Riverside Senior Apartments turned out to be a four‑story brick building that had seen better days, probably around 1970. The paint was peeling near the roofline. The front steps had cracks running through the concrete.
The lobby smelled of old carpet and something vaguely medicinal.
I found the superintendent’s office on the first floor and knocked. A man in his fifties with thinning hair and permanent scowl lines answered.
“I’m here about the cleaning job,” I said, holding up the paper tab from the bus‑station bulletin board. He looked me over with obvious skepticism.
“You got experience?”
“No,” I said honestly.
“But I’m a hard worker and I need the job.”
He grunted. “Seven‑fifty an hour, six days a week. You clean common areas, help residents with minor maintenance requests, take out trash—whatever needs doing.
You start tomorrow at six a.m.
Don’t be late.”
He thrust out his hand. “I’m Jack Brennan.
I own this place, and I don’t tolerate laziness.”
I shook his hand firmly. “Bridget Ellis.
I won’t let you down.”
The work was harder than anything I’d ever done.
That first week, my hands blistered from mopping floors. My back ached from scrubbing bathtubs. I fell into bed each night in the tiny room Jack let me rent at a discount, too exhausted to do anything but sleep.
But I showed up every morning at six sharp.
And I listened. Mrs.
Chen in 2B told me about her grandson, who’d promised to visit monthly but hadn’t come in eight months. She cried while I fixed her kitchen cabinet door that had been hanging loose for weeks.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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