Next, she went through the paperback books he had borrowed from the library, thumbing through the pages, commenting on the titles. “Tess of the d’Urbervilles?” she asked, pausing on the last book.

He shrugged. “I’ve never read it before.” He had been arrested the day after Ms. Rebuck, his English teacher, had announced in class that Tess would be their next major paper.

“Hm,” she said, giving the book a second, more careful inspection.

She finally replaced the book and put her hands on her hips, surveying the room. John didn’t have a chest of drawers so his clothes were folded and stacked in neat piles on top of the red cooler where he stored his food. He could tell she had already gone through the clothes because the shirt on top was folded differently, and he assumed she’d checked out the bananas, bread and jar of peanut butter in the cooler. There was one window in the room, but he had taped construction paper over it to block out the early morning sun. Ms. Lam had peeled back the edges to make sure there was no contraband hidden behind it. A bare lightbulb overhead illuminated the room and he noticed she had turned on the floor lamp beside the bed. The shade was askew. She had checked that as well.

She said, “Lift up your mattress, please,” then, as if they were old pals, she explained, “I just had my nails done.”

John took two steps into the tiny room and was at the mattress. He picked it up and leaned it against the wall so she could see the dirty box spring underneath. They both saw the back of his mattress at the same time. The bloodstains and some kind of gray circle of grime in the middle made her frown in disgust.

“That, too,” she said, pointing to the box spring resting flat on the floor.

He picked this up, and they both jumped back like a pair of frightened little girls when a cockroach scuttled across the dank brown carpet.

“Bleh,” she said. “No luck finding another room?”

He shook his head, dropping the box spring and mattress back into place. He had been fortunate to find this one. As in prison, even flophouses had standards and a lot of them wouldn’t take sex offenders, especially if the victims had been young. John was stuck in a house with six other men who were all registered with the state. One of them had a record for going after an eight-year-old girl. Another liked to rape old women.

“Well.” Ms. Lam smiled, cheerful again. “I guess the Pedo Arms will do for the time being.” She indicated the cardboard box by his bed. “Open this, please.”

“There’s nothing-” He gave up, knowing there was no use. He took the stack of books off the box and put them on the bed, then placed the photo of his mother on top of them, not wanting the frame to touch the dirty sheets.

He opened the box, showing her it was empty.

She went down her checklist. “Not hiding any Viagra in here, are you?” John shook his head. “Illegal drugs? Porn? Weapons of any kind?”

“No, ma’am,” he assured her.

“Still working at the Gorilla?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Anything changes, you’ll tell me about it first, right?” Yes, ma am.

“Well.” She had her hands tucked into her hips again. “All righty, then. Clean bill for today.”

“Thank you,” he said.

She wagged a manicured finger at him. “I’m watching you, John. Don’t you forget that.”

“No, Ms. Lam. I won’t.”

She looked at him a moment longer, then shook her head as if she couldn’t understand a thing about him. “You stay out of trouble and we won’t have any problems, okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed. Stupidly, he added, “Thank you.”

“I’ll see you around,” she said, heading for the door. “Keep your nose clean.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed. He closed the door behind her, leaving his palm flat against the wood, resting his head on the back of his hand and just trying to breathe.

“Knock-knock,” he heard above him. Ms. Lam was in charge of the old-lady rapist, too. John didn’t know the guy’s name because every time he saw him in the hall, it took all of John’s willpower not to deck him.

He turned back to his room, blocking out Ms. Lam’s voice as she made her cheery rounds upstairs. John hated people going through his shit. The most important thing he had learned in prison was that you never touched another man’s property unless you were willing to die for it.

He picked up his T-shirt, one of the six that he owned, and refolded it. He had a pair of chinos, two pairs of jeans, three pairs of socks and eight pairs of boxers because for some reason his mother had always brought him underwear in prison.

John used his foot to upright one of his sneakers. Ms. Lam had searched them, too. The tongues were pulled out, the inserts crooked. Thirty dollars for a pair of shoes, John thought. He couldn’t believe how expensive clothes and shoes had gotten while he was inside.

Upstairs, he heard Ms. Lam say, “Uh-oh!” John froze, knowing she had found something. He heard the rapist mutter a response, then Ms. Lam’s voice loud and clear: “Tell it to the judge.”

There wasn’t much of a scuffle. She had a Glock, after all, and it wasn’t like there was anywhere to run in the dilapidated house they all called home. John couldn’t resist sticking his head out the door when he heard them making their way down the stairs. Ms. Lam had one hand on the rapist’s shoulder, one on the cuffs that were locking his hands behind his back. The guy was still in his underwear, no shirt, no socks, no shoes. They’d have a real nice time with him in the holding cell, as Ms. Lam well knew.

She saw him peering from behind the door. “He messed up, John,” she said, as if that wasn’t obvious. “Take it as a lesson.”

John didn’t respond. He closed the door, waiting until he heard a car door slam on the street, an engine turn over, the car pull away.

Still, he checked out the window, pulling back the construction paper in time to see Ms. Lam’s red SUV stop at the light at the end of the street.

John dropped to his knees and picked at the edge of the filthy brown carpet. He tried not to think about the roach they had seen or the mouse turds between the carpet and the pad. He found the credit report right where he had left it. Not contraband, but what would Ms. Lam say if she found it? “Uh-oh!” And then he’d be gone.

John slipped on his jeans and shoved his feet into his sneakers. He took the stairs two at a time. There was a phone in the hallway that they could use for local calls, and he picked it up, dialing the number he knew by heart.

“Keener, Rose and Shelley,” the receptionist on the other end said. “How can I direct your call?”

John kept his voice low. “Joyce Shelley, please.”

“Who can I say is calling?”

He almost gave her a different name, but relented. “John Shelley.”

There was a pause, a hesitation that kept him in his place. “Just a moment.”

The moment turned into a couple of minutes, and John could picture his sister’s frown when her secretary told her who was on the line. Joyce’s life was pretty settled and she seemed to be doing well. She had rebelled against their father in her own way: instead of becoming a doctor, she had dropped out of medical school her second year at Emory and switched to law. Now, she did real estate closings all day, taking a flat fee for getting folks to sign on the dotted line. He couldn’t imagine her doing something so boring, but then, Joyce probably got a good laugh out of him wiping soapy water off of cars all day.

“What is it?” his sister whispered, not even bothering with a hello.

“I need to ask you something.”

“I’m in the middle of a closing.”

“It won’t take long,” he said, then kept talking because he knew she’d cut him off if he didn’t. “What’s a credit score?”

She spoke in her normal voice. “Are you an idiot?”

“Yeah, Joyce. You know I am.”

She gave a heavy sigh that sounded more labored than usual. He wondered if she had a cold or maybe she’d started smoking again. “All the credit card companies, the banks, anybody who lets you buy anything on credit, report to credit agencies about how well you pay your bills, whether you’re on time, whether you’re slow, if you make the minimum payment or pay it all off each month or whatever. Those agencies compile your payment histories and come up with a score that tells other companies how good a credit risk you are.”