He unlocked the door and stepped inside the kitchen. “Christ!” he muttered, looking around. The place was a disaster. Dirty pots and pans were piled in a sink full of sludgy gray water. Every dish in the house seemed to be piled on the countertop. The trash can in the corner was overflowing with empty beer cans and wine bottles, and there was a distinct fishy smell.

He peered down into a pot that had been left on the stove top. Yup. It was full of shrimp peels, and it had been there a day or two. He picked up the pot and went to dump it out, and for the first time, noticed the slurping sound his flip-flops were making on the linoleum floor.

He looked down and lifted his right heel slightly. The flip-flop stuck to the floor.

“Fuckin’ college punks,” he said aloud.

He should have known better. The e-mail address for their reservation had been Cooter@Gamecocks.com. The VRBO and Craigslist ads clearly stated that rental of the house was restricted to adults. But Cooter and company had paid for a week in advance, and the American Express card they’d paid with had gone through with no problem. He’d had a bad feeling about it from the start, but, hey, thirty-four hundred dollars was nothing to sneeze at, not these days.

So when the caravan of cars had pulled into the driveway—first a stripped-down Jeep, then two pickup trucks and a lime green VW bug convertible carrying four half-drunk chicks—he’d made up his mind to ignore them. He’d watched with a sinking heart, though, as sixteen college kids piled into the house. And that was just the first night.

The ad specifically stated that the house slept a maximum of ten people—which wasn’t totally accurate, since two of those people would have to be willing to bed down on the butt-sprung living room sleeper sofa he’d picked up off a curb back in March.

With a sigh, Ty went out to the back porch and dragged in the big-wheeled garbage can. He grabbed his janitor’s bucket and mop and the battered Food Lion grocery cart some other little college pricks had left at the back door earlier in the summer, which now contained his cleaning supplies.

Not for the first time, Ty pondered the irony of his situation. Maybe his old man had been right. Maybe, if he’d stayed in law school, he’d be sitting pretty at some white-shoe law firm in Manhattan.

Maybe he’d still be with Kendra too. Nah, probably not. But maybe he’d have a fatty mutual fund, maybe he’d be driving a Jag, wintering in Cabo, or at least Key West. Maybe he shouldn’t have sunk every last dime and mortgaged himself to the hilt trying to save Ebbtide. Told you not to buy that dump.

Maybe, if he’d listened to his old man, he wouldn’t be living in a tiny garage apartment, staring at a computer screen all night ’til he was glassy-eyed and brain-dead. Maybe he wouldn’t be cleaning toilets by day and worrying that the next phone call or e-mail would mean the end of all of it.

The clock was ticking. He had less than six weeks left to save Ebbtide. Otherwise, come September 15, the house would be auctioned off on the steps of the Dare County courthouse. He’d be out on the streets, jobless, homeless. And his old man would stand there, shaking his head. Kendra, his ex, and Ryan, her new husband, aka Fuckface, would be right there with his old man, oozing phony sympathy. They might not say it, but they’d all be thinking it. Told you so.

Ty looked out the kitchen window. If he leaned out, he could see the waves rolling in on the beach. They had some size to them this morning. His stomach growled loudly. If he got this pigsty cleaned up, in say, three hours, he’d have just enough time to make it to Abigail’s before they ran out of the Saturday lunch special: mahi-mahi tacos.

He pulled the grocery cart into the combined living/dining room at the front of the house and his eyes widened at the degree of destruction his tenants had wrought there. Armchairs, tables, and lamps were upended. The battered wooden floor wore a thick carpet of beach sand, and the sofa cushions were lined up end to end in front of the fireplace, where a trio of untwisted wire coat hangers suggested an impromptu wienie roast. Which would have been fine, if the fireplace damper had been opened, which it hadn’t. Fingers of greasy black soot marred the white mantel, which Ty had repainted in June. His grandfather’s huge, framed navigational map of Currituck Sound, which had hung over said mantel, was askew on its hanger, its glass shattered. Tufts of stuffing poked out of one of the sofa cushions, which had a baseball-sized hole burnt into it. The unmistakable odor of stale beer and cheap weed lingered in the air.

“Christ,” he repeated. He yanked his iPhone from the pocket of his baggy board shorts and scrolled over to the last e-mail he’d gotten from his good buddy, ol’ Cooter.

He typed rapidly, his fingertips flying over the tiny keyboard.

“Hey Cooter,” he wrote. “Kiss your $500 security deposit goodbye. Asshole. Sincerely, Mr. Culpepper, manager, Ebbtide.com.”

When he got the notification that the message had been sent, he looked down at his incoming message box and sighed. Another e-mail from another pain in the ass. The PITAs were the reason he always communicated with his tenants by e-mail and never gave out his phone number. As far as they knew, Mr. Culpepper was a cranky old bastard who resided somewhere in the Internet. They didn’t need to know that their landlord was actually the guy who lived over the garage, just a door knock away if the toilet didn’t flush or you couldn’t figure out how to use the remote control.

This particular PITA’s name was Ellis Sullivan. He’d been peppering Ty with nit-picking questions for weeks now. From the tenor of the questions—should he bring his own linens, were there beach chairs, bicycles, a grill—Ty decided Ellis was undoubtedly gay. Straight guys, like ol’ Cooter, just wanted to know the location of the nearest liquor store.

Ellis Sullivan and his friends were supposed to check in later today. The later the better, as far as Ty was concerned. God knew how long it would take to clean up the kitchen and living room. His shoulders sagged as he realized he hadn’t even taken a look upstairs yet.

He was headed for the stairs when he became aware of a faint gurgling sound. It was coming from the bathroom tucked under the stairs. Funny, the door was closed and it didn’t want to budge. He braced one leg against the doorjamb and yanked hard. The door flew open, and a torrent of foul-smelling water rushed out into the hallway.

“Shiiiit,” Ty said. And he meant that literally.

*   *   *

Ellis took her time finishing breakfast. She checked her e-mails repeatedly, finding nothing new except for sale offers from Bloomingdale’s and more e-mails from old friends at the bank, who’d also had unpleasant termination sessions with Stonehenge.

In the days following her downsizing (which was how she preferred to think of it), Ellis had been consumed with the injustice of her situation. She’d spent hours, days really, commiserating with her former colleagues. She’d joined a “I got jobbed by BancAtlantic” Facebook group and chatboard and had even attended a meet-up at a bar in the suburbs, where everybody had gotten sloppy drunk and teary-eyed about their dire situations.

No more, though, Ellis had resolved. She’d been a saver her whole life. Her father had left her a little inheritance, so her town house was paid for. Her car was paid off, and she’d wisely decided years ago against investing her pension funds in her own bank’s stock. She was by no means wealthy, but she had a little cushion, and she refused to panic. Or so she told herself.

So she scrolled down the messages in her in-box, looking in vain for a reply to her message to Mr. Culpepper.

Finding none, she got out the printout of the VRBO ad for Ebbtide. Strange, the only thing it lacked was a contact number.