Page 30 of Gray Area

“Listen, 3C is having a problem with the water—”

“Yeah, I’ll get to it,” he says, rolling his eyes and moving to shut the door, but I slap my palm against the door, holding it open. Tim looks at my hand on his door and then back to me. “You got a problem, buddy?” he asks me.

“Like I was saying, 3C is—”

“Do you live here?” Tim asks me.

I feel my vision starting to see red. “No.”

“Then I got nothing to say to you. Now get the fuck out of here!” Tim shouts, pushing my arm from the door. I use the same arm to fist his shirt, pushing him back into his smelly apartment and against a wall, then slamming the door shut, locking us inside together.

“I will get the fuck out of here when I am done telling you what I need to tell you,” I growl into his face. “Do you fucking understand me?”

Tim’s eyes go wide with fear, and he nods slowly, his jaw slack in panic.

“Now, you small-dicked fuck job, you may think you are king shit running this fucking slum and bullying the tenants, doing what you want, when you want. But you fucked with the wrong god damned guy. I don’t know what you are charging, but you should be paying people to live here. You got me?”

Tim gives me a little nod.

“The women in 3C had a problem with their door. Did you know that?”

Tim gave his head a small shake no, and I feel my pulse ratchet up. “Oh, no? Because they say they’ve been telling you about it for the better part of a month. So someone is lying to me, Tim.”

“I, uh, I maybe knew—”

I slam my fist into Tim’s stomach and drop him to the floor. I crouch down beside him. “I don’t fucking like people like you, and Ihatepeople who fucking lie.”

“I’ll fix the door,” Tim moans, grabbing at his gut as he writhes on the floor.

“Oh, it’s too late for that one, becauseIjust fixed it,” I explain to him. “But you will fix their water,”—Tim nods wildly—“today.”

Tim stops nodding, and starts frantically shaking his head no. “I can’t. It’s a problem with the whole building. I don’t have the money to fix it now, and it can’t be fixed in a day. I—”

I stand up and put my foot lightly on Tim’s chest. My foot moves up and down as if riding waves with the motion of Tim’s panicked breathing. “You have been collecting rent, and I know it isn’t going back into the building, so what have you been doing with it, Timmy boy? Hmm?”

“My rents are way lower than anyone else—”

“But you still get some, so what are you doing with it?” When he doesn’t immediately answer me, I move my foot, putting just enough pressure on his fat neck to upset his breathing and make him nervous.

“Horses,” he wheezes out, grabbing at my foot with both hands.

“Ah, the ponies,” I say, nodding with understanding. “Well, you seem to suck at picking those as much as you suck at being a landlord.” I push my foot down a little more. “Get the water fixed, Tim, because if you don’t, my size thirteens on your neck are going to seem like paradise compared to what else I have in store.”

I give a final shove into his neck and walk back through the door, slamming it closed behind me. My father is waiting for me in the hall, leaning on the wall opposite the apartment. He gives me a slow smile as I come out.

“What?” I demand, still hopped up on my interaction.

My father angles his head to the exit, and I follow him as we walk to my car. “What?” I ask him again.

My dad hesitates before he speaks, something I don’t recall him ever doing. “I always worried that without your mother, I was going to turn you boys into just a bunch of thugs, like me.”

“Dad, you aren’t—”

He ignores me and speaks over me. “I run some nice places, but make no mistake, Declan. Deep down, I am a thug. And I want so much more for you, but honestly I don’t know how to be anything else and provide for you boys.

“But watching you change that doorknob for Vivian, and watching you, uh, negotiate with the landlord, shows me that you aren’t a thug. You’re a man trying to help people that are struggling in the best way you can. You’re a good man, and that’s all I hoped you’d be, and I’m proud of you.”

“I just threatened the guy with my boot on his throat to fix some pipes. I don’t think that’s the tactic of a good man.”

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