Rule Four of the Lease Said No Overnight Guests novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Rule Four
Jo falls asleep on Mina's couch on move-in night, and at 2 a.m. the landlord Lena knocks, counts two guests, and leaves her thumb on Mina's pulse; Rule Four has a penalty clause.
The knock came at 2:04 in the morning, three slow raps, exactly spaced.
I knew who it was before I opened the door, because I had read the lease.
I had read all twelve pages of it, standing in her kitchen the day before, laughing out loud at page four.
Rule Four: No overnight guests. The owner will count them, and she checks at two a.m.
I thought it was a joke, and I signed it.
Now I stood in my sleep shirt in the dark hallway of my new apartment, and I opened the door.
Lena Fischer stood on the landing with a flashlight in one hand and the typed page in the other.
She was my landlord, thirty-three, and a full head taller than me.
Her silver-blond hair was buzzed short, and she wore a flannel shirt buttoned to the throat.
Her grey eyes went past my shoulder, to the living room.
"Two," she said.
"Hi, Lena."
"Miss Harlan."
"It's two in the morning. You can call me Mina."
"Rule Four says the owner counts." She lifted the flashlight and swept the beam over my couch.
Jo was asleep there, face down, with one boot still on and a pizza box on her stomach.
She had helped me carry boxes up four flights, and she had passed out at midnight halfway through a sentence.
"That's my friend Jo," I said. "She's a line cook. She worked a double and she moved my couch."
"She's a guest."
"She's unconscious."
"The rule doesn't say what the guest is doing." Lena clicked off the flashlight. "It says no overnight guests."
She said it flatly.
I leaned against the doorframe and crossed my arms.
"You really came up here at two in the morning to count."
"It's in the lease you signed."
"I thought it was funny."
"Did you."
She stepped forward, and I had to tilt my head back to keep looking at her.
She smelled like cedar sawdust and cold air, and under it something clean.
My heart was already going hard, and I hated that she was close enough to hear it.
"You're awake," she said.
"You knocked."
"You were awake before I knocked." She reached out and took my left wrist in her hand.
Her fingers were long and calloused, and they closed around me completely.
She turned my hand over, and her thumb settled on the inside of my wrist, right on the pulse.
I stopped breathing.
"Ninety-six," Lena said quietly. "That isn't a woman who was asleep."
"I was drawing."
"At two a.m."
"I'm an illustrator. It's the only time the house is quiet."
Her thumb moved a half inch, a slow stroke across the vein.
Heat went down my spine and landed low in my belly.
She watched my face while she did it, and her expression did not change at all.
That was somehow the worst part.
"Your friend can sleep there tonight," she said. "I won't wake her."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet." She still had my wrist. "Rule Four has a penalty clause."
"Violations are handled at the owner's discretion," I said.
I had read that one too.
It was at the bottom of every single page.
The corner of her mouth moved, just barely, and then it was gone again.
"You memorized it."
"I'm a quick reader."
"Then you know what I do with my discretion."
"No," I said. "I don't. I've been in the building for one day."
She let go of my wrist, slowly, one finger at a time.
My skin kept the shape of her hand, and I wanted it back.
She took one step down the stairs and turned around.
"There are twelve rules, Miss Harlan. I enforce all of them."
"Every one?"
"Every one, in person." She looked at me for a long moment, and her voice dropped. "The last three tenants didn't last the winter."
"Because of the rules?"
"Because they broke them."
I should have been scared of her.
Instead I stood there in my sleep shirt, with my pulse still going wild under the place she had touched, and I smiled.
"Goodnight, Lena."
"Goodnight."
"Are you going to check again tomorrow?"
She stopped on the third step, one hand on the rail.
"Rule Four," she said, "is every night."
Her boots went down the stairs without a sound.
I closed the door and leaned my back against it, and I put my own thumb on my own wrist.
It did not feel the same at all.
On my couch Jo said, without lifting her face from the cushion, "Mina. What did you do."
"I haven't done anything yet," I said.
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