He heard the front door open and the murmur of voices. He recognized Betty’s but not the man’s. He was without escape. He’d have to pass them in order to get back to school. He crept to the door and listened.

They were talking, the man’s voice followed by curt replies from Betty. “Here’s fine,” he heard the man say. There was no reply from Betty, and then Simon heard spoons clatter and a thump that sounded like a body falling.

Simon padded to the top of the stairs. He knew he couldn’t step on them, the squeaks would have been too loud. He knelt and walked his hands down the lip of each stair until he was prone, and looked through the white banister slats and saw the landlord fucking his mother.

He had put her over the kitchen table. Betty endured. Simon could see one of her eyes, cool and unblinking, like a gut shot doe, alive but too weak to stand. The table wobbled on its chrome legs, but it held. So did she.

He retreated and got into bed. It was cold, the ghost of his lovemaking gone, slipped out the frost-caulked windows. He couldn’t sleep, though the sounds from below had ceased soon after he turned away. The door slammed, and time sat back and crossed its arms, waiting for Simon’s reaction. It was the first of February.

Simon at seventeen. He quit school and hired on with One-Two. He was proud of his first check, of hauling steel and doing grunt work no union man would do. He took his first check and looked up Rojta’s address on the rent agreement. He snuck a look at a rent receipt and tucked the yellowed envelope behind the silverware tray in the drawer next to the sink.

It was a long bus ride to Brooklyn Park. By now it was May, and the world was creeping back open.

Rojta didn’t look surprised to see Simon amble tensely up the front walk. He kept his distance, putting a low hedge of arborvitae between them. He pretended to busy himself with raking the dead leaves from the cage of exposed roots.

“How much?” asked Simon, as if every word cost him. “How much to leave off?”

Rojta didn’t look up. He made Simon address the top of his skull.

“Fifty.”

“Fifty,” spat Simon, chewing the amount over. “Fifty bucks.”

“That sounds about right.”

Simon picked out two twenties and a ten. “You’ll get it every month. But you leave off.” He bent down and spoke as closely to Rojta’s ear as he could. “You leave off or I’ll break your fuckin neck.”