“Well—” I began.

Tyra cut me off again, “Six hundred dollars a month.”

My eyes got big.

Six hundred a month?

That was only a few hundred more than what I was currently paying for the not-so-great place I was raising my son.

A deal!

She took in my big eyes and added swiftly, “Plus free cable.” When I didn’t speak because my excitement made me mute, she threw in, “And electricity paid.”

“I, uh… a house for six hundred dollars?” I finally got out.

“It’s nice. Really nice. In a good neighborhood. And you said you weren’t real big on where you’re staying,” Tyra said by way of answer.

At this point, Tack was holding out his phone. “Scroll, girl. Those are pictures. We can take you ’round whenever. Place’ll be open at the end of the month, which means a week.”

I took his phone and I scrolled through the photos. They weren’t big on the phone but I could still see the place wasn’t nice.

It was very nice. Clean and attractive with personality.

Not something that cost six hundred dollars a month.

And here it was again.

This wasn’t a deal, it was a steal.

And I’d be the thief.

Darn.

I gave Tack back his phone, saying, “That’s really sweet but I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because you can get more out of it if you rent to someone else,” I explained what he well knew.

“Yeah, and we can get more headaches with dogs and lease jumpers and shit like that,” he returned.

“Not to mention, the expense of placing an ad in the paper,” Tyra put in.

I didn’t know how much ads cost but I did know that whatever they cost didn’t cover what they weren’t making if they rented their place to someone who could afford it.

“And we don’t go through a management company,” Tack added. “So we gotta go through applications, pay for credit checks, drop shit to do showings. It’s a pain in the ass. You take it, we don’t have to do any a’ that shit.”

Okay, well, I could imagine that none of that was fun, not to mention it had to be time consuming and pricey.

“When’s your lease up?” Tack pushed.

“It’s month to month. Where I am, they know not to try for anything over six months. Tenants are pretty transient,” I told him. “Once I did my first six months, they went month to month.”

“Notice?” he asked.

“I’d have to check but I think it’s a week.”

“Give it. We’ll get you in. Boys’ll help. First up, Tyra’ll show you around so you know it’s where you wanna be.”

I already knew it was where I wanted to be. Me, Travis, a clean, nice little house that was not in my current neighborhood. It was where I wanted to be.

But taking advantage of them wasn’t who I wanted to be.