by Peter Clines
Nate felt his grin become a smile. “That’d be fantastic.”
Two
The building was a cube of red bricks lined with gray mortar, the type of building one pictured in New York or San Francisco. Two rectangles of concrete sat in the brick at the third story, each bearing the eroded image of old heraldry. Just above the wide front door, a fire escape zigzagged up the center of the building’s face. Nate knew Los Angeles had lots of old buildings like this. He worked in one of them.
It was built up on a tall foundation, sitting on top of an already-high slope. There were two flights of stairs leading up to the door. He saw them and immediately pictured the hassle of hauling furniture up them. Two trees flanked the steps and gave some cover to the downstairs apartments. They were newer additions, not as thick and sturdy as the one sprawled by the wrought-iron gate.
A small Asian woman stood just inside the gate, an orange iPad tucked under her arm. She waved to him. “Nate?”
He nodded. “Toni?”
“I am. Great to meet you.” She opened the gate and shook his hand.
Toni was one of those women it was impossible to pin an age on. She could’ve been anywhere from eighteen to thirty-five. Her skirt showed enough leg to make him think younger. The cadence of her voice and manner made him think older.
She smiled at him as she led him up the stairs. It was a fantastic smile. If it was fake, she practiced it every day. “It’s a great building,” she said. She gave one of the pillars by the door an affectionate pat. “Over a hundred years old. It’s one of the oldest in this part of the city.”
“It looks great.”
“They built them to last back then. Isn’t that what people say?” She pulled open the steel security door. The main door past it was wide open. “Come on in and I’ll show you the place.”
Above the wide front door, KAVACH was engraved on the concrete lintel in bold letter. Nate wasn’t sure if it was a word or a name.
The small lobby was straight out of a dozen noir films. Apartments 1 and 2 flanked the front door. A staircase with a well-worn banister curled up to the second floor. Beneath the staircase were two banks of mailboxes. Under the boxes were tall stacks of phonebooks. It looked like they’d been there for a long time.
“Don’t mind those,” she said. “Usually Oskar, the property manager, keeps things pretty tidy.”
“It’s not a dealbreaker,” he told her.
She gave him another smile and butterflies fluttered in his stomach. It had to be practiced. No one could naturally pack so much into curved lips and a flash of teeth.
“Let’s head up,” she said. She glanced at her iPad. “We’ll zig-zag a bit.”
She guided him up the curving staircase to the second floor and down the hall. It was all dark brown and ivory paint. They passed a narrow glass door that made him think of an old telephone booth. Toni glanced back over her shoulder and followed his gaze. “Elevator,” she explained. “It’s out of service right now, but they’ll probably have it working by the time you move in. It’s pretty small, though. You’ll have to take your furniture up the stairs.”
“Good thing I don’t have much,” he said. He glanced at the other side of the hall and glimpsed a set of padlocks on a door marked 14, but Toni’s tour had already moved past it. He looked back over his shoulder, but the thick frame hid the door.
“Twenty-two units,” she said as they walked toward the back. “Eight, six, and eight.” They stepped through a fire door and into a large space that stretched from one side of the building to the other. There were three couches and a pair of matching chairs. The south wall wore a huge flat screen, at least forty inches. “The lounge area’s open to everyone,” she said. “There are connections for a game system or Blu-ray or whatever you might want to use. You might want to leave a note if you want to reserve a certain time for something.”
The back of the lounge was also the landing for the rear stairwell. It was much more industrial than the front one, and switched back and forth with each short flight of steps. Toni continued up the stairs. The third floor hallway looked identical to the two below it. On either side of the landing was a brown door, 27 and 28. She produced a key and opened 28.
The studio wasn’t huge, but pretty big. Nate pictured clones of himself laying head to toe on the hardwood floor and guessed the room was twenty by twenty. Maybe deeper than wide. Two long strings dangled from the ceiling fan in the center. The brick wall across from the door was filled by two huge windows, big enough for him to stand in. They were the old-fashioned, mullioned kind, with ropes and counterweights hidden in the frames.
Outside the window he could see Los Angeles. With the small hill and the tall foundation he was close to five stories up. The windows looked right over the top of the building next door. Nate could see the 101 Freeway a few blocks to the north. In the distance, up on the hillside, he could see the Griffith Park Observatory.
Toni’s heels clicked on the floor. “Some view, isn’t it?”
“It’s amazing.” He leaned his head close to the glass. Off to the left stood the tall, white letters of the Hollywood sign.
She stepped through the open doorway to the left and into the kitchen. The counter was decorated with white and blue tiles in a pattern that could almost pass for a checkerboard. The linoleum on the floor mimicked the counter. “The apartment comes with a fridge,” she said. “Laundry room is in the basement. There’s a sun deck up on the roof. We start with a six month lease but it goes month to month after that. Once you pass a credit check we’d need first and last month’s rent.”
He walked over to the kitchen and tried to play it cool. He opened a few cabinets focused on the countertop so he wouldn’t risk stupidity in the light of her smile. “And the rent is how much?” he asked. “The guy I talked with said it was on the cheaper side.”
“Well, I’m afraid we just had an increase,” she said, “so it’s not as cheap as it used to be.”
Nate looked back at the studio and pictured all his furniture lined up along one wall. “That’s understandable,” he said. “So how much is it?”
“Five-sixty-five,” she said. “That includes utilities.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them.”
He risked looking at the smile. “Five hundred and sixty-five dollars total?”
“Yes,” she said. “Are you interested?”
“Fuck, yes,” he said. “Pardon my French.”
Toni’s smile wavered for a moment, and he realized a real smile had pushed through the practiced one. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’ve been know to swear like a sailor when things don’t go my way.”
A business card and pen appeared from her pocket. She used the back of the iPad as a desk and scribbled something on the card. “Go to our website and log on with this code,” she said. “The whole application’s online. Do it tonight and we can process the credit check on Monday. This time next week, this could be your place.” She held out the card.
“That’s great,” he said. “Credit check shouldn’t be any trouble.”
“Fantastic,” she said. “I’ll give you a call next week and—” Her smile cracked and started to crumble. She stepped back and caught it just in time.
A cockroach had appeared on the counter. It wasn’t one of the huge ones Nate saw sometimes at night out on the sidewalks, but it was big enough—half the size of his thumb. Its antennae wiggled as it followed a zigzag path across the counter.
“I’m so sorry,” Toni said. She glanced at her iPad again. “We have an exterminator in every other month, but it’s impossible to wipe them out, you know?”
The insect paused in a shaft of sunlight to give them a look and Nate got a good look back. Then it pressed itself behind the plate for an outlet and was gone. He knotted his brows. “Was that cockroach bright green?”
Toni shrugged and her smile reasserted itself. “Maybe? It’s an old building. You have to expect some weirdness, y’k
now?”
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1 - The Doctor Is In
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4 - Signing Up
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7 - Daughter of Liberty
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10 - Brute Force
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13 - The Spirit of Freedom
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16 - Common Sense
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19 - Sad Songs
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22 - Ghost in the Machine
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26 - Influence Peddler
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32 - Meeting Your Heroes
Epilogue