Young Squatters

by London, Blair

  “Of course,” Nick replied, a hard edge creeping into his voice. Was this another one of Nora’s tricks? He knew she missed the kids, but they couldn’t very well let them back in the house, especially since Colin knew that Bradford character and there was clearly something between them that caused unspeakable tension. And they didn’t need Clara to be anywhere near Bradford, either, especially with his apparent affinity for younger girls. “We’ve got a new plan, don’t you worry, Mrs. Parker.”

  “Oh,” Millie’s voice sounded disappointed. He hadn’t given her the juicy tidbits she had wanted, and he hadn’t given into Nora’s plan of revealing what he planned to do about this whole thing, if that had been her plan. He had one victory in this mess, and for that he felt at least a little proud. Her voice raised up a pitch, trying to sound cheerful as she said, “Well, you just let me know if you need anything at all, sweetie. Have a great day.”

  “You too,” Nick said, smirking.

  His smirk faded as he hung up. What exactly did he plan to do about this situation? Something had to be done, and fast.

  He couldn’t stand looking at himself in the mirror anymore, knowing that he was a useless human being, someone who couldn’t even protect his family when they needed him the most. What the hell could he do? That was the question of the minute, the hour, the day, the year.

  What the hell could he do?

  ***

  “I’m telling you, Harper, we’re going to win this thing. I thought of everything. I’m going to be pre-law, I watched every episode of Law and Order growing up, you know. I got this.” Bradford propped his feet up on the headboard, staring up at the ceiling.

  They were lying in their bed in the finished basement, talking quietly about their case so no listening ears could hear them.

  They’d done a lot to make the place their own. They’d bought new shower curtains for the adjacent bathroom, new curtains for the basement windows, even painted the walls. Harper had found a cute off-white with a blue tint that she really liked. It had been a little expensive, but Bradford had come up with the money somehow. It seemed he could always come up with some money when they needed it. He didn’t say how, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but it helped their case. As long as they treated the place respectfully and acted like any other good tenant or homeowner might act in taking care of it, it made their claim more legitimate, or at least that’s what he’d told her.

  But Harper was worried. They couldn’t afford a real lawyer, they didn’t have real jobs. She was working as an intern herself and that didn’t pay anything. He only had his student loan checks coming in each month for room and board. She’d said as much already.

  He’d just smiled at her. “I already hooked us up. We’ve got a lawyer through the community law center, it won’t cost us much, and when they lose, they’ll owe us money.” He’d winked at her with those handsome blue eyes of his. “Chill out, I’ve got it all covered. We just have to stand our ground until this is over. This is what you wanted, right? A house of our own, someplace we could raise our family. Just look at this neighborhood. Yard, pool, cul-de-sac. People would kill to live in this neighborhood.”

  Harper wasn’t so sure anymore. She liked the neighborhood, of course. Who wouldn’t? Everybody had gardeners that came every Tuesday and housekeepers, even though their housekeeper had quite a while ago, mumbling something about Bradford on her way out the door. She didn’t mind that Sarah had gone away; she was just as bad as the Donnellys, when it came to judging them. The few times they had come face-to-face, Sarah had backed away, as if Harper had been sent by the devil himself. Everyone had nice cars too, and their kids went to good schools. It was always quiet in the evenings. Anyone, rich or poor, would have considered themselves lucky to live in such a safe environment, a perfect place to raise a family like she and Bradford planned to do.

  And Bradford had been her saving grace, as usual. He provided for her; just as she thought they had run out of money, he would always come up with more, and more. He’d been in high spirits, lately, constantly planning future events and talking about how they would win the house from the Donnellys without having to even lift a finger. His happy mood was infectious.

  But he was gone a lot, either out and about or going to school. She, on the other hand, only had her internship at the health clinic to rely on, and that only took up two days each week, so most of the time she stayed at home and took care of things here. Somehow, despite the beauty of her surroundings, she still felt out of place.

  “Bradford, the other women on the block are always scowling at me when I leave and come home from work. That woman’s been saying who-knows-what horrible things about us,” she said, referring to Nora, who, despite the fact that Bradford had said the Donnellys would move out immediately, still lived upstairs.

  She lurked around like a ghost all the time; Harper was afraid to venture upstairs too often, because Nora could be there, ready to yell and scream at her like she did to her husband every night. Although the woman hadn’t actually confronted her besides the first day of their arrival, Harper had pinned her as unpredictable, and therefore tried to stay out of her way, even though Bradford had told her time and again to be confident, that this was their house now, their right.

  What she had said was true. The looks from the other women made her skin crawl. Someone had even scrawled the word “Squatter” on her old BMW with shaving cream one night while they were sleeping. She’d taken it straight to the car wash the next morning, but everywhere the shaving cream had touched was four shades lighter than the rest of the car, so you could still read the word. She had even taken it to a BMW dealership. It cost them two hundred dollars to have the car stripped and waxed, but the next morning when the dew had settled on it, you could still see the writing etched in the paint. Now the dealer was telling them it would cost another four hundred dollars to buff the car and get the writing off. Bradford had said it wasn’t worth it, that she’d have to live with it.

  And the Donnellys weren’t speaking to them either, but that didn’t mean they were quiet. The old bitch had been screaming at her husband almost every night. She refused to be in the house alone with them, at least without the safety of her locked bedroom door, and she’d told Colin and Clara, who occasionally stopped by to see their parents during the day, not to speak to them either.

  “I know, baby, but we’ve just got to stay strong, you know? A united front, right? You and me against the world, baby.” He hugged her tight, kissing her forehead. “You’re the perfect girl, Harper. I know you can pull through this; you’ve lived through so much worse. And now you have someone who is going to love you forever, don’t you? Things will be so much better once the house is really ours, after those Donnellys move out of here. We’ll have a perfect life, Harper.”

  He gently pinched her chin between his thumb and forefingers, making her look at him. She nodded. He did take good care of her, and she should have been grateful to him. Even though things were hard during the day, having him here beside her every night made this time the happiest time of her life.

  “Did I tell you Colin and a couple of his buddies tried to corner me on campus, like they were going to beat me up?” he asked her suddenly, letting her chin go and stretching his arm out toward the ceiling.

  “Oh my, no!” She looked up at him, her face a mask of horror. She couldn’t imagine what she would have done without him; just the thought of him being bullied or potentially hurt made her skin crawl. “What’d you do?”

  Bradford shrugged, as if the situation had only been a minor bump in the road. He was so brave, her Bradford.

  “I just kept away from them and dialed nine-one-one right away,” he recalled. “Then I held the phone up and kept the line open after I got the dispatcher on the line and explained what was happening. Colin and his punk friends didn’t have the guts to try anything while I had the cops on the line, and Colin’s friends took off when the cops showed up.”

  Bradford laug
hed a little at the memory. “Colin screamed at them that I was stealing his family’s house, but the cops and dispatchers had all the threats he and his friends made recorded while I was holding up the phone. Coward wouldn’t even stand up to me himself; he just kept hiding behind his big jock friends, like they were going to do something real bad to me. Yeah,” he scoffed, “right.”

  “But Bradford, my gosh, you could have been really hurt!” Harper said, hugging him tightly, leaning her head on his chest. He wore his characteristic white polo shirt and khakis today.

  He continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “They asked me if I wanted to press assault charges, so I said yes. They had no choice but to cuff him and take him in.” He smiled broadly at her. “They never even touched me, but all you have to do is make a threat to get charged with assault, so what the hell? It won’t help his family’s case any if they’re threatening us, and they’ll have to spend even more money on that lawyer of theirs to fight the assault charges.”

  Harper had never seen him so full of pride, so—well, almost arrogant, but not quite. She didn’t think evading Colin and his friends was something to be proud of at all. The whole incident should have made him worry about her and his safety, even though Colin was in jail now and out of their hair for a least a couple of weeks. But really, she had never seen this side of him before.

  Finally he wrapped his arms around her tightly, making her smile a little, though the thoughts of what could have happened still lingered, unwanted, in the back of her mind.

  “I’m telling you, baby,” he said. “The law’s there to protect defenseless people like us. My dad always said so, and he’s absolutely right. Man, I wish I would have listened to him sooner, the things I could have done, the people I could have screwed--” he trailed off, giving her a smile.

  She wondered what he had been about to say, but didn’t press him. He hated to be pressed about things. He didn’t like people who even inadvertently called him a liar by questioning him, either.

  Harper thought hard about what he had said. It had been three months already. The Donnellys had filed a suit against them in court, but it took almost a week and a half for the court to serve them with the lawsuit. After that, Bradford and their lawyer from the law clinic just kept sending requests for “discovery” back to the Donnelly’s lawyers: requests for oral depositions, requests for written interrogatories, requests for inspections of the house, requests for the Donnelly’s records, and on and on. Harper wasn’t sure what that all meant, but every request pushed off the court proceedings for another ten days or more while the lawyers sorted it out and depositions were taken and everything. She had to admit she was proud of Bradford. It seemed like he had it all figured out, and their lawyer from the clinic was a real activist for tenants’ rights; she wanted to make sure they got their day in court.

  But Harper was still worried. They’d had to sit through depositions too. The Donnelly’s lawyer hadn’t been real nice to them, making them out to be con artists and scammers. But Bradford and she just stood by their story. They’d answered an ad online, someone had let them in to see the house before they agreed by email to rent the place, they’d paid the deposit, and everything had seemed on the up and up to them. No, they hadn’t ever wondered why such a nice house was being rented so cheap. Yes, they had email records. No, they didn’t have any phone records. Everything had been handled online.

  It didn’t help the Donnelly’s case any when they found out that the ad was placed from Colin’s own Gmail account, or that the PayPal account was in Colin’s name, or that they had Mr. Donnelly on tape threatening to fuck them in the ass. It all made the Donnellys look like the ones who had tried to scam Bradford and her, and Nick had gone absolutely ape. He’d threatened to get a gun and shoot them, right there in front of everybody, and the camera and the recorders, too. The lawyer from the clinic had filed a restraining order against Mr. Donnelly after that, and now it looked like he’d have to move out of the house.

  But Harper felt kind of sorry for them. She hadn’t meant for anybody to get hurt, they seemed like a nice enough family. Like her own family, you know, before her father left them. That was all she really wanted, to have a family of her own, and a house like the one she’d had as a kid.

  That’s what Bradford told her they could have. They just had to stick together and hang tough. The Donnellys couldn’t keep this up forever, he’d said. Their lawyer was costing them an arm and a leg. He knew, he’d called up their firm, you know, anonymously, and they’d told him what they charged, two-hundred-fifty dollars an hour, plus expenses for filing claims and doing paperwork and research. Their own lawyer from the legal clinic didn’t charge even half that much, and she was willing to waive her fee until the judgment came down from the court. She thought they had a good case, all things considered. Not that she and Bradford had told their lawyer the truth, of course.

  Bradford squeezed her tight in those strong, protective arms, and she nuzzled against his broad chest.

  “Really, babe, there’s nothing to worry about. Our lawyer’s just going to bury them in paperwork, I promise. Sooner or later, they’re not going to be able to afford to fight back. We just have to wear them down, you know?”

  Harper lifted up her head. “I hope you’re right. We could get into a lot of trouble for this, couldn’t we?”

  “Naah. Don’t worry, baby. I got it all worked out.” He tapped his head with his finger, winked at her, and gave her a long, slow, luxurious kiss on the lips. “Everything’s gonna be alright.”

  ***

  A restraining order, a fucking restraining order.

  He was the laughing stock of the entire community. This has been his solution? Nora had asked him that a thousand times. To threaten the two kids in front of the whole world? He had seen his face in newspapers and on news stations, being slammed in print and on television by those welfare-favoring yuppies who thought they knew everything about society and the people in it.

  He had just wanted his damn house back, to get everything calmed down and back to normal. Now they didn’t even have a house to move back into. Nora had cried and complained, cried and complained, over and over, until he had told her to shut the fuck up. She didn’t understand where she was supposed to go, how they were supposed to live, especially now that he had been kicked out of the house. They’d had so many run-ins with the law and lawyers and the failing court system that both of them were nearing insanity. Finally he had grabbed her by the arm, dragged her down the stairs, and given her the reality of the situation.

  She either stayed in the house with those two intruders--and yes, intruders were what they would always, always be--or she came with him.

  She chose the latter option. He didn’t know whether to be overjoyed or dismayed at her decision.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Nick slammed down the phone. It was the third time he’d called the front desk about the noise in the hotel room next door. It was a Friday night, and the thumping rhythms of a salsa-house-music mash-up had been pounding on their wall for three hours already. He’d knocked over there twice and been told three times by a short, brawny man in a sleeveless white tee and extensive tattoo-work to mind his own business. The reek of marijuana was coming through the walls as well, and Nick was honestly afraid to go next door again, but the front desk folks weren’t even pretending to be helpful.

  “Well?” Nora had her arms crossed and was glaring at him.

  “They’ll send someone up to ask them to quiet down.”

  “Oh, they will? Really this time?”

  “Shut the hell up, Nora. What do you want me to do?”

  “Call the police.”

  “You didn’t see the guy next door. The police aren’t going to stay here all night. They’ll shut the party down and then leave, and then we have to live with that asshole.”

  She looked disgusted with him. He felt disgusted with himself. They’d been here a week already, at a La Quinta that offered rooms by the week. I
t was cheap, and he’d thought it was better than moving in with her sister considering they didn’t know how long they’d have to stay. Although Belinda had kindly offered to let them stay for as long as they needed to at her place, both he and Nora could tell that her offer was strained, that she wanted to have her own life back with just Ben to boss around.

  He didn’t even want to think about Colin, rotting away in some jail cell. He’d visited on more than one occasion, promising time after time that he’d get Colin out of the place, but as usual time stood in the way. They had to wait until he could be seen by the judge. Nora had been hysterical. Now her hysterics had turned into pure rage at him, as if somehow Colin’s bad temper had been all his fault, the result of his bad upbringing, the result of Nick’s influence on his young mind. Bullshit. She didn’t want to take responsibility herself, so she took every ounce of her sadness and fear out on him.

  That was the way it had always been, after all, and he had allowed it.

  They’d taken Clara to the hotel with them, hardly able to even comprehend the thousands of problems that awaited them. But the marijuana stench had started almost immediately, and he had to practically put Clara under lockdown after he’d caught her hanging out by the pool with Mr. Tattoos earlier in the week. Now this.

  Nora kept glaring at him, sitting on the bed opposite of his. Her voice sounded hard and uncaring as she spoke; it was a tone he’d gotten used to. “I called Ben. He’ll let us stay for a while. Anything is better than here.”

  He threw up his hands. “Okay, fine! Nora, I don’t know what the hell you want. First you want to come here, then you don’t. We’ll just go to your sister’s in the morning!”

  “Well, we wouldn’t have had to go anywhere if you’d just kept your damn mouth shut!” Nora snapped back.