by Dave Daren
The GPS on my phone continued to ding to confirm my arrival, and I huffed and shut the damn thing off before I shouldered open the driver’s side door and slipped out onto the sidewalk.
I gave a groan of relief as I was able to actually stretch out my legs and twisted my back to relieve the tension that had already begun knotting up along my spine. When I felt human again, I locked Evelyn’s car and deposited both the keys and my phone into my pocket before I briskly walked up the sidewalk and pushed open the faux-stained-glass door of Green Earth.
A small bell jangled as I entered, and I was immediately hit in the face with the overwhelming scent of freshly ground coffee and something earthy and sweet I couldn’t quite place until my eyes fell onto the lit stick of incense that sat up on the counter.
The inside of the coffee shop was just as crowded as the outside and had the same eclectic design sense I’d noticed on the patio. The furniture all looked like it had been picked up from various thrift shops and tossed into the small shop without a second thought.
A number of armchairs in varying styles were spread out and sat side by side with the more standard dining room chairs at tables of indiscriminate heights. The walls were painted a pleasant soft yellow, and if a table wasn’t cluttered with mismatched plates and mugs, there were plants crowding the otherwise empty space. Soft music trickled through the speakers and just barely cut through the din of commotion from the customers and employees alike.
I glanced around to try and catch sight of Natalie, but she was nowhere to be seen. So I moved over to the end of the line that stretched out from the register to wait my turn. I didn’t want to order something to drink or eat, but I did want to ask the cashier where Natalie was, and I wasn’t going to be rude and cut in line.
It felt nice to have a few minutes of time just to exist without anything pressing weighing on my shoulders, and so I leisurely waited in line and let myself enjoy the normalcy of the atmosphere.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had been in a place like this, but it probably hadn’t been since college. There had been a small cafe near campus that I’d set up a home away from home inside to study for the LSATs. It was a fond memory, and standing in Green Earth had sent it hurtling back to me.
Bit by bit, the line trickled down, and soon I was standing in front of the cashier. He was a shockingly tall man that had to have been fresh out of an undergrad program. His hair was shaved close to his skull and bleached a shocking shade of white. Small pink and red hearts were dyed into the white and turned him into a very late Valentine’s Day card.
I blinked and dragged my eyes from his interesting hair to the sticker-covered nametag hooked into his canvas apron. The nametag read ‘BECK’ in large, curling letters that looked handwritten.
I offered Beck a pleasant smile.
“Hi,” I greeted. “I’m looking for Natalie?”
My words were closer to a question than a statement. I knew that I’d gone to the exact place Natalie had directed me toward, but I was almost worried that Natalie had said the wrong thing.
I didn’t know her all that well, but it still felt like a fairly likely circumstance given that the first time we’d met, she’d been close to thirty minutes late to our meeting.
Beck’s dark eyebrows furrowed, and he ran his tongue over the small ring in his lower lip as he seemed to process what I’d said. He glanced back over his shoulder toward a narrow swinging door.
I followed his gaze and let my eyes trail from the swinging door I assumed led to the kitchen over to the coffee bar where two other employees were loudly chattering to each other as they made whatever complicated orders the customers in front of me in line had placed.
Beck reached up to scratch the back of his head.
“I’m sorry, man,” he apologized, and I was surprised at how remorseful he actually sounded. “I’m not allowed to tell you who is or isn’t on staff. Stalkers and stuff, you know?”
He shrugged as he said it, and I was surprised I hadn’t thought of that before I barged in guns blazing. I heaved a heavy sigh and nodded.
“Makes sense,” I said in resigned agreement. “If she is here, let her know that Archer Landon, her lawyer, stopped by?”
It might have been a low blow, but I hoped that dropping the lawyer card would help my case.
Beck, however, seemed unmoved by the career drop and just nodded as he continued to worry his tongue over his lip ring.
I turned on my heels to vacate the space in front of the register, but before I could take more than a single step, the kitchen door swung open and a wave of sound rushed out to join the din of the cafe.
“I know, Donna!” Natalie exclaimed over her shoulder to a woman I couldn’t see. “I already told you that I’m--”
Her words cut off as she turned toward me, and her mouth hung open. She clicked her jaw shut before she whirled around and caught the swinging door with one hand before it could settle closed.
“I’m going on my fifteen!” she shouted into the kitchen and without waiting for any sort of go-ahead, Natalie whirled back around to me with a smile and an almost frantic sort of wave.
I noticed that her nail polish was a pale-blue this time, but it was still chipped around the edges. She looked much like she had the first time I’d seen her, with the addition of a canvas apron that looked as if it had been attacked with an embroidery needle and floss.
The nametag on her chest read ‘NAT’ in thick marker strokes. Her dark hair stuck up like she’d been shocked, and it bounced as she shuffled around the coffee bar, out from behind the counter, and around the corner toward me.
“You made good time!” she said in lieu of a greeting. “I was a little worried that you hadn’t caught the address because Donna was like, yelling at me, even though I told her I was talking to my lawyer, and she knew the situation with Race, too, so I don’t know why she was being such a bitch, but I’m so glad you came!”
Natalie smiled happily at me before she nodded and shuffled off with the apparent expectation I would follow.
I don’t think she’d taken a single breath since she’d noticed me. I felt tired already and almost regretted not ordering a coffee of my own as I followed after my client as she bobbed and weaved through the packed tables to a singular open set of chairs near the front corner of Green Earth.
She flopped down into the green velvet armchair in a flurry of swishing fabric and tinkling jewelry, and the chair nearly swallowed her whole.
I sat down on the low, wooden barstool angled toward her armchair. I rested one of my feet on the wooden beam that cut between the legs of the stool and planted my other on the ground.
“I need to know Race’s primary address,” I said before I could get caught up in Hurricane Natalie again and swept off course.
Natalie nodded, and her clay, carrot-shaped earrings swung back and forth wildly with the gesture.
“Right,” she agreed as she clasped her hands in her lap and twisted one of her rings around her slim fingers. “He lived in that like, dank apartment complex, you know the one?”
I did not know the one, and apparently my face made that apparent.
She sucked in a breath through her teeth as she tried to come up with the name. She furrowed her brow, cocked her head to one side, and then started to bounce in her chair.
“Right, okay, so like, Oakbrook? Oakley? Oakwood?” she said. “Oakwood, it was Oakwood. He lived in the Oakwood apartments in Crowley, like, before he got arrested and stuff, because now he lives in jail, which honestly, good fucking riddance.”
I opened and closed my mouth numerous times to try and get a word in edgewise as Natalie seemed to speak mostly to herself.
“Oakwood,” I repeated the apartment complex’s name to her once she’d lulled into a brief silence. “Do you remember which apartment number? I need some sort of proof that your residence wasn’t his primary residence, and I can’t do that without a complete address.”
I felt a little like I wa
s trying to guide a child through their homework by explaining it step by step. It wasn’t that I thought Natalie was unintelligent, but she seemed like she operated on an entirely separate frequency from the rest of the world.
Her tongue darted out to run over her lower lip in a gesture distinctly reminiscent of what her coworker Beck had done earlier when I’d asked him about Natalie’s presence.
“Uh, I think twenty-one-hundred B?” she phrased her answer like a question. “They had super weird numbers. I never really hung out there because, like I said, it was super dank. But like, it was one of those apartment complexes that has a leasing office in the area, so you should just be able to go there I’d think?”
That was surprisingly helpful information, and I nodded and worked to keep my shock off my face that this conversation was actually being fruitful. Maybe I’d been too hard on her before. After all, I’d just had an awful few nights, and I was certain that they hadn’t helped my mood much.
“Did he have any roommates?” I asked as I pulled my phone out of my pocket to jot down the information that she’d already given me. Oakwood Apartments, 2,100 B, leasing office in the area.
Natalie reached up to tuck a spiky strand of black hair behind her ear, and her jewelry jangled with the gesture.
“Yeah, he did, actually,” she said and nodded her head again. “Some guy named John, or maybe it was James. They weren't, like, good friends or anything. It was a random sort of thing, you know? Shitty college apartments and all that, take who you can get.”
I did know what she meant, and I’d had my fair share of horrible roommates in my time spent both in undergrad and law school. I really did take what I could get. I wondered if this John-or-maybe-it-was-James might have had some sort of information on Race that could be helpful and wrote his name down in my notes as a sort of fallback in case the leasing office didn’t work out how I’d hoped.
“If you have his primary residence, will you be able to get my stuff back?” Natalie asked and seemed to perk up as she came to that conclusion. “Like, my mom’s ring and stuff? I’d also like my television back, but I can totally live without that, it’s probably better for the environment that way, too, but I do miss like 90 Day Fiance which is such a trash show, don’t ever watch it, but it’s also like, super fun, so don’t hold that against me.”
I blinked as I parsed through all of the information she’d just dropped on me.
“Never watch 90 Day Fiance, right,” I repeated with a slow creep to my tone. “And hopefully this does mean I can get your stuff back. If I can bring the information to the judge before his day ends, he’ll grant an injunction which will stop the sheriff’s department from being able to sell your belongings in a police auction. And that should give us more time to get the forfeiture dropped.”
I glanced down at the watch on my wrist and saw that it was now nearing 11:30, and I heaved a small sigh. Time was passing me by quicker than I’d noticed, and I wondered how much time I’d actually spent in the coffee shop.
It certainly felt like Natalie and I had been speaking for more than the fifteen minutes she’d called for her break.
As if like clockwork, Beck, the cashier with the heart-patterned hair, approached Natalie and I with a sheepish look on his face as he reached up to anxiously rub at the back of his head again.
Without the register blocking most of his torso, he looked even taller.
“Nat,” he said before she and I could exchange any other words. “Donna’s about to put your head on a pike if you don’t get back to the pastries. Something, something ‘I’ll bake her into the croissants’ something, something.”
The little curl to the corner of his lips made it evident he was joking, just a little, but he did seem serious about the fact Natalie needed to get back to work.
She heaved a deep sigh as she wiggled around to unearth herself from the velvet chair and clambered up to her feet with what looked like a fair bit of work.
“Tell Donna she can die mad,” Natalie said with a smile that seemed a little more scathing than pleasant, and Beck snorted in response.
Natalie turned back toward me and gave a little huff.
“Sorry, I’ve gotta get back to work, but like, just call if you’ve got anything else to ask, and I’ll sneak to the bathroom to answer or something,” she said it like a promise. “Beck will cover for me, won’t you, babe?”
Ah, so apparently Beck was the boyfriend she’d mentioned in her absurd little ramble during our earlier phone call.
Beck snorted, rolled his eyes, and without giving another response, he turned on his heels and sulked back toward the register where a line had started to form once again.
Natalie fluffed up her hair with one hand before wiggling her ringed fingers at me and disappeared back into the clutter and crowd of the coffee shop.
I sat on the barstool for a minute longer to try and process everything that had just happened before I pushed myself up to my feet. I squeezed through the throng of people and tables and all but toppled out onto the sidewalk.
The sudden silence was almost deafening, and I inhaled a deep breath of coffee and incense-less air. I then swallowed down another gulping breath of fresh air before I started back toward my borrowed vehicle.
While I still had two and a half hours before my deadline with Judge Calhoun, I didn’t want to waste any time in getting to Race’s former apartment building. So, I squeezed myself back into Evelyn’s car and sighed at the immediate discomfort that rocked through my limbs. The sooner I could get my own car back, the better, but I didn’t have any other options for the time being.
I tapped Oakwood Apartments into the GPS on my phone to pull up the address and gave another groan as I saw that the building was nearly thirty minutes away from Green Earth.
And apparently, the traffic I had been glad to miss on my way here had finally caught up with me. I had never been overly fond of being in my car for the majority of my day, and that was when it was a car designed for normal-sized humans, not Evelyn’s damn clown car.
I didn’t waste any more time bemoaning my own situation, however. I pulled out of the spot and set off toward Race’s former apartment building.
The drive didn’t seem to take too long despite its thirty minute time stamp, and by the time I climbed out of the vehicle and into the parking lot of Oakwood Apartments, the mid-day sun hung heavy and violent overhead.
I smoothed my hair out and slipped my phone into my pocket before I put on my most professional lawyer face. I did a quick check of my appearance in the side mirror before I made my way toward the small leasing office that was so helpfully identified by the signs at the entrance of the apartment complex.
The sign on the door read OPEN in large, faux-neon letters, and I sent a silent prayer up to whoever was listening for that small blessing before I pushed the door open.
Just like in Green Earth, a small bell dinged to signal my arrival. Unlike Green Earth, however, the Oakwood Apartments leasing office was beige on beige on beige with a dust-covered faux-potted plant in the corner acting as the singular pop of color.
Three desks sat in the small room with two facing each other from across the room and one along the back wall that sat in the exact center of the room and faced the front door. Two open doorways led back to whatever other rooms the leasing office held.
Two of the three desks were empty, but the desk on the left-hand side of the office was occupied by a bored-looking man that I assumed was one of the college students Natalie had mentioned before.
His shaggy brown hair flopped in his eyes, and his chin was propped in one hand as the other hand dragged a wireless mouse around the desk on a picked-over mousepad.
I cleared my throat as I made my way over to the desk and lowered myself into the chair opposite the bored student.
As soon as I sat down, the man, no, the kid, looked up and raised his eyebrows in surprise, as if I had just suddenly appeared in the room. But, to his credit, as soon as he reali
zed I was there, the kid straightened up and brushed his hair back behind his ears.
It didn’t make him look more grown-up by any stretch of the imagination, but I could appreciate the effort.
“Hi,” I greeted with a kind, amused smile. “Archer Landon of Landon Legal. I’ve just got a couple of questions about a former resident here, a man by the name of Race Chase?”
The kid seemed to sit up even straighter still, and he glanced around as if he was looking for something.
“You a cop?” he asked as if I hadn’t just explained that I was not, in fact, a cop.
“No, I’m a lawyer,” I said with a smile and a shake of my head. “Sort of working against the cops right now.”
It was almost a joke, but the words seemed to make the kid running the leasing office relax, and I swore I physically saw the tension seep from his shoulders as he sighed.
“Oh, okay, cool,” he said in what seemed like a feeble grab for nonchalance. “Uh, so what can I do for you again?”
I wanted to smack my head into the desk. The clock behind the kid’s shoulder seemed to be ticking faster and faster, and despite the fact I knew I still had plenty of time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was rapidly running out of it instead.
“I need to know if you have any records of Race Chase living here,” I said much slower this time as if I needed to give each word adequate space of its own. “He should have been in twenty-one-hundred B.”
I leaned back in the creaking plastic chair as the kid nodded. He reached up to scratch at the scraggly facial hair on his chin that he’d have been better off just shaving and pretending it hadn’t existed at all.
“Uh, I can check my files?” he asked me, and I sighed as I fought the urge to scream.
I was usually much more tolerant of using kid gloves like this. But it had been a long, sleepless, twenty-four hours, and I could feel my patience rapidly running from me like water.
“That would be great,” I assured the kid with a nod and a smile that I knew for a fact didn’t meet my eyes.
