The Landlady

My story begins in a telephone booth.  Not that I was Superman, although the little round Puerto Rican lady coming up in this story thought I was.  I was just a dude looking for an apartment.

Looking through the glass booth I could see a couple of ladies walking towards the car parked next to mine.  It appeared to be a mother and daughter carrying some groceries from the all night Stop and Shop there.

I was watching the daughter, the daughter was watching the mother, the mother was watching me, and Goliath, my pet Doberman, was watching a bag of cheesedoodles balancing on top of an over stacked bag of groceries.

“Poor Goliath,” I thought, “no stranger would ever feed him a cheesedoodle through the window of a car, or through anything else for that matter.”

Goliath is a 100-pound Doberman Pinscher with a face like a rottweiler and a slim physique carved out of nothing but muscle and rib.  He was also the reason I was having such a hard time finding a place to live.  There weren’t too many places that would take you if you have a pet, and even fewer if you happen to own a beast like Goliath.

Anyway, I must keep trying, I thought.  So I slipped another quarter into the slot and started to dial the next number on my list.

It rang at least three or four times before some lady picked up at the other end.

“Hello?”

I answered and sounded just as desperate as I was, I’m sure.  “Do you have an apartment for rent?”

“Yes,” she replied, and then started the usual third degree.

“How old are you and do you have a job?”  The two most important questions.

“Yes, I do work and I’m 28 years old.”

“What do you do?”