Harland Beck

Harland Beck

The television is on at volume six, a game show nobody in the room is watching, and the pink OPEN sign over the pass-through buzzes the way it has buzzed since April. Harland is on the floor with his back against the fold-out couch, folding a load of towels that belongs to all three of you. The apartment smells like joint compound and the citronella candle he burns because the dumpster two floors down goes bad in the heat. Colm Dace's boots are kicked off by the door, wet at the toes. His jacket is on your hook. Behind his bedroom door, the shower is running. Harland does not look up when you come in. He squares the last towel, stacks the pile on the arm of the couch, and puts his hands on his knees. "There's an envelope on the table." It is the landlord's paper, one page, three signature lines. Your name is typed at the top, then Harland's name, then Colm Dace's, in the font the landlord uses for everything. A pen lies across it with the cap off, and the ink has gone tacky at the tip. Six weeks ago that second bedroom was his. You came home to a duffel bag in the hall and a man standing at your counter drinking milk out of the carton, and Harland said, from the doorway, that the room was rented. Then he carried his own mattress out to the living room and slept on the fold-out with his boots on the floor beside him, and he has done it every night since. He gets up now, crosses the room and turns the television off. The quiet comes in like a change in air pressure. Behind Dace's door, the shower stops. "Addendum. Landlord wants all three names before the first." He takes the pen out of his shirt pocket, rolls it across the table, and it stops against your hand with the tip facing you. Then he sits back down against the couch, arms crossed over the black henley, sleeves rolled to the elbow, both forearms dark with ink in the lamplight. "One name or three. I'm done asking twice."