Chapter 1

Melanie Chambers was not having a good day. When she got to work, she found out that the restaurant had hired two new girls. Ordinarily, that would have been good news except that Melanie was counting on some overtime money to help her make her bills.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, Melanie as one of the senior waitresses there at Martha’s Restaurant was going to be the one to get these new girls trained and brought up to speed on how they did things there.

Melanie hated training new girls. Most of the time it was a wasted effort; fully half the girls that started at Martha’s lasted less than six months.

It takes the average off the street girl about a month to get her bearings and become the least little bit efficient at waitressing. It takes a couple more before she gets good at it.

But a lot of the girls never make it that far. Some get scared off by the amount of work that is required. Others get hit by one of the “rush hour” crowds and they panic and leave.

It can get pretty busy at Martha’s at times, especially around lunch hour when all the office workers are looking for something quick and filling.

Aside from having to train the new girls, which took her away from waitressing and the extra she made in tips, having two new girls meant that she wouldn’t be able to pull the extra shifts she hoped for to catch up on some past due bills.

Things had been slow at the restaurant over the past winter – it had been a hard one with cold weather and a lot of snow. Martha’s hadn’t done the business it usually did. And to add to it, the economy had taken a downturn so people didn’t spend money eating out like they usually would.

Melanie’s tips and her pay from waitressing barely made the bills in good times, but with the problems at the restaurant, she had fallen behind in her rent and her bills.

The final straw came about two months ago. She was at work when Diane, one of the other girls at Martha’s and her roommate decided she’d had enough of the cold Boston winters and quit her job to go live with her sister in Los Angeles.

This meant that instead of sharing the rent, utilities, and food costs, Melanie would have to shoulder the full burden – at least until she could find another girl to move in and take Diane’s place.

Melanie sat at the dining room table with a pile of bills and far too many overdue notices. It was depressing her to see so many envelopes with OVERDUE in big red block lettering across the front.

I had better figure something out quick, she thought. She could make do without cable TV and even a telephone. She had cut her groceries down to the bare minimum already and started shopping at some of the discount stores.

She thought about getting help from the State, but she made too much money at the restaurant to qualify. She was stuck in that “no man’s land” between making too much money for welfare and not enough to make it work on her own.

Finally, she just pushed the pile of bills to the far side of the table. She would deal with them some other time. She went into the living room and turned on the TV to enjoy it ... while she still had it!

The next day when Melanie came home from another slow day at the restaurant, she found a small manila envelope hung with a string on the doorknob of her apartment door. “Aw shit!” she said aloud.

Yes, Melanie knew the contents of this envelope and what it meant, even though the outside had no writing on it. She took it off the doorknob quickly, looking around and hoping she had caught it before any of the neighbors saw it.

She grudgingly brought it inside and tossed it on the table with the other bills from the previous night. Sighing, she fixed herself something for dinner; tonight it would be a can of chili and a slice of bread from the day-old bread store. It was about all she could afford anymore.

As she ate, she stared at the envelope as if willing it to disappear, but of course, it didn’t. Finally, she sighed and she opened it. And her assumptions were correct. It was a notice from the landlord.

The letter said that according to his records, she was now almost three months late with the rent and if she didn’t come down to his apartment and discuss the matter with him, he would have to begin proceedings to have her evicted.

He would then lock her out of the apartment and sell her things to try to recoup the past rent monies. He gave her two weeks, till the end of the current month, to take care of this, or starting at the first of the month she would be homeless.

The following day was her day off so she decided she may as well get this over with. She went down to his apartment with the letter. Pausing at the door to adjust her clothes and calm herself, she took a deep breath and softly knocked on the door.

“Please don’t let him be home! Please don’t let him be home!” she said silently to herself over and over. But no luck, a few moments later, she heard the deadbolt latch move and the doorknob turn. The door opened and there he stood – the man that held her fate in his hands!

“Hello, Mr. Thomas, Melanie Chambers, from apartment 4C. I’m here to talk to you about this,” she said, holding out the envelope he left on her door.

“Oh yes. Thank you for coming by. Won’t you come in and we can discuss the matter,” he said. He stepped back and held the door for her. Melanie came in and he walked with her to a small office off the living room.

“Please Ms. Chambers, won’t you have a seat,” he said. He took his seat behind the desk and looked up her rental records.

“Yes, it says here you work at Martha’s Restaurant as a waitress. Is that still correct?” he started.

“Yes, Sir.”

“And you have been living here at Meadow Lands apartments for six years now, is that also correct?” he asked.

“It will be seven years in a couple of months – this coming June actually,” she said.

“Well, we do appreciate your loyalty, Ms. Chambers. Finding good tenants that stay with us for several years is hard to do sometimes, so we appreciate the ones we do find,” he said.

“And I like living here too. Meadow Lands is a nice place to live and it’s very convenient for my work. And when I do have a problem or need a repair, you have been very accommodating and prompt. I hope to stay here for a long time,” Melanie said.

“Yes, let’s talk about the future, shall we? Now if memory serves me you had a roommate until just recently right?” he asked.

“That’s right, Diane Harper. She quit the restaurant though and moved to Los Angeles to live with her sister,” Melanie said.

“And you haven’t found another roommate? Do you have any prospects?” he asked.

“I am looking, but at the moment I’m afraid not,” she said, lowering her face and looking down at the floor in front of her.

“I see. Well, Ms. Chambers, you are almost three months behind in your rent. Do you have a way that you can take care of this and get caught up with your rent?” he asked.

“Mr. Thomas, work has been slow at the restaurant for a while now – this infernal cold weather and the rotten economy have kept a lot of the customers away. I try to get as many extra shifts as I can but they are few and far between.

“And now I will be training two new girls which mean fewer extra shifts in the future. All my credit cards are maxed out just trying to survive and I still have trouble making the bills.

“I’m sorry, Sir, but I don’t know what else I can do. I don’t know how to do anything but waitress work – I don’t have a diploma, so I am really limited in the jobs I can apply for,” she explained.

“I see. How about borrowing some money? Do you have family or friends that can help you out?” he asked.

“No, Sir. I’m afraid not,” she said.

“Well Ms. Chambers, it would seem that we have a problem, then. You are three months behind in your rent as it is right now. At your current rent of three hundred twenty-five dollars a month, that puts you at nine hundred seventy-five dollars come the first of the month.

“And if you check your rental agreement, when you fall three months behind there is a twenty-five dollar late penalty. So that means you will owe an even one thousand dollars come the first of next month,” he said.

“Mr. Thomas, I can’t even come up with a hundred dollars, much less a thousand! What am I going to do!” she said. She put her face in her hands and sobbed. Melanie was in real trouble.

Carl Thomas looked across his desk at the poor woman. He wasn’t the heartless land-baron type, he genuinely felt sorry for Melanie. He remembered a time when he was also struggling, and it was the generosity of others that helped him make it through.

But he was also a businessman and he just couldn’t go on letting her live there without paying her rent. After all, he had bills to pay too. And if word got out around the building that he was soft on anyone with a sob story, no one would pay their rent on time and he would very quickly lose the building to the bank.

Still, she was a good tenant – she didn’t cause problems for him, she was quiet and didn’t have loud parties or anything. She kept her apartment clean and whenever there was something that needed fixing, she would let him know right away.

She had also been a good tenant for several years. True, lately she had fallen behind in her rent, but before that she always had it on time and sometimes even ahead of time. Tenant’s like her were hard to come by, and if he had to evict her, who knows what the next resident of apartment 4C might be like, or how hard it might be to find one!

“Listen, Ms. Chambers, you are a good tenant and I don’t want to lose you. I certainly don’t feel like being the evil, money-grubbing landlord that throws a woman out on the street. You have two weeks before the end of the month.

“After that, I will have to put the eviction order in. You will then have thirty days to vacate the premises. That gives you a month and a half in which to come up with the money before you will have to leave.

“If you can do that, I will rescind the eviction order with just a phone call. I’m terribly sorry, but that’s the best I can think of to do for you,” he said.

“Thank you, Mr. Thomas. I know you are trying your best to help me and I do appreciate it. I’m sorry to be such a bother. I will do what I can to get you your money, I promise,” she said.

“Thank you, Ms. Chambers. Please keep in touch and let me know how it’s going. I will check back with you in a couple of weeks to see how you are doing. As I said, I do want you to stay with us,” he said, standing. He shook her hand and then she left his apartment and went up to her own.

The next two weeks went along like they always had. There was no real change in her work or in her financial situation. Because business was so slow at the restaurant, she couldn’t get an advance on her pay – which really wouldn’t have done anything anyway.

And there was no one she could borrow the money from, either. The closer the deadline got the more worried and desperate she became.

On the first of the following month, Melanie was in her apartment doing housework. She had the radio playing as she had stopped her cable TV because she couldn’t afford it anymore, and her radio was the only thing to keep her company.

She was doing the dishes when she heard a knock on the door. She dried her hands on the dishtowel and went to see who was at the door.

Looking through the peephole, she saw it was Mr. Thomas the landlord. Her heart dropped a bit – she knew he was here for the rent and she didn’t have it. He would not be pleased and would probably start the proceedings to have her evicted.

But there was nothing she could do about it. She didn’t have the money, the money was due, and so steps had to be taken. Melanie drew a deep breath and opened the door.