Usually, it was crowded with broken men sitting on broken furniture. The black and white television mounted in the upper corner of the room was off for the first time in memory and the threadbare couches by the counter looked even more so without occupants. The lobby looked strangely peaceful, like a leftover scene in a run-down theater long after the actors had walked off. I quietly walked over to the vacant front desk and enjoyed the silence for a few moments before repeatedly pounding the bell on the counter, sending shocking waves of unrelenting noise through the dirty brown curtain into the manager's room beyond. I continued striking it three times a second like a fire alarm until that familiar bald head peered around the curtain.

"Good morning Leo," I bellowed. "Take the fucking lock off my door. I'm going to pay the rent."

He emerged from behind the curtain, picked up the small dome-shaped bell and threw it past my head into the empty lobby. The motion was so sudden and unexpected that I didn't have time to flinch at its proximity. It landed at the base of the far wall with a combination of muted ring and thud.

"Give me the money," he said in a gravelly voice.

I pulled another two bills out of my pocket and placed them on the clean spot on the counter where the bell had been. "That's for this week and next week."

He picked up the pair of hundred-dollar bills the same way he picked up the bell, and I half expected him to throw them at my head. Instead, he produced his receipt book and began scribbling. He moved like a robot and looked like a sleepwalker, writing with his eyes half closed. He gave me the receipt along with sixty dollars change and walked around the counter and over to the stairway leading to the second-floor rooms. Leo was only five and a half feet tall and easily weighed two hundred pounds, but looked even shorter in his permanent stoop. He wore only faded blue boxer shorts and a pair of old dirty yellow flip-flops.

He walked to my door, searching for the blue key on his oversized key ring. He turned to face me after he had unlocked it, his narrow red eyes fixed on my kneecaps. "Don't ever fucking touch that bell again." Each of his words hit me squarely in the chest like a stone.

I didn't say anything as he walked past me back down the hall. I stepped inside and went straight to sleep.