my face is,” Berit replied. She wished people would stop asking her how she was. She couldn’t help having Resting Bitch Face. Maybe if she got a brow lift, people would leave her alone.

Before the nurse opened the door to the outside world, Berit turned to her and asked, “The old man -- he has somewhere to go?”

“He has a nephew,” Svetlana said. “Have you found a place?”

Berit shook her head. Her credit was shit. She’d fallen behind on her student loan payments and had a habit of throwing out the letters they sent without reading them, so now she couldn’t qualify for an illegal basement sublet. The old man was lucky he had family who could take him in.

“You should just call every friend you have. Someone will know something.”

Berit scoffed inwardly. Cold call a bunch of acquaintances and beg for a couch to surf? But later that evening, she scrolled through Facebook and saw a picture that her friend Danny had posted of an empty room. She barely knew Danny. She’d gone to a party once and Danny was there, sipping a margarita under the glow of paper lanterns. He showed her a picture of his dog and the next day he sent her a friend request. That was last fall — almost a year ago.

Berit hesitated before she clicked on “message.” She carefully tapped out a note and held her breath when she hit “send.”

Clarence

Blank squares where pictures had hung revealed how filthy the walls were. The white patches reminded Clarence of the way the walls had looked when he first moved in, during those first few weeks when he was the only one in the building, when he still hadn’t bought a bed. 

He’d kept his war ribbons in a shadow box that hung on the wall opposite the door. It was the first thing everyone saw when they entered his apartment. It held his Vietnam service ribbon, his Tet Offensive commemorative medal, his Bronze Star and his Vietnam Campaign ribbon with the green and white stripes. He also had a black-red-and-white POW ribbon that a buddy’s old lady had sent to him. Poor Benny. His old bones were still in Quang Tri. Just because the army couldn’t find them didn’t mean they weren’t there. 

The shadow box would be the first thing Clarence hung in his new room in his nephew’s house. 

His nephew had served in Iraq. He would understand. 

Magali

They celebrated their first weekend in the new house with a big party. Brightly-colored papel picado stretched from one end of the yard to the other. The picnic tables held bowls of vinegared chili peppers, salsa verde and pico de gallo. Steaks hissed on the grill. In the kitchen, tamales steamed in a 32-quart steel stockpot. Bottles of Pacifico chilled in an ice-filled cooler. A tray of empanadas stuffed with gooey pineapple jam sat on the kitchen counter, while a tres leches cake rested in the refrigerator, safely tucked away in a pink cardboard box.

Moving had been easier than Magali had predicted. Diego and the boys were so eager to move into the new house, they didn’t give her time to linger or take one last look at anything. With all of their belongings moved out, the whole place just looked blank and gloomy. With the new counters, it looked nothing like it had when they had moved in. Magali gathered the keys and set them on the counter before rushing out to meet the rest of the family in the truck.

On their first night in the new house, Magali took out a candle and prayed to Saint Joseph, begging him to keep Ramon Cespedes and his girlfriend together. When she was finished, she could hear the crickets chirping. She found Diego sitting on the porch. She sat next to him on the couch and rested her head on his shoulder. She gazed at the willow tree, silhouetted against the amber glow of the streetlight. 

Saint Valentine, Saint Raphael, Saint Monica, Saint Joseph - keep them together forever so we never have to leave.

When they arrived at the party, Magali heard Ramon and his girlfriend, Ana, arguing. It made her shiver.

Now, she was alone in the kitchen with Ana who was helping her remove the tamales from the stockpot. Ana was blonde and fat with silvery eyeshadow painted all the way up to her brows. 

“How do you like the house?” asked Ana.

“Me gusta mucho. With this yard to run around in, the boys tire themselves out. They sleep better than they ever have before.”

“I knew you would be happy here,” Ana said. 

Magali grabbed onto Ana’s wrist, causing her to spill a little bit of her sangria. 

“Ana,” Magali whispered, “please don’t kick him out again. I don’t know where we will go if Ramon asks us to leave.”

Ana furrowed her brow. “Ramon would never do that.”

“Ana, promise me, please.”

“You worry too much, Magalita!” Ana smiled and squeezed Magali’s shoulder. If Ana was right, then why did Magali have this strange feeling like her collarbone was pressing down on her lungs, and why didn’t it ever go away?

Clarence

With the last of his stuff out of the apartment, Clarence waited on the sidewalk for his nephew to help him out of his wheelchair and into his car. He took one last look at the front of the building. When it was new, it looked like all of the other buildings that went up in the ’60s. Square with blonde bricks and a row of decorative blue tile running down the center. As it aged, it became drab and ugly. Now, the bricks and the tile were painted dark gray. There was a new entryway with a bright yellow canopy and the building’s address spelled out in three-dimensional numbers on top. 

For 50 years, he’d lived alone in that little apartment, leaving the TV on when he felt like it, washing dishes when he got around to it, going for days or even weeks without speaking to or seeing anyone when it suited him. Now there would be someone else around all the time. His nephew promised that they would light a fire in the backyard, roast hot dogs and tell war stories. 

Maybe it will be fine, Clarence thought. He studied the brick and their new coat of gray paint. He tried to imagine the people who would be moving in. He supposed it would be mostly kids whose parents had too much money and people from California. 

Maybe it will be better, he decided.

Berit

2601 Stevens was empty save for Berit. She loaded the last of her boxes onto a hand truck and stopped to take one last look around. Hours earlier, before her friends arrived with their pickup, she’d grabbed a container of bacon grease and made finger paintings all over the new granite countertops. Now, with the windows shut tight and the afternoon sun burning hotter, the grease turned rancid, and the stench filled the whole apartment. 

She imagined what it would be like to strike a match and drop it onto the whorls of grease.

Flames would leap up and pirouette as they raced from one end of the counter to the other. The overhead sprinkler would kick on and spit weakly onto the counter causing the flames to erupt and kiss the ceiling. The apartment would quickly fill with smoke so black everything would vanish. The alarm would shriek and the white strobe would flash. Soon, the firefighters would come.

Berit imagined the Nylon carpet fibers melting, creating a molten river as the flames spread toward the apartment door and into the hallway.

In the hallway, the elevator bell sounded. 

“Berit, let’s go,” Danny shouted impatiently. Berit tossed the apartment keys onto the grease-slicked counter and pushed the hand truck toward the elevator. Danny shared the top floor of a duplex with his brother who had moved to Japan to teach English. Berit would miss living alone, but at least she wouldn’t be living across from a dingy strip mall in a dreary inner-ring suburb. 

“I’m starving,” Danny said as they loaded her boxes onto the elevator. “As soon as we’re done getting your boxes into the house, let’s go to Subway.”

Danny pressed the button for Level 1 and Berit watched the elevator doors close. 

Author’s note: In the original version of this story, Berit actually sets fire to the apartment. After giving it some thought, I realized it would be better for her to fantasize about setting it on fire as she leaves to move in with someone she barely knows. Committing such a serious felony seemed over the top for the character, especially since her main goal is to avoid moving to a boring suburb.

What do you think, readers? If you think I should have left in the original ending, let me know in the comments!