PART 4 — The Notice
The eviction notice arrived on a Thursday, slipped under the door like a threat.
THIRTY DAYS TO VACATE. Rent owed: $2,840.
I sat at the kitchen table and cried — quiet, so Liam wouldn’t hear. Three weeks past due had become two months behind while I wasn’t looking, and the landlord was done waiting.
Marcus found me there. He read the notice over my shoulder, and his jaw tightened.
“How much work does this place need?” he asked.
“What?”
“The building. The other units. I’ve been here two weeks, Chloe — I hear the neighbors complaining. The lady upstairs has the same door problem. The guy in 4B has a bathroom ceiling that’s about to come down.”
“I don’t see what—”
“Your landlord,” Marcus said slowly, “is sitting on a building full of code violations because it’s cheaper to ignore them than fix them. And he’s trying to evict the tenant who’s three weeks behind.” He tapped the notice. “What if I fixed them? All of them?”
“Marcus, you can barely walk—”
“My knee is healing. I can do finish work sitting down.” His eyes were bright — the brightest I’d seen them. “Let me talk to him. I’ll propose a trade: I bring every unit up to code, he wipes your arrears and gives us time.”
“Us?”
He flushed. “You. You time. Sorry.”
I looked at this man — this homeless carpenter in my ex’s sweats — offering to take on my landlord.
“That’s insane,” I said.
“Probably.”
“He’ll say no.”
“Probably.”
I wiped my eyes and laughed — actually laughed — for the first time in weeks. “Fine. But I’m coming with you.”
The landlord — Mr. Kowalski, no relation to bikers, just a tired man in a tired office — listened to Marcus’s pitch with his arms crossed.
Then Marcus showed him the photos. The door frames. The ceilings. The violations, documented unit by unit, in the two weeks he’d been quietly observing.
“I can fix all of it,” Marcus said. “Licensed work, permitted where it needs to be. You know what a contractor would charge you for this building?” He named a number that made Kowalski flinch. “I’ll do it for Chloe’s arrears wiped clean and six months’ grace on rent increases.”
Kowalski stared at him. Then at me. Then back at the photos.
“You’re homeless,” he said bluntly.
“For six more weeks,” Marcus said. “Then I’m in transitional housing. And in three months, I’m working again.” He leaned forward. “Sir — I’m offering you fifty thousand dollars of work for less than three thousand in arrears. That’s not charity. That’s business.”
Long silence.
“Two months’ grace on increases,” Kowalski said. “Not six.”
“Four.”
“Deal.”
We shook on it in that tired office, and walking out, Marcus was grinning like a kid.
“Did you see his face?” he said.
“I saw it,” I said, grinning back. “You’re terrifying when you negotiate.”
“Twenty years of bidding jobs.” He glanced at me. “Chloe… thank you. For letting me be useful again.”
