Chapter 55

“I feel like a new man,” he said to himself when he was finished, and dressed again in the sweats Shaun had bought him. “Which I need to pay him back for, as well as everything else. And give Miss Gina the rent.”

Returning to his room, he took the envelope out of his pocket, with the cash he’d gotten from the bank. After paying for his new phone, with sixty minutes of airtime, he had a little over two hundred and forty dollars left. Enough, he hoped, to pay for at least a week’s rent. He went in search of Miss Gina.

He found her in the parlor, with two men—both closer to her age than his—who she introduced as George and Walter, other lodgers. Ryan asked if he could talk to her privately, so she took him into the kitchen. “I saved you some dinner,” she told him. Then she grinned. “It’s a one-time deal, since I figured you needed the sleep.”

He thanked her before asking how much the rent was for his room.