by Peter Clines
“I wouldn’t worry,” said the older man. “Lots of people don’t figure out what they’re doing until later in life. Case in point.” He raised his bottle, and the two men clinked their beers together again.
They each took a drink. “The flipside to what you’re saying,” continued Tim, “is that there are hundreds of thousands of people who’ve decided they want to do this despite the fact that they’re no good at it. They devote all their energy toward being a doctor or a loan officer or something when they’re really better suited to another career altogether. Not to mention all the folks who end up trapped in a career they don’t like because they can’t afford to leave it. I’ve met a lot of people who would’ve been millionaires if they figured out what they were doing wasn’t what they were supposed to be doing.”
“Like you?”
He shook his head. “No, I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. And I did it for a long time. Then it was time to do something else.” Tim shrugged and took a long drink of beer. He turned to Nate. “One day you’re just going to find the thing you’re supposed to do and it’s going to click. Until then, yeah, it’ll be a big mystery. Speaking of which...what is that?”
Nate turned and followed Tim’s gaze to the block of bricks next to the stairwell door. “It’s part of the elevator,” he said. “It’s where all the cables and motors and stuff are.”
“The machine room?”
“I guess.”
“You sure?”
Nate shrugged. “It’s what Xela told me. She said it’s what Oskar told her.”
Tim wrinkled his brow. “It’s way too big for a building this size.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. She said it’s because it’s so old. Everything was bigger back then. Less miniaturization or something.”
Tim shook his head again. “No,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of old buildings with elevators. None of them had a machine room that big.” He paused. “Well, nothing this size, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “The last time I saw one that big was on a tour of the Empire State Building.”
Eleven
Nate overslept Sunday. By a lot.
He woke up and stretched under the covers. Moving had fluffed up the mattress on his futon and the past few weeks had been some of the best sleep of his life. If nothing else, the move had been worth it for that.
It was a warm day. Almost hot. He guessed it was part of the reason he’d slept so well.
He stretched again and glanced at the clock. It was twenty past twelve. Still, it wasn’t like he had big plans for the day. If he could find a Target or Walmart in the area, he might get a new lamp for the kitchen, or maybe a—
Stop by my apartment tomorrow at noon and I’ll give you a password. Don’t be late.
“Ahhh, crap,” he muttered.
A few quick sniffs of his armpits told him he could get by without a shower. He yanked a t-shirt off the bookshelf and pulled on yesterday’s jeans. He stepped into the bathroom, dabbed his teeth with Crest, and swished the paste around in his mouth for a moment. Not great, but hopefully he’d make a slightly better impression this time, aside from being half an hour late.
Veek yanked open her door on the third knock. Despite the heat she was wearing another long-sleeved dress shirt, this time over a black tee. She didn’t say anything.
“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “My alarm didn’t go off.”
She glared at him through her glasses for a moment, then pushed the door open and walked back inside. He waited for an invitation, but when one didn’t come he just followed her in.
Her apartment was a studio like his. Her kitchen wasn’t separated by a wall, but the basic layout looked the same past that. He even saw the same blue and white tile checkered across her counters. She had a rumpled, blanket-covered twin bed shoved under the windows. The room was cool, and he understood why she had the extra layers on.
The right wall of Veek’s apartment was dominated by a folding table, the kind used by caterers or hardcore yard salers. It was covered with computer components. Or maybe it was just one big computer. Everything looked connected by lots of cables.
In front of the chair were three flat screens, one of them on a long arm. A swirling blue and silver screensaver, like underwater lightning, rolled back and forth across them. The keyboard looked foreign, and he realized a beat later it was a Dvorak setup, arranged for efficiency and speed over classic training. A set of what he thought were black phonebooks stood next to the tower under the table, and Nate recognized them as old Playstations just before he saw the name on one. A small cluster of external hard drives stood on the table above the towers.
She saw him studying the setup. “Got a problem?”
“Nope,” he said. “This is pretty impressive.”
“It’s nothing great,” she said. “Just some stuff I’ve scavenged and got secondhand.”
“It all looks pretty new to me.”
“I got some good deals. People throw out a lot of stuff with life left in it. If I could afford a real machine it’d be one-fourth the size.”
“Must use a ton of power.”
She smirked. “Well, that’s not a real problem here, is it?”
“I guess not.”
She dropped into the chair and tapped the mouse. The rolling screensaver vanished and the screens were filled with windows. “For now your password’s just your last name spelled backwards. I got it off your mailbox. I can change it right now if you like.”
“Can I just change it myself later?”
Veek shrugged. “It’s all through me. I know all the passwords. If I cared to look I could tell you every email address you use and what kind of porn you download. But I don’t care.”
“Gotcha.”
“So, do you want a new password or not?”
“Can you add one-four-four to the front of it?”
She nodded. “Twelve squared? Not bad. Easy to remember, and using it at the front instead of the end gives you a bit more security.” Her fingers danced on the keys. It was an odd dance, and Nate realized he’d never seen someone use a Dvorak keyboard before.
“Done,” she said. “Ten bucks a month. I’m not a hardcase about getting it on the first, but the first week’d be cool.”
He fished in his wallet and pulled out his lone twenty. “Do you have change?”
“No,” she said. “Tell you what, though. Give me the twenty and we’ll say you paid for the first three months.”
It was a good deal, but he still crunched numbers in his head to see if he could afford it. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said.
He held out the bill. She plucked it from his fingers and stuffed it into her shirt pocket. “You’re good to go,” she said. “You should have access when you get back to your apartment. Sometimes the signal gets a little hinky going through walls. If it does, try opening your door or going out in the hall if you’ve got a laptop. It’s usually stronger out there.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“So,” he said, “Veek is short for...?”
“Why do you care?”
Nate shrugged. “Just trying to be polite and neighborly.”
“Malavika Vishwanath. Don’t try to say it, you’ll just piss me off.”
“Okay.” He nodded at the computer. “So, seriously, what do you use it for?”
The screensaver kicked back in. “I do a lot of work from home. I’m in the office half the time, but they let me work here, too.”
“What kind of work?”
Veek’s eyes narrowed. “Just data entry. Nothing exciting.”
He bit back a chuckle.
“What?”
“I do data entry,” said Nate. “Worthless job. And it doesn’t need a machine like that.”
“I told you, it’s not that great.” She settled back in her chair. “You’re all good.”
He shrugged and shook his head. “Thanks.” He
turned to leave and saw what had been behind him the whole time.
There were five thermometers on the wall by the door. One was an old-fashioned glass rod filled with mercury. One was a dial. There was a brass, baroque thing where an arrow swung on a graded circle. The largest was a square of white plastic that gave a digital readout. The smallest was also digital, the size of a cell phone. He peered at each of them and confirmed they all said the same thing.
69
“Go on,” she said.
He glanced back. “What?”
Veek nodded at the wall. She had her arms crossed again. “Get the stupid sex joke out of the way.”
“I wasn’t going to—”
“Just say it. I’ll give you points if you can come up with something original.”
“Seriously. I didn’t think of—”
“You’re a guy who just saw the number sixty-nine repeated five times. Don’t try to tell me you didn’t think of sex. Just say it so we can get it out of the way.”
He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and gave an awkward shrug. “You... really like sixty-nine, don’t you?”
“No,” she said. “It’s weird and everything looks wrong. More to the point, it’s not my choice.”
“Sorry?”
She turned in her chair and waved her hand at the apartment. “It’s always sixty-nine degrees in here. I can put the oven on high and crank the heat in the middle of summer and it’ll be sixty-nine degrees in here. I can open all the windows in January and put the AC on full and it’s sixty-nine degrees in here.”
He looked at the wall of thermometers. “Why?”
“I don’t know. It just is.”
He took another step toward the door and stopped to look at her. “Yesterday,” said Nate, “you told me twenty-three wasn’t a real door.”
Veek took off her glasses and wiped them on the corner of her shirt. “It’s not.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been living here for two years now. I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff.”
“But how do you know?”
She looked at him and she smiled. It was a tight, secretive smile.
“What’s up with apartment fourteen, then?” he asked. “All the padlocks?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Seriously, I don’t know. It’s been like that the whole time I’ve been here. I’ve seen the door get painted twice, but as far as I know it’s never been opened.”
He studied her eyes through the large lenses. “You’ve tried to open it, haven’t you?”
Her lips twitched. “Oskar was furious. I came this close to getting evicted. I even went down on the street once and tried to look in the windows with the zoom on my phone. The windows are painted black.”
“What?”
“Yep. Solid black. Every inch of ‘em.”
Nate stared through the wall in the direction of the mystery apartment. His eyes crept across the wall of thermometers to Veek’s kitchen. He cleared his throat. “Any bulb I put in my kitchen fixture lets off black light,” he said.
Her eyebrows went up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean any bulb I put in the fixture lets off black light.”
“You’re sure it’s not just one of the ones they sell at Halloween?”
He nodded. “I’ve traded it out four times now. Twice with bulbs I brought from my other place, twice with bulbs I bought over at Vons. Whatever I put in it becomes a black light. I think it’s a voltage thing, or amperage or something.”
Veek shook her head. “I don’t think it works that way. You need to make the bulbs specifically.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
He shrugged. “It’s the only thing I can think of.”
She tapped her fingers on the arms of the chair. “Nobody stays in apartment five. They rent it and the people move out as soon as their lease expires. Some of them move out sooner.”
He nodded. “There was a guy moving out the day I moved in. Craig?”
“Carl. Jerk stiffed me for two months of internet. And they never rent the apartment across the hall, sixteen.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing. I’ve been in there a couple times. They’ve left it open at night once or twice when they’re painting. But they never show it.”
“Why not?”
“I asked one of the older tenants, Mrs. Knight down in four. She’s been here for twenty-five years. Right after she moved in someone killed herself in there. A wanna-be actress. Hung herself in the closet.”
“Hanged,” said Nate.
“Don’t be one of those people.”
“So a woman kills herself and they never rent it again? That’s a bit odd.”
“Yeah,” said Veek. She looked at him. It was a look he remembered from college, when he had a few less pounds around the waist. He was being considered. She spent another moment examining his face and made a decision.
“You want to see something mind-blowing?”
He gave her a faint smile. “I don’t know, I’ve seen some pretty wild tattoos, but go ahead.”
Her smile faded. “I’m serious. I can show you something else about this place but you might lose a lot of sleep over it.”
They looked at each other for a moment.
“Okay,” he said. “Show me.”
Twelve
Veek led him to the back stairwell. They walked down the concrete steps and out the fire door to the small lot behind the building. She gave a sweeping wave with her arm. “What do you see?”
He glanced around. “What am I looking at?”
“It’s better if you figure it out on your own.”
Nate studied the back lot. There was a chain-link fence between them and the building the next street over. Two small trees grew in either corner of the lot, their trunks forced up through cracks in the concrete. A few faint outlines stood out on the ground, the shapes of things that had been spray-painted red, black, or blue.
He looked at the back of the building. There weren’t any concrete decorations or decorative pillars on this side. A cinderblock propped the door open. Another fire escape clung to the brick wall, and the ladder hung a few feet above the door. He followed it up to the windows of his kitchen and Mandy’s studio. “I’m still not sure what I’m supposed to see.”
Veek shrugged off her Oxford shirt and tied it around her waist, leaving her in the black tee. “Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s go out front.”
They walked back through the building, past the ever-empty room 5 and the never-functional elevator. She led him out the front stoop and down to the first landing. “Now what do you see?”
“I’m still not sure of the point of this.”
“Just look,” she told him. “Once you see it you’re going to kick yourself for not noticing before.”
He shrugged and looked at the building again. It was the same mismatched brick as the back. On this side it was broken by the two slabs of concrete and the pillars flanking the front door. “This fire escape zigzags the other way,” he said. “Is that it?”
“No. Keep looking.”
The stone lintel had KAVACH engraved in bold letters, but Nate couldn’t see anything else on it. He squinted up at the concrete over Oskar’s windows and beneath Xela’s. It didn’t look like there’d ever been words or numbers on them, just the image of a shield. He stepped off the landing and peered over at the cornerstone with its pair of monograms. They still didn’t mean anything to him.
He counted the windows, then used his hands to make sure they lined up. He looked up at the edge of the roof for any gargoyles or angels or anything else he may have missed. After another few minutes, he shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Across the street,” she said, opening the gate.
“What for?”
“I told you, it’s better if you figure it out on your own.”
“Right,” he muttered. “No one can be told what the Matrix is.”
She smirked. “Something like that.”
They walked across Kenmore and she guided him up the steps of another building. It was one of the brighter ones on the street, with a lot more Spanish influence. It might’ve been a small mansion at one point before being broken up into apartments. He glanced up at the building. “Are we going to get in trouble for being here?”
“For what? Standing on the stairs? If anyone asks, we’re looking at our place.” Veek gestured at the far side of the street. “Now?”
He looked at the apartment building, then at the ones on either side. The one to the north, the one his window looked down on, was more of a Victorian style, painted bright blue and white. The one to the south, higher up the hill, was another Spanish-style place. Past that was a wider brick building that looked like it might be distantly related to theirs.
“Still not seeing anything,” he said.
“What’s on the roof of this building?”
“This one?” Nate turned and craned his neck back. There was a small balcony with a flowerbox blocking his view. He took a step back, but the edge of the roof was still lost in the cluster of wires leading into the building. He could see the orange-red tiles of the roof, but nothing else. “I don’t see anything,” he told her. “Can you give me a hint what I’m...”
Nate stopped and gazed over his shoulder at their apartment building. He looked over at the quasi-Victorian and the fan of power cables and phone lines running into it. He glanced up the street at the larger brick building and the web stretching between it and the phone poles.
He crossed the street. Veek stayed a few steps behind him. He got to the gate and looked up at the Kavach Building. The bricks and concrete stared back.
“There aren’t any power cables,” he said. “There’s nothing.”
Veek pointed at the single line running from the phone pole to the corner of their roof. “Pac Bell and Comcast,” she said. “The one in the middle is the phone line, the one spiraling around it is the cable.”
Nate was still staring up in the air. “But where’s everything else?”
“There is nothing else,” said Veek. “There’s no electrical lines running into the building at all. There’s also no meters out back or in the basement. No one here notices because we’re not paying for it. No one else notices because it’s not their job.” She nodded at the building. “We’re not hooked into the L.A. power grid.”