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Well, technically yes. But nobody needed a technically. “Let’s call it a social call.”
She glanced down the program brochure. She’d probably been the one to book it for Mister Garcia to begin with, so she hardly needed to look at it, but I’d hardly needed to hand it over to begin with. I’d just been trying to break her little barrier. And she was just using it to occupy her eyes while she mulled it over.
She wasn’t sold. She didn’t seem the type to have patience for frivolities. Had to make yes the easier option. I glanced at my phone. “If now’s not a good time, I can call back later.”
Seemed to work. She sighed, dropping her shoulders, and she set the brochure down. “I’ll ask him.” She tapped a button on her desk, an intercom crackling loudly. “Mister Garcia, a different agent from Queen Pearl is here… she says she wants to discuss the Anima Libera summer retreat.”
“Oh yes?” His voice, big and warm and rich with his Cuban accent, spilled through the speaker. “What’s her name?”
“London Sinclair.” The speaker crackled, and then with an ear-cracking pop, it went dead. The secretary flinched, and I sighed, my shoulders slumping. “Mister Garcia?” She tapped the button a few more times, but no use—the speaker had blown. She muttered a few choice words I probably wasn’t supposed to hear, so I pretended I didn’t.
“Technology’s great while it holds up…” I said, and she gave me a frustrated look.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m afraid—”
But the door past her clicked and swung open, and Mister Garcia strolled out, a portly man with a neat pinstripe gray suit and a big, winning smile. “Intercom went down?” he said, looking at the secretary.
“It just blew up right in my face,” she said. Mister Garcia sighed.
“Think we’ve had that system since the nineties. I’ll talk to Tom and see about an upgrade.” And he turned to me with a smile. “And you must be… what was it, London something? I didn’t catch it.”
“Sinclair. Please, just call me London. It’s just personal business anyway.” He looked like a cheerful person—I’d seen his type a few times, and they were always some of my favorites, where business was just socializing and striking deals with his buddies. The only people who could last long in the business world. Still, anyone like that who had made it more than a couple years had to be incredibly canny—I couldn’t afford to sweep this one up with a couple easy lies.
There was a small something in his demeanor, though—a touch of something that said he had less of his guard up with a woman. I couldn’t even place what it was, but I’d seen them a million times, less likely to perceive me as a threat if I was small and weak and feminine. I shrank my posture a little, tilted my shoulders to meet him at a slight angle, making myself look smaller, ducking my head and looking up through my lashes a little. Not far enough to be flirtatious or I’d never be able to get the topic to business, but enough to look like a harmless, demure woman. I put the finishing touch with a big, fat lie.
“I heard about this kind of meditation from my father, so… I was just curious.”
Score—worked a charm. He softened into a big smile, and he gestured to the door behind him. “Well, step into my office, then, London. Your father—did he attend any retreats like these? I’m curious if I know the man.”
“Ah… no. Always wanted to, but he was so busy, he never had the time.”
He shook his head, shut the door behind me as I stepped into his office, a neat place filled with what looked like travel souvenirs, a few Buddhist symbols, and the heavy smell of a little too much lemon Pledge. “Isn’t that always the way? Some people never make time until the world makes them.” He gave me a big, warm smile. “Now, I see what this is about. You’re trying to talk to me about the property, aren’t you?”
I sighed, letting my shoulders sink. Playing the helpless woman card was working so far, and I had no intention of turning in a winning hand. I’d apologize to Mother Goose later. “My boss wanted somebody in the firm to take the case from Ruth, and they decided to send me. Commercial property isn’t my specialty, though… if you want to talk about business, I might need to ask a lot of questions to figure out what you’re looking for.”
Bingo. He was the authority now, and it fell into place like clockwork. Little appeal to the personal and friendly side, little appeal to the traditional masculinity, and he was selling himself on a property with me there to watch. He rubbed his hands together, sitting behind the desk. “Sit, sit down,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get to business later, then. Maybe let’s talk about your old man first.”
Ah. Shit. That meant I had to make more things up. Doubted it would go well if he knew my actual father was a deadbeat and my mother threw me out for being gay.
Well, wasn’t the first time I’d made things up whole cloth.
∞∞∞
Someone’s shopping bag broke as I walked up the stairs to my apartment unit, spilling oranges all down the stairs. She cursed to herself, scrambling to pick them up, and I walked on by—I’d learned to tell when someone wanted my help dealing with the fallout of my curse and when someone wanted to be left alone.
I unlocked my front door at unit 616 and pushed inside, into where my cat was sprawled like a fistful of tangled spaghetti flung onto the back of my couch. I wasn’t even sure where his limbs were going or how they were connected, but that was the venerable Earl of Westlake for you.
“Hey, Earl,” I said, shutting the door behind me. He stretched, letting out a low yowl that said he was hungry—because of course he was. Delicate little princeling had missed his regular dinnertime by ten whole minutes. The poor thing. He'd live.
I was in the middle of filling his food bowl, though, when I noticed the paper slipped under my door—under the door, like a spy thriller or something. Who did that these days? Earl of Westlake wouldn’t forgive me for taking too long, so I finished pouring his food and shaking it around so he didn’t have to see the bottom of the bowl, and I slid up to a seat at the kitchen counter as I opened the letter, on a letterhead I didn’t recognize, Leon Realty Group.
Dear sir or madam,
This is a friendly notice that your current lease has been taken over as we have purchased the company that issues your lease, ILA Property Management.
Friendly notice. That was never likely in a hostile takeover, and I knew how to spot a hostile takeover. It took until the second page to get to the important part.
They were hiking my rent. And by hiking they meant doubling.
