14

by Peter Clines

  Nate took a step back.

  The man opened the car door, slid behind the wheel, and started the engine. It was an amazingly fluid action, as if he practiced getting into his car for hours every day. The Taurus pulled out and drove away. It reached the intersection and turned east, toward the freeway.

  Nate watched him go. Either he’d just been very unlucky and a puzzle piece had gotten away from him, or he’d been very lucky the man had driven away. He wasn’t sure which. He walked to the end of the block and looked east. There was no sign of the green Taurus.

  He decided to keep walking.

  Another few blocks took him beneath an overpass and the Hollywood Freeway thundered over his head. It was remarkably clean aside from a splattering of pigeon poop. He continued north on Kenmore as it jogged back and forth. He’d noticed a few times on the nights he circled for parking that his neighborhood had lots of odd roads that didn’t line up.

  Half an hour of walking brought him out somewhere on Vermont. Nate recognized a McDonalds he’d passed once or twice, the Braille Institute, and the entrance to L.A. City College. He went another few blocks and saw a little coffee shop with big windows and a faded awning. He decided it was as good a stopping point as any. He considered the few bills in his wallet, the pitiful balance in his checking account, and the news he’d gotten the day before. In the end, a coffee and a muffin wasn’t going to kill him, especially if he counted it as lunch.

  The prices at the shop were cheaper than at Starbucks, which helped ease the pain of parting with his last five-dollar bill. The coffee was good, the muffin was sweet, and he settled onto a long bench below the window with a three-week-old issue of TIME he found abandoned on a nearby table. He paged through an article on the rise of end-of-the-world groups since the start of 2012. There was a sidebar mentioning the May 21st predictions of the year before, the Y2K paranoia of 2000, and how similar cults had sprung up in the late 19th Century, predicting the end would come in 1900. There was even a piece about the original Rapture predictions from William Miller in 1844.

  He finished the muffin, balled up the paper bag it had been served in, and tossed it on the table. He glanced around for a moment and went back to the doomsday article. Then his mind registered what he’d seen.

  Toni from the rental company stood in line. Her smart suit was gone, replaced by a teal tank top and a pair of shorts that showed off her legs. She had a backpack slung over her shoulder and an open textbook balanced on one hand.

  “Toni?” he called out.

  She kept reading.

  He straightened up and raised his voice another notch. “Toni?”

  A few people looked. She was one of the last. Mild disinterest filled her eyes, then confusion. And then, just for a moment, panic. She glanced around the coffee shop like a cornered animal looking for an escape route.

  Then the killer smile spread across her face.

  He stood up and went to join her in line. She looked away to place her order, slipped the book into her backpack, and turned to him. “Hi,” she said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s kind of lucky, actually. Do you have a minute?”

  “Ummmmm...sure.”

  He glanced at her outfit. “Is this your day off or something? I could just call you later.”

  Toni shook her head. “No, it’s no problem, I just...” Her voice dropped a few decibels. “I don’t have any of the material with me. I can wing something if you think that’d be okay.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Or just give me five minutes,” she said. “I can run to my place, grab my props and stuff, get some better clothes on. I’d be ready to go.” She gave a more honest smile, a faint one, and gestured at her outfit.

  He frowned. “I think you’re confusing me with someone else. I’m Nate Tucker. You rented me an apartment in the building on Kenmore about two months ago.”

  “No, right,” she nodded, her voice still low. “I just...I thought everything was supposed to happen there. I’m not prepared for this.”

  “Prepared?”

  “Normally I’ve got time to go over stuff, y’know?” Her head bobbed side to side. She looked very young in these clothes. “I mean, I’m not method, but I think it’s still better if you’ve got some time to get your head in the right place.”

  Nate wrinkled his brow. “What are you talking about?”

  Toni stared into his eyes. “You’re not here for extra material?”

  “Well, sort of,” he said. “I was hoping you’d know something about the history of the building.”

  She sighed and looked around again. “This wasn’t planned, was it?”

  He shook his head. “I was just killing time and saw you in line. I had some questions about the apartment building and—”

  They called a name and Toni raised her hand. The clerk handed her a tall cup of coffee. “No, I mean, this wasn’t scheduled,” she said. “You weren’t told to come find me.”

  “Look,” said Nate, “I’m feeling lost here. Are we talking about the same thing?”

  She nodded. “The building, yeah.” They sat at a table and she shot another glance at the door. “Look, this is a really sweet gig for me, so you’ve got to promise you’re not trying to mess it up. If I get fired because of this I will sue your ass, clear?”

  “Not in the slightest, no.”

  She shook her head. “My name’s Kathy. I’m a theater arts grad student.” She used her cup to gesture toward the campus across the street.

  Nate felt his eyes twitch. “A what?”

  “An actress. Trying to be, anyway. The Locke Management gig is still the best thing I’ve had, though.”

  “So...” He closed his eyes for a moment. “So the company hired you to pretend you’re one of their managers?”

  Toni-Kathy shook her head again and her bangs swished back and forth. “No, you don’t get it. There is no company.”

  She pulled a sleek, high-end cell phone from her backpack. “This is the number you called. It’s got sweet noise-reduction so you can’t tell if I’m outside or in a hall or what. It just makes me sound like I’m in an office somewhere. I get texts telling me if someone passed their background checks or not so I can make the follow-up calls.” She handed him the phone.

  It was deep green, with a touch-sensitive screen that shifted up to reveal a keyboard. Nate had never owned a phone with so many features, but it didn’t take him long to find the basics. He flipped from MESSAGES to INBOX. There were only three texts, dating back just over eleven months.

  All of them were from Caller ID Unavailable.

  The middle message was dated April fifth. He remembered that day. He remembered getting the follow-up call at work. Nate tapped the line and it expanded into the full message.

  Nathan Tucker has been accepted for apartment #28.

  He stared at the phone. He looked up at her and handed it back. “Can you start again? From the top? Just tell me everything.”

  She nodded. “Okay, every couple of years someone puts an ad in the campus paper for an acting job. It’s like a campus urban legend or something at this point. You play a manager for a real estate firm. They give you all the props, enough background to answer questions, and then you do ad-lib scenes with people at the location.”

  “Who? Who hired you?”

  Toni-now-Kathy shrugged. “Don’t know. You send in your resume, a headshot, and they just pick from that.”

  “Who pays you?”

  Another shrug. “All done through PayPal. A grand a month. Sometimes I don’t even do anything. You were the first person I’d even shown an apartment to in three months.”

  “And how long has this been going on?”

  She sipped her coffee. “I’ve been doing it for a year now. The girl before me did it for a year and a half. She said the girl before her did it for almost three years.”

  He juggled everything in his head. “None of this seemed weird to you?”

  “I
t’s LA,” she said. “This isn’t the weirdest acting job I’ve ever had. Once I was in full animal makeup, like in Cats, and they wanted me to—”

  He waved her to silence. “Sorry,” he said, “this is kind of important. What’s going on over there?”

  “At your building? Isn’t it obvious?”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s some reality show like Big Brother or something,” she said. “There’s probably cameras all over the place. They’re filming you and making a show out of it.”

  “Filming us doing what?”

  “Whatever. Having sex, getting dressed, all that voyeuristic stuff.”

  He shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. When they do those shows they stir things up. They set people against each other, create fake conflicts, stuff like that. I don’t think I’ve even met half the people in the building.”

  She shrugged again and took another hit off her coffee.

  “Besides,” he said, “wouldn’t they need us to sign something before they could do anything? Release forms for using us in their show or whatever it is? And have you ever even heard of a show like this?”

  “I figured it just hadn’t aired yet. They were waiting to get enough footage or something.”

  He glanced at the phone. “People were doing it for years before you even started. How much footage do you think they need?”

  Kathy shifted in her seat. “Maybe it’s for the BBC or Australia or somewhere.”

  It was clear she’d never thought about it much at all. Nate wondered if it was deliberate. He’d met some pretty clueless wanna-be actors since moving to Los Angeles. He’d also met a lot of people who just kept their heads down and didn’t ask questions.

  “Can you do me a favor?” he asked.

  She crossed her legs. “Maybe. It depends.”

  “You said they gave you some background information on the building?”

  She nodded. “Oh, yeah. There’s a document on the iPad that’s like thirty or forty pages long.”

  “Could you send me that? There’s something going on over there, and it’s not a television show. A couple of us are trying to figure out what.”

  Kathy frowned. “I don’t want to lose this gig.”

  “You won’t, I promise. Just email me the file. It’s just background information to give out anyway, right?”

  “I suppose so.”

  He pulled out a pen and scribbled his email address down on his napkin. “Just make up some reason why you’d have to send it to me. Most rental places keep documents on their properties, right? You’ve just got one that’s a lot better than most.”

  Nate pushed the napkin across the table. She stared at it for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “But I swear, if you fuck this up for me I will kill you. And I know where you live.”

  Twenty Five

  Thursday Nate was back in the office and focused on making up for the three days he hadn’t been doing his job. Another crate had arrived on his day off and he guessed there were close to two thousand names and addresses to input now. He checked his email every other hour, but there was nothing from Kathy-who-had-been-Toni.

  At the end of the day, Anne leaned into his cubicle. “Drinks tonight,” she said. “Down at the Cat and the Fiddle.”

  He shook his head. “Love to,” said Nate, “but there are no outings in my future. Especially to places with expensive drinks.”

  She nodded. “That’s the whole point. Editor Dave is taking us all out and buying the first round. It’s his way of saying sorry.”

  “Dave’s not responsible.”

  “Yeah, but he’s a good guy.”

  He looked at the screen. His inbox was still empty. He pictured the search for a parking space in his neighborhood after hours. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m still feeling tight with the hours getting cut. Plus, I’m working on a couple projects at home.”

  Anne shrugged. “It’s a free drink. Thought you’d want to know.” She slipped past him and out the door.

  Her hips made a convincing argument for going out.

  It went like every other time out, of course. He made small talk with Dave and Zack. He flirted with Anne even though they both knew she was out of his league. He listened to Jimmy the intern explain how he was going to make it big and change Hollywood and not play studio games. The Journalist was there, without his Hot Redhead Girlfriend, chatting with Dave and another editor whose name Nate could never remember.

  Once his free drink was gone, Nate considered having another. There were four beers in the fridge at home, though, and his wallet was very thin. And for the past ten minutes he’d been leaning back in his chair not talking to anyone and the conversations were still going on all around him. Plus, thinking of home reminded him that Veek still didn’t know about Kathy the actress.

  He got up, thanked Dave, said a few goodbyes, and headed for his car. It was late enough he only caught the tail end of rush hour. In a record-breaking ten minutes he found a space only a block from his apartment.

  He was cutting across the parking lot for the corner liquor store when a familiar figure stepped out. Oskar had a plastic bag slung around each wrist. They almost dragged on the ground. His face had a slumped expression Nate knew all too well. The look of someone who’d accepted his place in life and stopped striving for anything else.

  “Hey, Oskar,” he called out.

  The man glanced up. It took a moment for him to process Nate out of context. Then his lips twisted into a tight smile. “Mr. Tucker,” he said. “Forgiff me for not greeting you. My mind was elsewhere.”

  “No problem,” he said. “How are you?”

  Oskar waited for Nate to come alongside him and then the two men walked down the street together. “I am well, thank you. Haff you seen any more rats?”

  Nate caught himself before he furrowed his brow. “Just that one,” he said. “You were right. It must’ve been a fluke.”

  The older man gave a sharp nod. “The Kavach Building would not allow rats within its walls,” he said.

  “Sorry?”

  “It is too dignified a building for pests.” He tried to raise one of his burdened arms to reach the crosswalk button. Nate reached past him and hit the large yellow button. “It is a wonderful place. I am glad to liff here with such good tenants.”

  The glowing red hand became a white figure in mid-stride. They crossed Kenmore and headed up the block to the building. “By the way,” said Nate, “I wanted to ask, what’s the address for the main office?”

  Oskar stopped. “The what?”

  “The main office. Locke Management. Where are they?”

  The older man shook his head. “Do not waste your time with them. Whateffer you need, talk to me.”

  “I don’t want to bother you.”

  “It is not a bother. It is my job. I am glad to do it.”

  “Still,” said Nate, “I’d love to get it from you. Just for my records and stuff.”

  Oskar stared up at him for a moment. “What is this about, Mr. Tucker?”

  Nate feigned innocence. He wasn’t sure if he did a good job at it. “About?” he echoed. “It’s not about anything.”

  “Do you haff a problem with how I haff been doing my job here?”

  “No. No, of course not.”

  “Why do you wish to work around me, then?”

  “I’m not trying to work around you,” said Nate. “I just wanted to know where the office is. Is it out of state or something?”

  Oskar’s brow furrowed. “Why do you say that?”

  “Say what?”

  “Why do you ask if the office is out of state?”

  “Because you’re being really difficult about giving out the address. I thought maybe it was far away.”

  He considered this. “It is,” he said. “Forgiff me for being suspicious. After so long here, I dread the thought of losing this job. I am comfortable.” He gestured with his head and continued up the hill to the building.

>   Nate fell in alongside him. “What about...whatshername? Toni? Who does she work for, then, if there’s no local office?”

  Oskar gave a theatrical glance over either shoulder. “Honest truth?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “She works for another office. Locke hires her to be their local face because she is attractiff, but they will not open an office here. It is a tax thing. I do not know the details.”

  “Ahhhh.”

  They reached the fence and Nate held the gate open for Oskar. The older man swung his broad shoulders to fit through with his bags and they both trudged up the steps.

  “So, anyway,” said Nate at the first landing, “could I get that address?”

  This time Oskar didn’t stop. “What address?”

  “The main office.”

  “I told you,” he said, prying the door open with his heel, “you do not need it. Whateffer you need, talk to me.”

  “But what if somewhere down the line I’m applying to live somewhere else? I need my rental history. They’ll want to talk to the people in the office.”

  “Are you going to moof out?”

  “Well...no. But if I do someday—”

  Oskar shook his head as they stepped into the lobby. “Just haff them call me. I deal with all such things.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t just assume you’re going to be here.”

  “I haff been here twenty-three years, nineteen as manager. I haff no plans to moof.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Mr. Tucker,” he said. “My job is to make things run smoothly. That means making sure there are no disturbances here. It also means making sure there are no disturbances for the people at the main office. They do not want to be getting phone calls at all hours from tenants with silly questions or worries about rats.”

  “This isn’t about the—”

  “So you will let me deal with such things. And we will stop with the idea of contacting the main office, yes?” Oskar’s face had lost the cheer and humor that had filled it outside. “And also with the measuring of walls and hallways.”

  They stood in the lobby for a moment and stared at each other. Then the older man turned away. He raised his bags and started up the stairs.