'Thank you for holding… What is the nature of your complaint?'
'I've been waiting on the line here for forty-five minutes. What's wrong with this department? I have half a mind to lodge another complaint about lodging this complaint.'
'Go ahead.'
'Let me speak to your supervisor.'
'I am the supervisor.'
'Well, I… Let me speak to someone else. I don't like your tone.'
'I don't like yours either.'
'This is an emergency and you don't seem to even care. The building behind mine—I can see it from my window—it's absolutely streaming with vermin. I can see them streaming in and out of there, in broad daylight, bold as brass. It's disgusting. The people living there don't even seem to care. They practically hold the doors open for them.'
'What's the address?'
'I don't know if it even has an address. It’s the alley behind my own building, 4027 M Street… I wouldn't even care—if people want to live like animals that’s their right—but I'm afraid they're going to spread to our building, and we can’t have that, we just can't.'
'Alley behind M Street.'
'And there are children over there, it's not clean for the children. If you're an adult you can make the decision about whether you want to live with rats or not, fine, but the children don't get to choose.'
'Do you have documentation of the vermin? Photographs, or droppings?'
'Good God in heaven, am I supposed to go collect rat droppings before you people do anything?'
'According to the rulebook, yes.'
'I shouldn’t have to... Haven't there been other complaints? I know there have been other complaints. We have been calling and calling you people…'
'When we get the necessary quota of complaints, we'll come and check it out.'
'And how many complaints is that?'
'We can't tell you. Departmental policy. And don't try calling back ten times a day. We'll know it's you.'

Read this story in full

'The Complaint' will be printed in full in Granta 97: Best of Young American Novelists 2. To subscribe to Granta and receive the entire issue free, or to buy a copy of Granta 97, click here.