He took a step inside and then moved to the center of the room and stood glancing around in silence. A window on one wall, the blinds closed and covered in cobwebs. Dead flies on the concrete.
An occasional insect fluttered past him lethargically. Along the wall that shared the door he had stepped through were a series of thin black lines a foot off the floor and running the length of that wall and when he stepped closer he realized that they were channels in the drywall, the concrete there a platform for tiny hills of white and tan sawdust. Termites. He reentered the house, returning to the air-conditioned rooms that were nearly as empty as the garage, and picked up his phone and dialed and when Barb answered he said: “Where’s all my stuff?”
“What?”
“Where’s my stuff, Barb? Where’s all my stuff?”
“At the mini storage,” she said.
“What mini storage?”
“The mini storage down the street.”
“What’s it doing there?”
“Wait, you’re just now wondering where your stuff is?”
“What’s their number?”
“I don’t know. It’s on the bill.”
“What bill?”
“What do you mean ‘what bill’? The bill. The bill. What do you want me to say? You change the bank account and I have no money and now you’re calling to ask about the mini storage?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m doing,” he said. He had already gone to the pile of mail on the counter and was rifling through it now. He had paid the phone bill and the power and the gas and the mortgage. But there was a sizable stack of mail there, much of it three months old, that he had not even looked at.
“What’s it called?” he said.
Perhaps she had been talking. “Are you even listening to me?” she said. “I don’t remember what it’s called. Something storage. It’s right up the street. I don’t get it. You’re just now noticing that your stuff isn’t there?”
“I haven’t been in the garage,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I just haven’t.”
“Are you serious?”
“How does it work? Is there a key here or something?”
“I left it on the counter along with the mailbox key and the extra house key.”
He looked at his keys. There was the one key he had never used and now he knew what it was for. The mini storage padlock.
“Why did you move everything to the mini storage?”
“Because I thought you were going to sell the house. I didn’t think you’d be hanging out there for months.”
He did not say anything in response.
“I hope you’ve been paying the bill.”
Again, his silence. Then he said, “I think I’d better call them.”
“I’m not done talking,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I’ll call you back.”
She started to say something but he mumbled a quick good-bye and clicked the phone shut. He had found a bill that read “EZ Storage” and then another and yet another, some with red letters under the address indicating “First Notice” and “Second Notice” and one marked in bold, triple-underlined and in all capital letters: “FINAL NOTICE.” He opened that envelope and searched for the number and dialed. The bill was in his hand and he read through it as the phone began to ring. One hundred and twenty days overdue. There was a letter enclosed and he had just unfolded it when the line clicked and the call was answered.
He was asked his name and the account number and the storage unit number and because Barb had opened it they asked for her social security number, birth date, and home address for verification and he gave them that information from memory. The voice on the other line asked him to hold and then the line clicked and he sat and listened to Bob Marley being piped through the telephone speaker. He had spread the letter on the table, a document that described, in as precise terms as possible, the extent of the disaster were he to fail to pay the enclosed bill within thirty days. He slid the chair closer to the kitchen counter and retrieved the envelope and looked at its mailing date. Six weeks ago. Shit.
Bob Marley was singing forever and would never stop.
Then there was an abrupt click on the line and a voice returned. “Mr. Corcoran?” it said.
“Yes,” he said.
“I’m sorry to inform you that your storage unit has been closed for lack of payment,” the man said. There was a faint hint of a Middle Eastern accent, but it was so subtle as to sound more like cultural refinement than ethnicity, as if the careful pronunciation of English words was exacted to the standards of a private university education.
“I don’t understand,” Keith said.
“The account was not paid for one hundred and twenty days. Even then we waited another thirty days after we sent the final notice. It’s not a free storage unit. It’s a business.”
“I understand that,” Keith said. “I’ve been out of town. I’d like to go ahead and pay the full bill now.”
“Sir, we appreciate that, but we have sent your account to the collection agency so you would need to speak with them about the eventuality of your payment.”
“OK,” he said. “Let me ask you this: How long before I can straighten this out and get my stuff out of the storage unit?”
“You misunderstand me, sir. There’s nothing in the unit anymore. Your account is closed and that unit is now occupied by a new renter.”
“Where’s my stuff, then?”
“Sir, I’m sorry to have to inform you that the items in the storage were auctioned.”
“Auctioned to who?”
“Sir, I cannot give you that information even if I had it, which I do not.”
He sat in the kitchen, blinking slowly.
“Sir, when nonpayment occurs the contents of the storage are auctioned off.”
“They got everything?”
“Sir, this is what I’m telling you. The whole unit is auctioned as a single item. What they do with the contents after that is up to them.”
“Christ,” he said.
“Sir, I’m sorry to have to give you this unsettling information.”
“Unsettling? Shit.”
“Sir, we made every attempt to contact you.”
“I’m sure you did,” he said. His voice was quiet now, slowing down. A weak thing. A dead bird. “When did the auction take place?” he said.
“Two weeks ago.”
“Christ. Is the stuff still in it?”
“Sir, the items sold at auction are required to be immediately removed from the unit upon payment by the winning bidder.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they removed everything from the unit so it could be utilized by a new renter.”
Keith was quiet.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the man said. “Would you like the number of the collection agency?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
He was given the number and he wrote it down on an envelope and the call ended. The room reentered its silence. He sat there at the kitchen table. There were no thoughts now, only a deep well of regret as if the entirety of his life had slipped away from him and what remained was not even a shell or a husk but something akin to a spindrift of thin and insubstantial and sifted dust.
“Well, Quinn,” he said to the empty room. “Here I am. What now?”
He stood again and returned to the stack of mail and looked for the termite inspection report but did not find it, instead bringing the mail to the table and proceeding to open each envelope and sorting the contents into piles. There were no bills he had not paid apart from the mini storage and a handful of magazine subscriptions that were Barb’s and these he threw into the trash pile and finally he stood and gathered that pile and dumped the whole of it into one of the two identical plastic trash bins and then lifted both and carried them through the doorway into the garage, clicking the button that opened the big door there and then waiting as that blank white square rattled open at last.