Renée stood alone on the sidewalk in an ordinary middle-class suburb of an unknown city in a different state, anxiously looking around at the houses. At the end of the training course (which had actually only been five days but had felt to Renée interminable), Andy’s team had been allocated Cleveland, Ohio as their sales patch, and so they’d all pitched together to hire a minibus to transport them the five hundred-odd miles from Nashville. But now they were here they had nowhere to stay, and most of the students, Renée included, couldn’t afford a motel for more than a few days. Even so, she couldn’t believe what she was about to do, that this was what the bookselling company advocated all their students do, across the whole of America. It seemed bonkers to her now.
Renée had picked a cul-de-sac to try her luck in; she’d been told that people were more likely to know each other in those kinds of streets, be more friendly, but right now she felt exposed, as if she were being watched. The gardens were large and well tended, the expanses of grass brilliantly green, lush with life despite the mid-nineties temperatures, the sprinkler systems poking up like spies. The houses were well-kept too – in fact it was all rather perfect, movie-like, and it felt as if she had seen it all before somewhere, maybe she was having her very own American dream, or nightmare, she wasn’t sure which. As Renée hesitated, she felt small and frightened, not at all her usual self, like it was her first day of school perhaps, and the heat from the sun poured into her as if it was trying to cook her. She kept staring at the houses, trying to decide which one to pick first, which one would be the least unwelcoming. She tried to remember her training, how they’d been told that this was all part of the process, part of embedding themselves into the local community, of becoming a loved and trusted part of it for the summer. As if, Renée thought, why had she listened to that crap, why the hell was she here at all?
After perhaps two minutes of pacing, where her knees felt hot and unhinged, as though she really could fall over, she decided she just had to get on with it. She picked the friendliest-looking house, the one with a couple of kids’ bikes strewn on the driveway, and she marched on slim, wobbly legs up the path, through the neat front yard, and knocked firmly on the door. She stood back six feet, exactly as she’d been taught, and looked sideways down the road: the least threatening position for the door-answerer apparently, the one most likely to grant you an entry.
The knocking set off a terrible racket. What sounded like a pack of dogs started hurling themselves at the door, barking madly. Renée was about to run away when she heard a voice saying, ‘Now just you stop that, Betsy, and you too, Growler,’ and the door was opened four inches by a harassed-looking woman in a long satin dressing gown the colour of chewed-up bubble gum, as unidentifiable dogs’ teeth and paws scratched through the opening.
‘Hi, are those your attack dogs?’ said Renée. This was one of the stock jokes she’d been fed for exactly this kind of situation, but her voice was squeaky and her delivery was terrible. Renée swallowed hard and continued her patter.
‘Er, my name is Renée and I’m all the way from England! I’m on an educational programme here in Cleveland, from the University of …’
‘Sorry, I’m busy,’ said the woman, and shut the door.
Renée stood still for a moment, feeling shocked, violated almost – and then she walked self-consciously through the front yard back to the sidewalk, hoping no-one was watching. She hated rejection, felt it like a punch. She thought of her mother in Paris for an instant and felt sick. She had to keep going. She walked straight to the next house and knocked, firmly, three times. A little kid answered, dragging his filthy muslin behind him.
‘Mommy, there’s someone at the door for you.’
Renée waited and the roof of her mouth felt claggy, as if she were eating a peanut-butter sandwich. After a couple of minutes a bright, friendly-looking woman with eyes so blue they must have been fake came to the door.
‘Hi! My name is Renée and I’m on an educational programme here in Cleveland all the way from Bristol University in England! How are you today?’
‘I’m good,’ said the woman, but she seemed a little impatient now, as though she knew what was coming.
‘I’ve just arrived in Cleveland as part of an educational programme and … and I’m … I’m looking for somewhere to stay for the summer. And, er … do you have a spare room that I could possibly use?’ As Renée said it, she thought she might even keel over with humiliation, even though she’d practised it so many times. The woman smiled kindly and said, ‘No, you know what, our spare room is used as an office, so I guess I can’t help you. Good luck though, have a great summer,’ and as she closed the door Renée could hear her yell, ‘Joey, get back up those stairs right now and brush your teeth. We’re gonna be late for preschool.’
Renée marched straight to the neighbouring house, refusing to give up now that she’d started. There was no reply at that door, but at the next several the people were friendly enough, in between a couple more door slams, although for various reasons no-one was able to help. Finally she approached the last house in the close, the least inviting one. It was tucked back further from the street than the others, and there was a big shady tree in the front yard and the paint on the windows was peeling. She waited for ages and was about to leave when she heard shuffling inside and several locks being opened, and eventually a man appeared at the door. He was in his late forties, balding, with a big, droopy moustache that seemed old-fashioned somehow, and although his clothes were smart enough his trousers were ever so slightly too short for him.
As Renée went through her patter the man said nothing, just stared at her hostilely. ‘So, um, do you have a spare room that I could, um, maybe stay in … ?’ she finished, her voice trailing off as she saw his face.
‘You what?’ he yelled. ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing? Coming round here asking if you can move in with me? Are you crazy?’
The man’s aggression, rather than diminishing Renée, seemed to strengthen her.
‘There’s no need to shout at me!’ she yelled back. ‘I’m only doing what I’ve been told to do. You don’t have to be so rude.’
‘Who told you to? What are you talking about?’ asked the man, and after Renée started rambling on about bookselling companies and headquarters in Nashville, and how it was all part of the programme, he seemed to understand, and told her that she’d better come in, and then he led her (quite forcibly, he was obviously angry still) by the arm into a room where the curtains were closed, and it was full of tangly plants and the only light was what seemed to reflect off the white antimacassars. One of the armchairs had a plastic protective sheet on it, and there was a strong fetid smell of cats, although she couldn’t see any in the room. Renée was a little freaked out now, but she started explaining how she’d been specifically instructed to go out and knock on people’s doors and ask to live for free in their spare rooms, how her friends were doing it too, they were all only following instructions – and as she spoke she felt ridiculous, as if she really had been brainwashed, she was not normally nearly so suggestible.
‘Have you any idea how dangerous that is?’ said the man. ‘How do you know whose house you’re going into? Anything could happen.’
Renée privately agreed with him – after all she was sat here now with this weird-looking, raging man in his dingy stinking sitting room – but she didn’t know what else she was meant to do. Her host stood up and went over to the telephone table, next to an ancient-looking TV which had a silver film of dust across its screen, and he found a pen and wrote down something on a small square pad, and when he handed the sheet to her it said ‘Father Duncan’ and there was a phone number, written in scratchy blue ink.
‘Give him a call,’ said the man. ‘Tell him Larry Johnson gave you his number. I can’t promise, but he might be able to help you.’ He started towards the door and so Renée got up and followed obediently. She thanked him in the hallway, and as she moved out into the sunshine she felt like she’d had a lucky escape, as if the man had just rescued her from something close to madness.