The God Patent

by Ransom Stephens

  Four mailboxes were mounted on the wall. Instead of a doorbell, under a little window, the sort of window you’d expect in the door of an abbey, was a huge goat-head knocker. He let it fall an inch, and the iron-on-iron clap shook the porch and echoed around the neighborhood.

  After a couple of minutes, Ryan peeked through the little window. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust, and, just as he could make out some details inside, he heard scuffling behind him.

  A girl with long dark hair combed to one side so that it hung over her left eye dragged a huge skateboard up the stairs. “Scammin’ the crib?”

  It cracked the seriousness right out of Ryan. “I am scammin’ the crib. Lookin’ for diamonds, a major stash. You got any diamonds in there?”

  In addition to the skateboard, the girl was struggling under a full knapsack.

  Ryan said, “You need a hand with that?”

  She cast Ryan a quick glare and scampered the rest of the way up to the porch. She was wearing black sneakers with striped socks and a black skirt that hung down to her scratched-up knees. Graffiti was scrawled along the hem in white paint, and her tank top was closer to gray than white. She looked a little younger than his son, at least one year on the child side of adolescence.

  “I’m looking for an apartment to rent,” Ryan said.

  She set her skateboard under a bench and let her backpack fall off her shoulders onto the porch. She knelt down and dug through it. “Deal with Dodge, then.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was told,” Ryan said.

  “Sucks to be you.” She pulled out a key.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “He’ll waddle out of his cave eventually.”

  The way she talked was refreshing, no child-to-adult pretense. Ryan said, “I have a kid about your age.”

  “Six billion people on this planet—I’m thinking that’s not such a coinkydink.”

  “I suppose.” He held out his hand. “Ryan McNear…”

  She opened the door, dashed through the foyer, and bolted up an oak staircase without returning his look or saying another word. Ryan followed as far as the base of the stairs. A door slammed above, and a few seconds later, loud music vibrated the walls.

  Another odd thing about this Victorian-turned-apartment-complex: the foyer opened to someone’s living room. An antique couch, diamond-tuck red velvet with sloping arms and lion feet, was set in the center of the room on a matching Persian rug. Ryan leaned against the wall and stared across the room out a picture window at the rolling hills across the valley. The reverberation of the girl’s music reminded him of his sisters at that age, and the smell of the well-oiled hardwood floor was just like his grandma’s house. Home had never been exactly comfortable, but it was home, and this wasn’t too far off.

  After about ten minutes, the bass line of whatever music the girl was playing had faded into the background, and Ryan heard a voice that sounded like an a.m. disc jockey who’d mixed black coffee, scotch, and cigarettes until his tone could define the word gruff.

  “You got a job, McNear?”

  Ryan looked up the stairs and around the living room but couldn’t tell where the voice came from. “Sir?” Surprised that whoever was behind that voice knew his name, he forced himself to relax against the wall.

  A man walked in and sat at the edge of the couch. He was several inches shorter than Ryan, about fifty, bald but with curly hair over his ears and thin glasses perched at the end of a long pointy nose. He set a thick stack of paper on the table in front of the couch, looked over his glasses at Ryan, and patted the velvet upholstery next to him.

  Ryan eased into the room and sat as directed. The top sheet was a faxed copy of the rental agreement he’d filled out on the elderly lady’s porch half an hour ago. It explained how the man knew Ryan’s name.

  “You got a job, McNear?”

  Ryan put on a facade of confidence and spoke the way he would to a business colleague in a boardroom. “I just got to town. I’m an electrical engineer—should have a position by the end of the week.”

  Dodge waited, holding his hands together so that the fingertips of one hand just touched those of the other. There was something deeply obnoxious about his extended silence and unwavering stare. Eventually Ryan gave in and, for no reason he could fathom, started explaining his situation, just the details a reasonable landlord might need: the job situation in Dallas and that he’d come to California to find an executive engineering position.

  Dodge laughed, a raspy but screeching chuckle that seemed to echo between the tip of his nose and the paunch of his belly. “Did you bring a shovel, McNear? The gold rush ended a hundred and fifty years ago.”

  Ryan’s instinct was to laugh along, but he resisted. The days of avoiding confrontation at any cost ended when the constable showed him that arrest warrant. This time, he let indignation temper his words. “I was the director of a Fortune 100 company. I’ve led a staff of fifty software jocks developing new technology—”

  “Software’s written in India now. What have you done—”

  “I hold half a dozen patents, from artificial intelligence to energy production to networking technology.” At the mention of patents, Dodge’s eyes opened wider, just for a second, but long enough to bolster Ryan’s tenuous confidence. “In my last engineering gig, I brought home six figures.”

  “And now you don’t have enough for first and last on a studio apartment.” Dodge leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “What did you burn that cash on, Irish boy? Meth? Hookers? Gambling?”

  “Child support.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere. So why’d she throw you out? Meth? Hookers? Gambling?”

  “None of your fuckin’ business.” Ryan stood and walked out the door.

  As it swung shut, Dodge called after him, “You’re homeless without me.”

  Ryan gritted his teeth. Those words hurt. He slumped onto the bench and put his feet on the girl’s skateboard. Even if everything bounced his way, he was at least a few months from an executive engineering position. He looked across the valley. Things happen for a reason. Maybe having a landlord who could see through his bullshit wasn’t such a bad thing.

  He walked back inside. “Are you going to rent me an apartment or not?”

  Dodge said, “I have some ideas for how you might compensate me for the deposit and first and last and a few of my other fees…”

  The way Dodge said this, smooth and just above a whisper, pegged Ryan’s bullshit meter. “What do you mean?”

  “I want to help you,” Dodge said, but he spoke like a bad salesman. “Really, I’m a man of goodwill. I care for the downtrodden. I’m a do-gooder. Don’t I look like a do-gooder? It’s not all about profit to me, really.”

  Ryan started to laugh. He said, “How full of shit are you?”

  “Okay, I lied. It is all about profit to me. So shoot me for being an entrepreneur.” Dodge laughed with him. His laughter came out as a long, loose, liquid cough. When he got hold of himself, he said, “Tell me about your patents.”

  Ryan countered with, “Let me see the apartment.”

  Dodge led Ryan upstairs to a good-sized studio set in the corner of the building. It included one of the two cylindrical towers that framed the Victorian and had a curved glass window with a 270-degree view across the valley to the mountains along the horizon. The kitchenette had one long counter along the interior wall and old but clean appliances. Ryan stared out the window, southeast toward Texas. “I don’t have first and last. I might not have second.” He turned to Dodge. “But I’ll have third.”

  This time Dodge threw a wink in with his raspy snicker. “Well, I’ll need to do better collecting from you than your wife does.” As he led Ryan back downstairs, he said, “There are a few things you’ll have to sign. Several things, actually. Are you familiar with contract law?”

  Ryan felt a few butterflies waft around his stomach as the notion of indentured servitude passed through his mind. With
all defenses in position but a complete realization of his bargaining position, he sat next to Dodge on the diamond-tuck couch.

  Dodge scrawled on a clipboard that held a thick sheaf of pages. Ryan took a pen from the coffee table and thumped it on his ankle as he looked over Dodge’s shoulder. Dodge repositioned himself so that Ryan couldn’t see what was on the clipboard.

  Dodge snickered and said, “Why’d your wife throw you out?”

  “You don’t need to know that.”

  “I need to know what I’m buying.” Dodge coughed again. “I think you get me, McNear. I sense an opportunity here, maybe even a partnership. You need me and I don’t need you—just the way I like partnerships. But I do need information. I like information. So tell me, you were cheatin’, right? It’s nothing to me—a man has needs. Monogamy is for the birds.”

  “No.” Ryan spoke louder than the situation warranted, but his nerves were raw. He had never broken a promise to his wife—ex-wife. Never. He had clung to that knowledge through the pain of reality. There was more to it, of course, but the tipping point came when Linda found what she thought was proof he’d cheated. Ryan stood and took a step away from Dodge. “I never cheated on her. Never. She’s the love of my life. I wouldn’t—”

  “Throw me a bone, McNear. What mess are you in?” He set the clipboard on his lap and put the pen behind his ear.

  Ryan paced, trying to walk off the vision of Linda sobbing and asking him to leave their home. He clenched every muscle, fighting the urge to walk away. The tension in his body absorbed the tension in his mind, and he realized that swallowing his pride wouldn’t be the hardest part of rebuilding his life. He sat back on the couch.

  Dodge responded with the most offensive smirk Ryan had ever seen.

  “Okay,” Ryan said, “I’m in debt. Wading in debt, debt up to my fuckin’ eyeballs.”

  “Closer.” Dodge wheezed. “How’d you get in debt?”

  “They set my child support payments when I was a company director, and six months later the economy crashed and I got laid off—there was no way I could keep up.” He stood again and walked across the room. The farther he got from Dodge, the easier it was to talk. “If I’d gone to the judge sooner, he might have reduced my payments, but I didn’t. I kept thinking there’d be another job, and my debt kept building.”

  The bass line from upstairs came to an abrupt stop, a door slammed, and the girl ran down the stairs. Dodge hollered, “Where you goin’, Kat?”

  “Forced mentoring with the bitch.”

  Dodge said, “Your mom know where you’re goin’?”

  She slammed the door behind her.

  Through the window, Ryan watched the girl jump on her skateboard and zip down the hill. “Is she your kid?”

  “Mine? No. I don’t reproduce,” Dodge said. “She’s a brilliant kid, damaged, though. Her father died a few years back. Mother should have, for all the good she does. If I let you move in, they’ll be your neighbors down the hall.”

  “How many apartments do you have?”

  “Three. The studio you just saw, a two-bedroom where Kat and her mom live, and a two-bedroom that you don’t need and can’t afford.”

  “Does someone live in the other one?”

  “Do I look like a font of information?” Dodge picked up the clipboard and continued, “Child support, huh? How many kids?”

  “Just my son.”

  Dodge scribbled on the form. “When did you last see him?”

  Adding up the months, Ryan released a long sigh. “Over a year now, almost two.”

  Dodge leaned back, and that nasty chuckle erupted into another coughing attack until a chunk of something hit the back of his teeth. “So, along with deadbeat dad, you can add poor excuse for a father to your résumé.”

  “Fuck you!” Ryan took two hard steps toward Dodge and stopped. “I tried to see him, but I couldn’t.” Then, under his breath, “My wife got a restraining order, and the judge granted her sole custody.”

  Dodge pushed his glasses up his nose and scribbled on the rental documents. “You realize that without any money you’re not buying, you’re selling, and you’re not a very good salesman.” He smiled up at Ryan. “Why would a judge prevent a pillar of society like you from seeing his son?”

  Ryan tried not to choke on the bitter taste of the last of his pride. An image came back to him, the first picture in his album of shame. It was at his best friend’s bachelor party. His duty as best man was to organize the traditional strip-joint celebration. He had just stumbled out of the men’s room, staggering drunk but experiencing a moment of warm clarity. A perfectly voluptuous woman wearing a light-blue lace bikini top and g-string caught him by the shoulders. Ryan slipped her a fifty and pointed at the groom, his buddy Foster, and told her to give him the lap dance of his life. It was a bachelor party tradition.

  That was the moment Ryan’s life started to cave in. The next morning his wife found a piece of paper with a phone number in his pants pocket. Six months later they were divorced, and a month after that, he got laid off. It had taken only three years to lose everything. How long would it take to get it back?

  Ryan looked away from Dodge, through the window and across the valley to the mountain. “I made some big mistakes. Unemployment, divorce.” He started to speak, started to describe the bachelor party as a “tradition” again, but fought the impulse to rationalize. He’d organized that party, and the day he was laid off he’d walked straight into his own personal hell. He said, “A few months after the divorce, the day I got laid off, I met a woman who made me feel better. Well, no. Not better, worse really—but she definitely made me feel.” He turned back to Dodge. “She did something horrible to my son, and before I had any idea, I was served a restraining order.”

  “So, was it meth, hookers, or gambling?”

  Ryan sunk back onto the couch and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He hung his head and mumbled, “Well, it wasn’t gambling.”

  Dodge let fly an especially loud version of his raspy laughter, this one with a trace of genuine humor.

  With the clipboard on Dodge’s lap, Ryan caught a glimpse of his notes. The word patents was circled over and over.

  “Okay,” Dodge said, “a five-thousand-dollar good-faith fee to pay for my risk, and if it even crosses my mind that you’re using methamphetamine, you’re out. Your rent starts at twice what your apartment is worth—make rent four months in a row and it comes down to market rate. If you miss a month, we start over. If you’re five days late, there’s a ten percent fee—that’s the most the state will allow—”

  “That’s robbery.”

  “—and I’ll have to type up a separate form, but in exchange for renting an apartment without first and last, I’m taking an interest in any future income derived from your patents. Do you have a car?”

  Ryan noticed how Dodge had slipped in the phrase about patents. It didn’t make sense. Those patents weren’t worth anything. He set the thought aside and answered the question. “Sort of, a twelve-year-old Probe that’s clicked over twice.”

  Dodge shuffled through his folder. “Sign this too. I’m putting a lien on it.”

  Ryan grabbed the growing pile of contracts as if to stem the tide. “Does the state allow this?”

  “Strangely, it does. Even here in Commie-fornia—did I mention I’m an attorney? I don’t practice law anymore—bad for my liver—but I had a tenant sue me a couple of years ago. The judge was amazed at how well I work the system.” He rambled from one tenant anecdote to another, speeding through pointless stories as though trying to confuse things.

  Ryan read through the documents. With each page, outrage pushed shards of his pride to the surface. “Give me a pen.”

  Dodge offered a blue ballpoint, but instead of signing, Ryan scratched out a few lines and made edits between a few others. As Ryan set the marked-up pages aside, Dodge picked them up, initialed some of Ryan’s modifications, scribbled through others, and set the pages in yet anot
her pile. As the sun set, the two men passed the documents back and forth, sometimes laughing, saying “yeah right,” sometimes grunting “cold day in hell.”

  As Ryan read the last page, its margins already scribbled and initialed several times over, Dodge leaned against him. Ryan pushed back with an elbow. He put the last sheet on top of the stack and rubbed his eyes.

  Dodge assembled the contracts and stood. “You can bring your stuff in while I retype this.”

  As the bluster of negotiating started to subside, Ryan felt puzzled. He had no bargaining position, yet Dodge had negotiated. Yes, he’d agreed to absurd rental terms, but there was no way for Dodge to enforce them. Then Ryan recalled Dodge asking if he was familiar with contract law. All the details in the contracts had to be a ruse, had to be covering up a greater con. And that con was somehow related to his old patents—or maybe something deeper. Ryan made a mental note to comb through the documents before signing.

  The front door opened, and the girl walked through the foyer. She stopped at the stairs. “Is the woman in the house?”

  Dodge said, “No, your mother isn’t home—learn anything from your mentor?”

  “That she is freakishly weird.” She started up the stairs.

  “Stop. Come here. Meet your new neighbor.”

  “Can’t. Already did. Meeting is a one-time thrill.”

  Ryan said, “But I didn’t meet you.” He walked over, smiled, and held out his hand. “Ryan McNear.”

  The girl performed an exaggerated curtsy and said, “Katarina Ariadne, pleased to meet you. My friends call me Kat; you can call me Katarina.” She stomped up the stairs.

  Dodge yelled after her, “If I find any more paint on your walls—”

  A door slammed, and a few seconds later, the bass line to some heavy-metal music leaked through the ceiling.

  Ryan turned back to Dodge. “She’s brilliant, huh?”

  “Character judgment isn’t one of your strengths, is it?”

  Ryan put a toothy grin on his face. “Strong enough to know you’re an asshole.”

  “Heh, heh, I like you.” Dodge headed deeper into his apartment as Ryan opened the front door.