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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