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He walked over to the kitchen and tried to play it cool. He opened a few cabinets and 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 known 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 the Locke Management 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.”

“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 outlet plate and was gone. “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’know?”

Mandy sat at her secondhand computer and punched her information in again. She had to hunt and peck on the keyboard because she’d never learned how to type. The keyboard always confused her, anyway. Why couldn’t all the letters just be in order instead of scattered everywhere? She brushed a blonde curl away from her face, then tucked it behind her ear when it fell back in front of her eyes.

The internet credit check was a first-of-the month ritual. She only had a few websites bookmarked in Firefox (a free browser, thank goodness), and almost half of them were credit agencies. The other half were articles on getting out of debt.

As she’d expected, her credit rating had gone down two more points. It was at 514 now. Over two hundred points down in just over a year. She’d never be able to get a house now. Or a car.

In a moment of weakness, in the Food4Less break room eight months ago, she’d confessed to another cashier, Bob, about her credit problems and the non-stop calls from collection agencies that wouldn’t listen to her. He’d pointed out that she couldn’t afford a new house or car, regardless, so what was the big deal? His advice was to ignore the calls. “After all,” he’d said, “once you’re at the bottom, what else can they do to you?”

The collection agencies kept calling, however, and made it clear that it was a very big deal. She believed them. They wouldn’t be this mean for nothing, after all. They insulted her and refused to listen to anything she said. All the articles said to talk with creditors about payments and they made it sound so easy, but the men and women on the phone just threatened to call her parents and her grandmother and tell them what a deadbeat she’d become. Once, she had to hang up because they made her start to cry.

Her mother did not raise a deadbeat daughter. Mandy didn’t want her mom thinking of her as one of
those
people.
Those
people were the ones who’d broken the economy and driven banks out of business, the liberals who thought they could spend as much as they wanted and never pay their debts. Mandy wasn’t one of them. She’d just gotten careless and hit a bad patch. That’s what her mom always called it. “Mike down at the store, he hit a bad patch after his wife died.”

The key, of course, was that people lifted themselves out of a bad patch. She’d been trying, but there were too many fees and the interest rates were suddenly much too high. No matter what she did, things just got worse. Her bad patch had become a rough spot in the road, and the rough spot had become a hole she’d fallen into.

A week after her confession Bob “gave” her the computer as a favor. Mandy knew what it meant when a man in Los Angeles offered a “favor.” One of her neighbors from downstairs, Veek, had done a bit of work on the machine and declared it internet-usable. Mandy was pretty sure the woman had added in two little green cards and done something to the memory or the processor or some computer thing. At the time Mandy worried Veek might also expect something for her “favor.” After all, she was from Europe or Asia or someplace and they were a lot looser when it came to such things there. Mandy wasn’t sure she could do something like that with another woman, but six months had gone by and Veek had never asked for said payment.

Mandy wasn’t sure what a score of 514 was, or what was used to calculate it. But she knew it was very, very bad.

She stared at the three-digit number for a while and realized she’d spent ten minutes lost in thought. The credit score check was supposed to be a quick thing. She was going to miss her bus.

She grabbed her shirt and jeans from the bed, decided she didn’t have time to change, and crammed them into the canvas shopping bag she used as a purse. Showing up in a sun dress would mean the manager leering at her and “accidentally” walking into the bathroom while she changed. She’d have to deal with it. It was her own fault for getting distracted.

She opened the door to her apartment and almost ran into a bookshelf.

It stretched across the hall at an angle. The man at one end of the bookshelf was on the thinner side of average and had a mop of brown-blond hair. He needed a haircut. The other man was stout and bald with a devil-beard.

“Sorry,” said the haircut-needing man. “Just moving in. I’m your new neighbor.” He balanced his end of the bookshelf on one hand, dropped his keys into it, and held out the other hand. “Nate Tucker.”

Mandy ignored the hand and locked the door behind her. “Hi,” she said. “Sorry, I’m late for work.” She slipped past the bookshelf and dashed down the hall.

“The people here are so warm and friendly,” said the bald man.

“I’m sorry,” she called back over her shoulder. “I’m going to miss my bus.”

She ran down the front stairs. It was an awful first impression, she knew. Her mom used to bake cookies for new neighbors. Then again, her mom had never lived in Los Angeles. Hopefully Nate Tucker wouldn’t be another one of
those
neighbors.

* * *

“Hot neighbor,” said Nate as her footsteps faded down the stairs. “Could make up for the parking.”

Sean, his soon-to-be-former roommate, shook his head. “Believe me, even if you end up sleeping with her it won’t be worth the hassle of street parking.”

Nate had passed the credit check on Monday afternoon and his check cleared Thursday morning. It had wiped out his savings and meant that he was paying rent on two places at once for the month of April, but it was his. He turned the knob and opened the door of his new apartment.

“Here it is,” said Nate.

“Damn.” Sean stared out the window at the observatory. “That’s some view.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You lucked out finding this place.”

“I know.”

“Parking still sucks, though.”

They headed back down to the street where Sean’s pickup held the rest of Nate’s furniture. The next bookshelf went up faster now that they knew the staircase. The entertainment center was small enough to go up with no problem, despite its weight.

They moved the desk into the lobby twenty minutes later and paused to adjust their grips. As they did, a solid-looking man with dark curls came out of the hallway carrying a box of his own. He glanced at the desk. “You moving in?”

“Yeah,” said Nate. He set his end back down and held out his hand. “Nate Tucker. I’m moving into number twenty-eight.”

“Carl,” the other man said. He tucked the box under his arm and shook the hand. “Moving out of five.”

“Really?”

Carl nodded. “If I could’ve afforded it, I would’ve broken my lease months ago.” He looked around at the wood and plaster walls. “Wasn’t even here six weeks and I was ready to go.”

“Was it the parking?” asked Sean. “I told him the parking was gonna suck.”

“The parking sucks,” Carl agreed, “but it’s just this place. It gets on your nerves. I never felt comfortable here, no matter what I did. Never got a good night’s sleep.”

Nate felt his stomach sink a few inches. “Is it loud?”

“No, it’s just... it’s not a comfortable place, y’know? I never felt good here. Do you believe in that
feng shui
stuff?”

Nate and Sean both shook their heads.

Carl’s lips twitched into a smile. “Neither do I, but it’s the best way I can think of to explain it. The place just feels off. Living here was like putting your foot in the wrong shoe. It’s just...wrong.” He shook his head again. “Sorry. This is a shitty welcome for you.”

“No,” said Nate, “I’d rather hear about it now than learn it the hard way.”

Carl shrugged. “There are tons of perks to staying here if you like it. The sun deck up on the roof is awesome. Check out the Mexican place up the street. The Thai place on the corner is pretty good, too, if you ask them to make stuff hot.” He shifted his box back into his arms. “Good luck.” He headed out through the door.

Nate and Sean got the desk up to the second floor. While they swung it around to the next flight of stairs, Sean said, “Man, I’m glad I’m moving back to the Bay.”

Nate hefted his end of the desk. “Why’s that?”

“I won’t be here to help you move out in six months.”

“He’s overreacting. Some people just don’t like some places.”

“Like your neighbor who was running to get out of the building.”

“Late for work.”

“Whatever,” Sean said.

The futon took two trips. They wrestled the floppy mattress up all three flights. The frame was the worst of all. It twisted just enough to hinge open, and the clang of metal was painfully loud in the stairwell. They almost lost it on the landing between the second and third story when it unfolded again.

“Thank God that’s over,” said Sean as they set the frame down in the center of the apartment.

“Still the boxes,” said Nate.

“Didn’t you say there was an elevator?”

“Yeah. Maybe they’ve got it fixed.”

They walked out to the elevator door. Next to the frame was a pair of stubby push buttons, the type where pushing one button in levered the other one out. They’d been painted over several times, and their edges had long since become ripples in the latex. Nate tried to twist the undersized door knob, but it refused to turn. He shook it harder and the door rattled in its frame.

Sean yawned. “No elevator?”

“Guess not.” Nate pressed his face against the glass and shielded his eyes from the hall lights. The space behind the glass was pitch black. There was no way to tell if he was looking at the elevator car or the shaft.

“You are ones who haff been making all the noise?”

A man stood by the stairs, half-silhouetted by the light pouring through the hallway window. He was short, bald, and round.

“Yeah,” said Nate. “Sorry about that.”

The man nodded once. “One of you is Mister Nathan Tucker?”

“That’s me.”

He nodded again. “I am Oskar Rommel.” His accent turned the S into a Z and emphasized the K. “I am the building manager.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you,” he parroted. He stepped into better light and features appeared on his face. He had bushy eyebrows and a mustache like a comb. The hairy arms hanging out of his wifebeater were thick with slabs of muscle that had gone soft. Nate guessed the man was pushing sixty. “The elefator does not work.”

“Ahhhh. Toni said they might have it fixed by now.”

“It has neffer worked,” said Oskar with a snort. “I haff been here twenty-three years, nineteen as manager. The elefator has neffer worked one day.”

“Rommel,” said Sean. “That’s...German, isn’t it?”

Oskar rolled his eyes. “Yes, I am a German named Rommel, so therefore I must be the grandson of the tank commander. And his last name is Tucker, so he must be the grandson of the man who made the car.”