The other counter charges more

Six hundred on the first. Six hundred on the fifteenth. Eleven people in Eastleigh live off that and four of them are my brother's kids. The rest you'd need a chart for.

The fee at the place I used to go was twelve dollars. Twelve on six hundred and twelve on nine hundred. He didn't care what the number was. Twenty-four dollars a month to move my money. It's landed before I've got the car back on Lake. I know men who pay a bank forty-five and then sit there three days waiting on it.

I drive out of the airport. You sit in the hold lot on the north side and you wait. Three hours in the summer. Four if there's weather anywhere east of here. Then you get a woman going to the Hyatt, nineteen dollars, and then you come back and sit another three.

There's a card you get for a short trip so you don't lose your place in the line. Without that nobody would take the short ones at all. Guys sleep in the seat with the window cracked an inch. Somebody's always got a game going on top of a cooler. One man wins too much and then nobody plays for a week.

The car isn't mine. Four hundred a week on the lease. Sixty a day in gas when it's warm out, more when it isn't. Three dollars comes off the top of every trip out of that lot before I ever see it. The city license is three hundred and eleven a year and I put twenty a week aside toward it whether it's due or not. Fourteen runs on a good Friday puts maybe two hundred and ten in my hand after all of it. That's a good Friday.

Rent's the first as well. Nine seventy-five. I pay the lease Monday mornings in cash at the office off Twenty-eighth and the man there writes it in a book, and if you're a day late he writes that in the book too, and it stays.

My brother's wife picks the money up the same day because the rate moves through the afternoon and the man on that end pays on the rate at the hour she walks in. She went in one Thursday after lunch and came back with less than her sister had that same morning, same amount sent. My brother's oldest is fourteen. He asks me for shoes on WhatsApp.

My mother calls at seven. I take it in the car. If I'm sitting in the lot I let the engine run for the heat. If I've got a fare I let it ring and call her back at ten past, and she counts those ten minutes. She asks about the boy first. The money she asks about second, the way you'd ask about weather.

She's never once stood on Lake Street. She can tell you which window I use. She'll give you the man's mother's name and the village that woman is from. Something gets said at a counter on Lake on a Tuesday. My mother has it Wednesday. My wife's mother has it before that.

Hodan's asleep on the couch most nights by the time I get in, phone flat on her chest, the TV doing the thing where it asks if you're still watching. She's on a shift at the clinic that starts at six.

Guled counted my money twice a month for four years. He did it by hand with a little sponge in a dish and then he did it again to be sure. Notes in fives. Four years and he never once got it wrong. I never saw him look at the clock.

I keep my sleeves down. There's a burn up my right forearm from a pot of tea when I was seven and my mother still tells that story wrong. The man at the gas station on Riverside asked me about it last year, straight out, while he was counting my change.

In January I send nine hundred instead of six. He'd say something about the boy while he was counting. He knew the boy was two.

February the fifteenth. Cold enough that the car doesn't warm up in the time it takes to get there from Cedar. He counted it and wrote the receipt out. Then he turned the receipt over and wrote something on the back of it. He wrote small. He looked up at the glass once while he was doing it. He folded it and slid it under with the receipt sitting on top.

I said thank you. I went out past the phone accessories and across the lot, which is forty steps to where I park, less if the spot by the pole is open. There's a trash can by the cart return. I dropped it in there on the way past without opening it. It's in a landfill somewhere now.

On the first of March I drove down Lake and went past. Kept going to the one by the phone shop, up at the other end. Nine more blocks each way.

Twenty-one dollars. Same six hundred. Their board runs about two shillings under the other one.

Nine dollars extra, twice a month. Two hundred and sixteen a year. A tire is one eighty-five at the place on Hiawatha.

The new man counts with a machine. It's faster, I'll give him that. He does it in front of you so you can watch the number come up. He asked about my arm in his second week.

My mother asked me in March why I'd moved. Somebody had told her already. I said the line got long at the other place. She said the line has always been long there. Then she said Guled's mother sends her greetings and I said send mine back.

I do the car Sunday mornings at the place on Cedar. Two dollars buys you four minutes and you want the mats out on the ground before you put the money in, otherwise you're spending it on bending over. The boy worked a handful of Cheerios down the rail of the back seat sometime that spring and you can hear them on the turns, and I've never got the nozzle far enough down there to reach them. Four minutes goes.

In June I was at that same mall for a phone case. His car was in the row by the doors. I know the car. It's got the plastic still on the back seats. I got the case and came out the far end by the restaurant.