14

by Peter Clines

  “Paint, sculpture, whatever the creative urge drives me to.” She picked up a cell phone from the pile of clothes and glanced at the time. “Anyway, it’s been nice meeting you, Nate from twenty-eight, but if you don’t mind I want to get some more sun before I go to work.”

  “You on a deadline?”

  “Sweet, but no. I’ve got a shift waiting tables.”

  “I thought you were an artist?”

  “Art is what I do,” she said, “but it’s not my job.” She unfastened one of the buttons and shooed him away. “Next time bring enough beer for the whole class.”

  He picked up his bottle and walked back to the fire door. The structure next to it loomed over him and he stopped at the padlocked door. “Hey,” he called back.

  “They’re already out.” She waved the shirt over her head like a flag. “I’m not covering up again.”

  “What is this thing, anyway?”

  “What?” She sat up on the chair and gave him a flash of bare shoulder.

  “This.” Nate pointed at the block of bricks.

  “It’s the whatsit for the elevator,” she said. “That’s what Oskar told me.”

  “The elevator?”

  “Yeah, all the motors and cables and stuff.”

  He took a few steps around the corner of the structure. It was larger than his apartment. “Kind of big, isn’t it?”

  Xela shrugged and vanished behind her chair again. “It’s an old building,” she said. “They had to make stuff bigger back then, y’know?”

  Seven

  Nate walked in the front door Tuesday after work and realized it had been ten days (not that he was counting) and he hadn’t gotten his mail yet. He’d changed addresses and had things forwarded, but it had slipped his mind to actually check the mailbox. He went to the mailboxes under the stairs and located the one with 28 on it. The numbers were on red label tape, the kind where someone spun a dial and pressed the characters into the hard material until they turned white. The box was packed with junk mail with his name and bills with someone else’s. As Eddie was so fond of saying at the office, he put it all in the circular file. Circulars in the circular file, Nate thought to himself.

  The piles of phone books beneath the mailboxes had capsized. There were three different versions, most of them in bags that would’ve been orange or white if they weren’t covered with dust. They were dated spring 2012, but he remembered them from his old place. They’d come out six months ago. There were at least two dozen of each type, so nobody had taken them. There was some brasswork behind them, hidden by a pile of alphabetical listings.

  Nate tried to shove the books back into a stack, but time and gravity had rolled their spines. They’d never stand again. In a sudden burst of community spirit, he decided they all needed to go in the circular file.

  No, he thought. Recycling by the dumpster. Even better.

  He looped the plastic handles around his wrists and twisted them onto his knuckles. It took some work, but he got seven phone books on each arm. He got his heel on the door, opened it back up, and headed down the front stoop.

  Nate found the first flaw in his plan when he got to the fence. He couldn’t lift his arms enough to open the gate. After a few moments of struggling a man in a sweater vest and tie unlocked the gate from the other side. “Are you okay?” the stranger asked.

  “Fine now,” said Nate. “You got here just in time.”

  “Not a problem at all,” said the other man. He looked at the bags Nate was holding and his head bobbed side to side for a moment. “Glad to see someone’s finally getting rid of those.” He stepped through and held the gate open. His dark hair was immaculately combed and parted. It reminded Nate of the plastic helmet-hair on LEGO people. “Have a wonderful day,” said the man.

  Nate wandered around to the side of the building where the dumpster stood. It reeked of piss, and he was careful not to step in any of the thin streams flowing down into the gutter. The blue recycling bins stood just past that. He let the bags slide off one arm, threw the lid open, and swung the other armload of phonebooks into the bin.

  Two more, slightly smaller trips to the recycling bins killed off the last of Nate’s community spirit and he decided the mail area looked fine with half the books gone. He spread the remainders out a bit more. As he rearranged the phone books he got a good look at the things behind them.

  There was a trio of dusty plaques hidden beneath the mailboxes. The largest was a slab of brass. It was almost a square, over a foot on each side, and divided into three sections.

  Next to it was a smaller one, the size of a hardcover book, which also identified the building by name, the build date of 1894, and declared it to be Historic-Cultural Monument No. 4 as of 1962. A large crest in the center of the plaque was labeled City of Los Angeles.

  The last one, underneath the city plaque, was for the state of California. It was almost as big as the national one and dark with age. The California plaque was rectangular with a curvy top and a picture of a bear between two stars. It had the name and the years again, this time declaring the building a registered landmark in 1932. Other than that it was blank.

  Nate wondered if landmark status granted some form of historical rent control. It might explain why everything was priced so low, although historical rents were probably closer to forty or fifty dollars a month, even in Los Angeles. He remembered something by Ray Bradbury where the author wrote about paying a miniscule amount for rent in Venice Beach back in the 1940s.

  He swung back around to the stairs and just missed the farmer’s daughter who lived across the hall from him. She flinched back and he stopped short. “Sorry,” he said. “My mind was somewhere else.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. Today’s outfit was tight jeans and a dark uniform top with a yellow logo on it. She had her hair pulled back in two stubby pigtails. A beat-up canvas shopping bag was slung over one of her shoulders.

  Nate set his hand on the banister just as she put her foot on the first stair. They both stepped back. She smiled. “Sorry.”

  “Ladies first.”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “I insist.” He took another step back and gestured her up the stairwell.

  She gave a little bow of her head and started up. Her feet clacked on the steps. She’s actually wearing cowboy boots, Nate thought, and she said, “You live across the hall from me, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I moved in two weeks ago.”

  “Right. You’re... Ned?”

  “Nate.”

  “Nate. I’m sorry I was so rude to you. I was gonna be late for work and my boss kind of has it in for me.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I know what it’s like to be running out the door and have something in your way. At my old place people used to double-park in our lot and block us in.”

  “Oh, that’s so rude.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  She slowed down and let him walk alongside her for the last flight of stairs. “I’m Mandy,” she said. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “And you,” he said. They tried for an awkward handshake on the move and laughed it off. At the third floor he let her take the lead again.

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Did you get moved in okay?”

  “No real problems,” he said. “Still a few things to unpack. Phone just got set up yesterday. Debating if I want cable. Trying to figure out what I want to do for internet.”

  “Oh, talk to Veek,” said Mandy.

  “Vic? Is he with the rental office or something?”

  “Veek,” repeated Mandy. “She. It’s short for something Middle Eastern or something. She’s got wireless set up for the whole building. She’ll let you in for five or ten bucks a month. And she works deals sometimes.” Mandy shrugged in an awkward way. “She’s down in fifteen.”

  “Good to know.”

  She stopped in front of her door. “What else can I tell you about this place you might not know?” She pursed her lip
s, pondering. “The elevator doesn’t work, but you probably figured that out moving in. Down in the laundry room, the machine on the left doesn’t work well. Oh, and there’s a girl who likes to lay out in the buff up on the sun deck.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Found most of that out already.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Mandy’s voice dropped into a conspiratorial whisper as she unlocked her door. “I don’t know what’s up with her. She’d be a real pretty girl if she didn’t do all that weird stuff to her hair.”

  While Nate debated if a comeback of some sort was needed, Mandy opened her apartment. He glanced in and saw homemade drapes and a broad clutter of furniture. “Hey,” he said, “is your apartment bigger than mine?”

  She looked over her shoulder, then past him to his door. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen inside yours. The last guy was kind of a creep. Always talking about S-E-X, you know what I mean?”

  “If by S-E-X you mean sex, then yes I do.”

  Her cheeks flushed. “Sorry,” she said. “I know it’s a silly habit.”

  “No problem.” He nodded at her apartment. “I’d swear, it looks like your apartment is bigger than mine. Maybe you’re getting more light from your kitchen window or something.” He jerked his thumb to the right.

  Mandy shook her head. “My kitchen’s over there,” she said, “behind the bathroom.” She pointed left, toward the far corner.

  “Your bathroom’s closer to the door than your kitchen?”

  “Isn’t yours?”

  “No. My kitchen’s right here.” He unlocked his door and pointed into the kitchen.

  She leaned cautiously into his apartment and glanced over. “Oh, wow,” she said. “You’ve got a real kitchen with counters and everything.”

  “You don’t?”

  Her pigtails wiggled in the air again. “Mine’s just a little kitchenette, y’know, like you’d get in a motel or something.” She shrugged and then took a few quick steps back to her door. “Anyways, it was nice to meet you, Nate. Again.”

  “You too,” he said. “Thanks for all the tips.”

  She stepped into her oversized apartment with a meek smile, and the door closed behind her.

  Eight

  Nate wanted to look up historical landmarks at work, but a fresh crate of returned flyers and another lecture from Eddie crushed his enthusiasm for doing anything. A parking ticket the next morning—he’d forgotten the street sweeping schedule—annihilated it. It wasn’t until the following Friday when Carla from accounting asked what his new place was like that he remembered the trio of plaques. Then he was ashamed to realize he couldn’t remember the name of the building. He peeled a sticky note off the pad on his desk and stuck it in his wallet so he’d have a reminder and something to write on when he got home.

  When he got home, though, his mind ended up focused on other things again. He’d learned weekends were the worst for parking, especially at rush hour. It didn’t help that an oversized truck was blocking most of the spots in front of his building. One guy in a green Taurus sat in his car, taking up two spaces between a pair of driveways and ignoring Nate’s attempts to squeeze in on either end. Nate looped around the neighborhood until he spotted a space he could wiggle his Volkswagen into on the next street over.

  He walked home and inspected the truck in front of the building. It was one of the basic white ones that could be spotted all over the city. They usually had something to do with the movie industry. Then, as he approached the fence, Nate remembered it was the last Friday in April.

  Toni, the woman from Locke Management, was at the top of the stairs. She had on another just-too-short skirt and held her iPad in one hand. The other hand held a phone to her ear. She saw him and her killer smile shined out across the front lawn.

  Nate had almost reached the gate, which was held open with a bungee cord, when two brawny men stepped off the truck holding a couch between them. The lift gate squealed as they bounced from it to the ground.

  He followed the two men up the steps. They moved like the couch was an empty box. Toni gestured for him to stop by the door and he watched the men head up the curving staircase, angling the couch so they never broke stride.

  “I have to go,” she told the phone. “I’ve got another client here.” The cell snapped shut and she beamed at him. “How do you like the place so far?”

  “It’s great,” he said. “I love the sun deck.”

  “I know,” she said, the smile spreading further, “isn’t it wonderful? I wish my apartment was this nice.”

  “Maybe you should get a place here.”

  The smile was blinding, and he knew the joke hadn’t been that funny. “Speaking of which,” said Toni, “you have a new neighbor. Someone just rented the apartment next to yours.”

  “Someone?”

  “Well, I can’t give out personal information,” she said. “You’ll probably meet him upstairs, though.”

  The sticky note flashed in his mind. “Actually, I’ve got a question for you,” said Nate. He nodded toward the lobby. “I saw all the plaques under the mailboxes. What’s so special about this place?”

  “It’s a historic landmark,” she said. “Part of the reason the owners can keep rent so low is because they’re exempt from certain changes and requirements, plus they get a small subsidy from the government.”

  “Right,” he said. “I was wondering why it’s a landmark, though.”

  Her smile dimmed. “Sorry?”

  “What makes this place a landmark? Is there something special about the architecture or did something happen here or something?”

  She stared at him for a moment. “It’s very old. Did you see the cornerstone? Built in 1894.” She turned and gestured at the base of the building.

  Nate followed the movement to the block of marble. “That’s it? It’s old?”

  Toni glanced at her iPad and traced patterns on the screen with her fingers. “To be honest, Mr. Tucker, I’m not sure why. It happened a little before my time, obviously.” Her eyes met his and the smile went back to full power. “Oskar might know. Have you asked him?”

  “No,” he admitted. “I haven’t seen him in a couple days.”

  “I’ll look into it for you if you like,” she said. “I can check with the office and have something for you next time I’m here.” She checked her phone for the time. “If you’ll pardon me, I need to get going. Another place to show in half an hour.”

  Nate gave her a wave as she dashed down the steps to the street, tapping her iPad the whole way. She stepped through the gate and vanished down toward Beverly Boulevard.

  He headed up the stairs and passed the movers on the way down. Neither of them looked like they’d just carried a couch up three flights. Four, counting the steps from the street to the front door. They each gave him a quick grunt of acknowledgment and headed back to their truck.

  Boxes sat in the hall. Nate headed down with the thought of introducing himself and being a good neighbor. Halfway there something else caught his attention.

  Or, to be exact, the lack of something.

  The door marked 23 still didn’t have a knob. The socket sat empty on the lock plate. Maybe they do take it off when people are moving in?

  Nate pushed his finger into the socket. It went into the raised flange and stopped. It didn’t feel like the hole was too small. It felt like there wasn’t a hole.

  He crouched in front of 23 and peered at the socket. It was a dummy. Past the flange was smooth wood. The plate had just been screwed onto the face of the door.

  “Hey,” said a voice. “Hope my guys didn’t knock that off.”

  It was an older guy, pushing sixty but in good shape. He stood at the door to apartment 26, holding one of the boxes. His white hair was cut bristle-short. Nate thought this was how retired drill sergeants looked before they went on to become sadistic gym teachers.

  “No,” he said, “it’s been missing for a couple weeks now.”

  The man stepped forward. He
was a good three inches taller than Nate and his torso was a sharp V inside his polo shirt. “How d’you get in, then?”

  “It’s not my place,” he said. “I don’t think anyone lives there. They’re working on it or something and took the knob away.”

  The man eyed the empty socket and his gaze flitted up to examine Nate’s face. Nate had the unmistakable feeling of being sized up. The sadistic gym teacher comparison reared its head again.

  “Tim Farr,” the man said. “I just moved in today.” He shifted the box under his arm, stuck out a hand, and gave Nate’s fingers a crushing shake.

  “Nate Tucker,” he replied. “I live next door to you. Number twenty-eight.”

  Tim nodded. “You a quiet neighbor?”

  “I guess.”

  The older man smiled and showed a mouthful of small, white teeth. “I’ll let you know if you’re not. Is it a good building?”

  Nate shrugged. “I like it,” he said. “I’ve only been here about a month myself, but I think it’s one of the best places I’ve ever lived.”

  Tim gave another sharp nod. “A little smaller than I would’ve liked, but it seems okay. A floor plan would’ve been nice.”

  “You didn’t see it first?”

  He shook his head. “Sight unseen. I was in Virginia before this.”

  “What brings you to L.A.?”

  “Why does anyone come to California?” Tim smiled. “Trying to find myself.”

  Nate smiled, too. “I came for a girl.”

  “How’d that work out?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been trying to find myself for six years now.”

  Tim chuckled and shifted the box back into both hands. “Hey,” he said, “how’s that sun deck Toni told me about?”

  “Pretty cool. Awesome view.”

  “Might as well do the whole California thing right, yeah? I was thinking of having a beer up there later and watch the sunset.”

  “Oh,” said Nate, “as a heads up, if you see a note on the door to the roof, it means one of our neighbors is sunbathing in the nude. She probably won’t be there late in the day, but just in case.”