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“Pathetic,” she sighed. She grabbed a shirt from a pile at the foot of the deck chair and shrugged it over her shoulders. “You can look now,” she said as she threaded a pair of buttons. “The awful things are hidden from your sensitive eyes.”

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just an odd way to meet the neighbors.”

“That’s why there’s a sign up on the door.”

“Yeah, but when I saw it, I thought ‘Xela is here’ might have something to do with Scientology.”

“Ouch.”

“Nothing personal.”

“No, you’re right. Most folks in the building know what it means and just leave me alone out here.”

He glanced back at the door. “Sorry. Did you want privacy?”

“If I cared about privacy, Nate, would I sunbathe nude on the roof of my building? It’s just a body. What’s the point getting worked up over it?”

“Fair enough.”

“I mean, if it makes you feel better I’m picturing you naked right now. Giving you the benefit of the doubt in a few places, too. Step towards me and to the left.”

“What?”

“One step forward. Maybe a foot and a half left.”

He moved and his shadow fell across her face. She smiled and pushed the sunglasses onto the top of her head. Her eyes were bright blue, too. She tapped his leg with her foot. “Thanks. That’s better.” She took a good look at him. “So, what do you do, Nate?”

“Do?”

“For a living. For fun. To make life interesting.”

He shrugged. “I work in an office.”

Xela’s face fell. “I’m so sorry for you.”

He took another hit off his beer. “Why say that? Maybe I love my job.”

“Do you?”

"No."

“Nobody sane loves working in an office,” she said. “It’s against human nature to be locked up in a cubicle all day long.”

“Who said anything about a cubicle?”

She grinned. It was a tight, thin smile. “If you had a big office, you’d’ve lied and said you loved your job.”

He shrugged again and finished off the beer. “Maybe if I had a big office I really would love my job.”

Xela shook her head. “You’re not that messed up.”

“How do you know? You just met me.”

“You’re uncomfortable seeing your hot neighbor topless even though I told you I was okay with it. If you were messed up, you’d’ve just stared.”

“I wanted to stare,” he told her. “I just thought it would make things awkward in the laundry room later.”

“Not really. I do my laundry nude, too. That way I can clean everything at once.”

“Really?”

“No, of course not. That’d be weird.”

He sat down on one of the other chairs. She knocked her sunglasses back down over her eyes as he set the empty bottle down on the deck. “So what do you do, Xela? Aside from making the new guy uncomfortable?”

“Guess.”

“Why?”

“Because I like to see what people say.”

He looked at her hair and the tattoos peeking out of her shirt around her neck. The collar was short with little points, and he realized it was an old, plain-front tuxedo shirt. She’d only done two buttons because that’s all there were. The rest of them were button holes for studs. And the shirt was dotted with pinpricks of color.

“I’m going to go with artist,” he said.

“Very good. What gave me away?”

“You’ve got paint on your shirt. A lot on the sleeves.”

“You’re amazing, my dear Sherlock,” she said. “Most guys just see the hair and the tits and go for stripper, although I think you would’ve been one of the classy ones who said ‘exotic dancer’.”

“Glad to know I measure up. So you’re a painter?”

“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?”

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 lips, 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.”