Chapter 17: The Spare Room

Dot Haskell lived in a yellow bungalow six blocks from the Strike Zone, with two bowling pins by the front steps instead of flowerpots.

She carried my duffel bag in from her Buick herself and set it on the bed in the spare room.

"Rent is three hundred a month," she said. "It's on the fridge."

It was typed on the back of a league scoresheet, with two lines at the bottom for signatures.

"Clause four," I read. "The tenant will not do a bit at breakfast."

"Breakfast is the only meal I get to enjoy."

"Clause nine. The tenant will not apologize for his family."

"That one's new," Dot said. "I added it in the car."

"Clause eleven says rent can be paid in lane oiling."

"Saturdays, six a.m. You'll hate it. That's why it's a clause."

I signed it with a pen that had the Strike Zone's name on the side.

Dot signed under me, took her stopwatch off her neck, and put it in the kitchen drawer.

"House rule," she said. "I'm off the clock at home."

She left me alone with the bed, a window, a shelf of trophies that did not belong to me, and a quiet I had never heard in my life.

At the Halvorson house somebody was always crying, laughing or arguing in the next room.

I lay under a quilt with a bowling pin appliqued on it and listened to a refrigerator hum.

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