Mr. Alvarez, the landlord, met me in the driveway.
He appeared to be in his seventies and wore the same faded gray shirt daily.
His face never revealed what he was really thinking.
He asked me only three simple questions that day.
Did I smoke?
Did I have a dog?
Was the little girl beside me my daughter?
I answered every question honestly and waited for his reply.
He then nodded toward the apartment and spoke.
“Eight hundred dollars a month. Due on the first. No lease because I don’t like paperwork.”
I almost burst into tears right there in the driveway.
That price was less than half of every other apartment I had seen.
So I wrote a check every single month and slid it beneath his back door.
That simple arrangement became our entire system.
He never gave me a receipt and I never asked for one.
The strangest part started in November.
About three months after we moved in, I checked my banking app.
My balance stayed exactly the same every single time.
The eight hundred dollars had never left my account.
My stomach tightened instantly with worry and confusion.
I rushed across the yard and knocked on his back door.
“Mr. Alvarez, I think my rent check may have been lost.
I can write another one right now if you find the original later.”
He studied me in complete silence for what felt like forever.
“It’s taken care of,” he finally said quietly.
Then he simply closed the door without another word.
I convinced myself he was one of those old-fashioned men.
He probably collected checks and deposited them all at once later.
My grandfather had done exactly the same thing in the bank.
But December passed and the check stayed untouched.
January came and it remained untouched too.
February brought the same result without fail.
Every month I wrote another check and pushed it under the door.
Yet the money stayed safely in my account the whole time.
I asked him about it more than once over the years.
His answer was always almost the same each time.
