The Saver by Edeet Ravel

ceilings.
    I had a conversation in the hallway with this woman who lives on the fourth floor. She’s around 35, kind of high strung, with really bad taste in clothes, like a top with vinyl pink hearts, and tight white slacks with a metal belt, and high heels with sequins. Her name’s Adorée and she has an eight-year-old daughter. I really like that name – Adorée. She told me she had her daughter with a man who’s been coming to see her almost every evening and on weekend afternoons for 16 years, even though he a wife and three kids at home. And his wife doesn’t know a thing about it! He tells his wife he’s workinglate, or that he has to go to the office on the weekend to catch up, and he never lets her see how much he makes so she doesn’t know that he gives Adorée a big part of his money. He runs his own import company, so I guess he makes enough for his wife and for Adorée.
    I can’t believe his wife doesn’t know. How can you not slip up in 16 years? I mean, how clued out can a person be? Also, if Adorée goes around telling people, wouldn’t someone eventually tell his wife? But Adorée said his wife has no idea at all.
    I read a murder mystery once about a guy like that. He ended up in a cement mixer.
    Yours forever,
    Fern

Thursday
    January 10
    Hi Xanoth,
    The restaurant job was a little better yesterday. I only made about a thousand mistakes. I also managed to fill a plastic bag with scraps for Beauty. Instead of scraping food that people left on their plates into the garbage, I scraped some of it into a plastic bag to take home. Beauty couldn’t believe her luck when I filled her plate with chicken. I have enough for a week at least.
    New tenants moved into the last vacant apartment today – an old pruny woman and her son. I have a bad feeling about her. I gave them a 1 because I was sure they’d pay, but now I think maybe I should have given them a 3. I think I was just getting tired of showing the apartment. It’s the one where Victor lived before he moved upstairs.
    The woman’s name is Mrs. Coleville. Her son, who’s around 30, is called Markus. Markus looks exactly like Humpty Dumpty. He never says anything. He just stands quietly next to his mother but half a step back, as if he’s a kid who got sent to the corner, except that the corner for him is behind his mother’s shoulder.
    The reason I’m worried about Mrs. Coleville is all the complaining she’s been doing. She says everything needs repairs in her apartment. She gets really angry, and she acts like everyone’s her servant. You should have seen the way she shouted at the movers. You wouldn’t think such an old skinny person could have such a loud bossy voice. All that’s missing is a rifle on her shoulder and a whistle.
    The rent in this building is really high, considering how rundown it is. It’s $850 for a two and a half, $950 for a three and a half and $1025 for a four and a half. That’s why they’ll be glad we left our old place. They’ll double the rent now.
    On her application form Mrs. Coleville wrote that her former address was in Beaconsfield, and she was a homeowner for 38 years.
    Those houses in Beaconsfield are mansions. Mom used to clean a place out there, but I made her quit because she had to take two buses and a train, and they wouldn’t even pay for the train.
    I wonder how you can go from a mansion to this place in like one month? Especially a three and a half for two people. Markus will have to sleep in the living room.
    Everyone else in the building is OK, I think. Some of the tenants are a bit grumpy, but they’re not a problem. But Mrs. Coleville has a long list of complaints: the windows are stuck, there’s paint on the glass, the linoleum in the kitchen has cracks, the bathroom mirror is stained, those wood strips between the floor and the wall are comingoff in a few places, the bedroom lock is