Room for Rent(Barry) Jarrett arrived at his grandparents’ house unannounced in the late afternoon as they were preparing for supper. “Is the upstairs bedroom still for rent?”

“Did you have someone in mind,” Ed Martinelli interjected?” In his early fifties, the middle-aged man’s gray hair was already thinning away to nothing. He pushed a pair of wire-framed glasses up on the bridge of his nose. The Martinellis were renting their married daughter’s empty bedroom.

His grandmother, who was mincing garlic bulbs, stepped away from the counter. “We interviewed a young lady just the other day, but nothing’s decided yet.” The older woman kissed him on the cheek and pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. “Spaghetti… aglio olio. There’s plenty of food. You’ll stay for supper.”

Jarrett folded his hands on the table and continued in a soft-spoken, plodding manner. “There’s this young woman, Katelyn O’Brien who waitresses at the Brandenburg Diner. Her step-father’s an alcoholic and abusive so she left home on short notice.”

“Where’s she staying now?” his grandfather asked.

“A cheesy motel on route one. They rent rooms by the week at a reduced rate, but that’s no way to live.”

“How awful!” His grandmother placed a plastic container of grated Parmesan cheese on the table. Back at the stove, she set a pot of water to boil. “And what’s your relationship with Katelyn?”

“We’ve been dating six months.” Jarrett stared into space with a stolid expression. In his mid-twenties, he was one semester away from graduating and taking his boards to become a certified public accountant. “I’m in love with her.”

“Do your parents know about the young woman?”

“They wouldn’t approve of me dating a girl who waited tables and was living hand to mouth.”

“What about the Katelyn?” his grandmother placed the silverware on the table along with a set of dishes.

“She doesn’t know either.” Jarrett continued in his unassuming, somewhat brusque manner.

“Doesn’t know what?”

“That I intend to make her my wife once I’m settled in a new job.” Crooking his head to one side at a sharp angle, he pressed, “I need to know if the room is still available.”

Jarrett’s grandmother placed a steaming bowl of spaghetti with a light topping of olive oil, garlic and crushed red pepper flakes on the center of the table. “Eat first… business later!”

* * * * *

“I’m here about the room for rent.” Giselle Evans showed up several days earlier. She was a short, compact brunette in her early twenties. The page boy haircut and lack of makeup gave her a hard-edged look.

Ed Martinelli held the door open and ushered the woman in. “Let me show you the room first, then we can discuss things.”

They climbed the stairs to the second floor landing. The woman’s eyes flitted over a taupe settee, nightstand and narrow bed with an ornately carved, dark walnut headboard. “Yeah, this will do just fine,” she said rather abruptly.

Back in the living room, Ed had her fill out a brief application. “It says here you’re currently employed at a business called Shenanigans in downtown Brandenburg.” The woman smiled and shook her head in the affirmative.

According to Giselle Evans, the company was situated several blocks down from the municipal center, where a handful of sports bars and flamboyant restaurants catered to the college crowd and urban yuppies. The eateries featured small-batch, craft beers along with burgers, fire-engine chili and barbecued ribs. In all probability, the woman sitting opposite him was employed in one of these fast-pace establishments.

“I’m in middle management.”

“Management,” Ed repeated. “What exactly do you manage?”

“The VIP room on the second floor,” she shot back, smiling effusively. “It’s where they bring the -”

“Very important people,” Ed interjected, anticipating her response.

“Yeah, you got.” The woman was chewing a rather large wad of gum and her jaw rocking side to side with a predictable rhythm.

Ed explained that, if she rented the room, she could entertain visitors during the day but no one after nine o’clock at night. They were also asking for a month’s security deposit in advance of signing the lease.

The woman crossed her legs nonchalantly and drummed her fingers on the oak table. “The security deposit ain’t no problem.” Giselle cracked her knuckles and shifted the wad of gum to the opposite side of her mouth before resuming the chewing process. “Since the promotion to middle management, my finances been rock solid.” “Some nights if I’m working late,” she added, “I might sleep in and not return home.” She looked him squarely in the eye.

“I see.” Ed let the remark pass without further exploration. Rising from the chair, he said, “I’ll get back to you with a decision in a day or so.”

* * * * *

“How was the applicant?” Mrs. Martinelli asked when she returned from the dry cleaners.

Ed was standing in the foyer with an armload of hardcover books. “Pleasant enough. She didn’t quibble about the rent, but I’d rather screen a few more applicants before making a final decision.” Grabbing his car keys, he hurried in the direction of the front door. “I gotta make a run to the library.”

Reaching the library Ed, held one book aside. Tossing the rest into the return bin, he went directly to the front desk. “I’m renewing this novel.”

The librarian, a heavyset, oriental woman with a pudgy nose, glanced at the front cover. “Edith Wharton… Summer.”

She ran a bronze fingers over the tattered spine of the book. “I read both The Age of Innocence and House of Mirth.” She processed the book and handed it back. “As I remember, the author favors bittersweet endings.”

“Judging by what I’ve read so far,” Ed replied drolly, grabbing the novella off the counter, “this particular ending will be far more bitter than sweet.” Clearly, the librarian would have preferred to continue the conversation, but the burgeoning line of patrons queuing up behind him barred that possibility.

Back on the main highway, when Ed Martinelli reached the intersection that would take him home, he continued past the road. Ten minutes later he parked the car on a side street in downtown Brandenburg within walking distance of the municipal complex. Two blocks away he found what he was looking for. In a garish, flamboyant script a shabby neon sign read ‘Shenanigans’. A nearby display featured a semi-nude woman with her buttocks firmly wedged in a wine glass and slender legs dangling in the air.

“Watcha drinking?” the bartender asked.

Ed looked around. The clammy air reeking of stale beer and tobacco, the seedy lounge was empty,. “Just a Heineken.”

The bartender, who was overweight with a stubbly beard, shrugged and poured the drink from a tap. “See today’s newspaper?”

“No, not yet.”

“The mayor wants to turn Brandenburg into a sanctuary city so all the illegal aliens, who swam across the Rio Grande with their pregnant wives and eighteen children, can turn our town into a suburban shithole.” Wagging a stubby index finger menacingly in the air, the bartender leaned over the bar and continued in a hushed, confidential tone. “Welcome to the goddamn United States of South America!”

Ed Martinelli ran an index finger around the rim of his half-empty mug and nodded in tacit agreement. “Does Giselle Evans work here?”

“Yeah.” The bartender rubbed a damp cloth over the surface of the mahogany bar then rinsed a couple of empty mugs. “She’s upstairs most nights in the VIP lounge when she ain’t working the pole.”

“The pole?”

“Over there… far left under the disco ball.” He pointed to a metal pole that stretched from the dance floor to an acoustic ceiling, where a glittery ball sent shards of multi-colored light cascading across the empty space. “ Giselle,” he chuckled with a salacious grin, “she’s one hot tamale.”

“And the VIP lounge…” Sipping distractedly at his beer, Ed left the unfinished sentence dangling precariously in the air.

“That sort of hanky-panky don’t get off the ground until much later at night, if you know what I mean.” The slovenly bartender with the grizzly cheeks winked a half-dozen times. Even though there was no one else in the room, he lowered his voice several decibels. “You frequent establishments like ours, everyone knows what’s in your pants and on your mind.”

Ed pursed his lips trying to decipher the man’s intent.

“Men got certain basic needs. It’s only natural.”

“For sure,” Ed chimed in.

“But nowadays, these goddamn transsexuals go prancing about,” the fat man continued, “demanding that a guy in a dress with sparkly fingernail polish, lipstick and a moustache is anything other than a deranged lunatic with male gonads.”

“Can’t argue with that.” Ed swigged what little remained of his tepid beer.

“You wanna know what we do, if one of those degenerate creeps wanders into a respectable establishment like ours looking for a refreshing brewski?”

Ed didn’t really want to know. He wanted to go home and feed the dog. He wanted to take his wife of forty-three years for a pleasant stroll on one of the leafy walking trails in the local park. He wanted to finish reading his Edith Wharton novella, where Charity Royall, the poor, uneducated mountain girl, had just become pregnant by the visiting architect.

Rummaging about with both hands under the counter, the bartender continued his rage-filled rant, “This is what he gets.” When his hands finally emerged from beneath the counter, a set of brass knuckles was draped across the fingers of his right hand. With brutal force the man smashed his right fist into the palm of his free hand.

Ed Martinelli’s eyebrows fluttered and his features contorted in a violent paroxysm just as the door cracked open and a young man approached the bar. As soon as the bartender went off to tend to the new customer, Ed fished a five dollar bill from his wallet and dropped it in the tip jar before rushing off.
On the brief drive home it occurred to Ed that his initial meeting with Giselle Evans and then later the phantasmagoric visit to the Shenigans Lounge assumed a surrealistic quality. If he jotted the details down, they would have read like pulp fiction replete with a mishmash of outlandish plots and equally absurd characters. And this was how half of humanity fleshed out their sordid lives!

* * * * *

Ed Martinelli spread a heap of spaghetti and clams on a plate then turned to his grandson. “This waitress who’s living at the cheesy motel… what’s her name?”

“Katelyn,” Jarrett responded.

“When can you bring her by to look at the room?”

“Right now. She’s been outside waiting in the car.”

Jarrett’s grandmother gawked at him in disbelief. “All this time we been gabbing about nothing in particular and your sweetheart’s been languishing out in the bitter cold?”

“It’s not particularly cold and she didn’t want to meet with you if the room was already taken.”

Ed waved a hand authoritatively in the air. “Well then, invite her in for something to eat.”

A moment later, Katelyn O’Brien was seated at the table with a dinner roll, garden salad and generous helping of aglio olio. In her early twenties the girl was dark-eyed with lush brown hair that reached to the small of her slender back. Halfway through the meal, Katelyn pointed at the Edith Wharton book that Ed had inadvertently deposited on a straight-backed chair in the corner of the room. “Is it any good?”

“Yes. It’s a masterpiece… a love story of sorts.”

Katelyn dabbed her lips with a napkin. “A love story with a happy ending.”

“No, just the opposite. The young couple’s romance falls to pieces with the downtrodden country girl losing both her innocence and future happiness.”

“But I thought you said -”

“Unfortunately,” Ed cut her short, “Edith Wharton was a world-class writer who preferred brutal realism over mawkish sentimentality.” “People commit all manner of mischief and mayhem in the name of love.” An uncomfortable silence ensued. “Keeping up with the Jones,” Ed suddenly blurted, conveniently diverting the conversation elsewhere. “Are you familiar with the term?”

“No, not at all.”

“Edith Wharton’s maiden name was Jones,” he clarified. “She was the daughter of one of the wealthiest, New York industrialists back in the early nineteen hundreds.” Having said that, he turned to the young girl. “If you’re finished with the meal, I can show you the room.”

They went upstairs. He told her how much they wanted for rent.

“Yes, that’s perfectly manageable. Is there a security deposit?”

“There’s no security deposit.” He spoke hastily, stumbling over several words.

“And how soon could I move in once a decision’s been made?”

A wispy thin sliver of a smile flickered across his lips. “Tonight, tomorrow… whatever suits your convenience.”

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