when everything is turned to black, you don’t know where to go Who: Nish and Chris What: Chris drops by Nish’s office to take her out for an unexpected lunch date. Where: Nish’s Office; Thai restaurant When: February 13th
Nish had been in court all morning, had breakfast with a client to discuss their case, and only just arrived at the office after noon. Jessica greeted her with a bunch of files that needed her signature, and an amused grin.
“Morning, Nish,” she said, holding the stack in front of her. “Make anyone cry today?” Nish smirked and took the files from her, heading into her office.
“No,” she said a little wistfully, “but it’s only 12:30.” From the looks of things though, she was in for a long afternoon of paperwork. Lawyering was a lot of talking and meetings, but what most people not in the business didn’t realize was, it was also a LOT of paperwork.
She sighed and settled herself at her desk, opening the top of the first file.
Chris paused in the doorway, not having an appointment nor feeling like he needed one. He rapped his knuckles on the door frame, leaning against it to take some of the pressure off of his bad leg.
"Counselor, I hate to interrupt..."
Nish looked up from the file she was poring over, smiling when she saw who it was.
“Hey,” she greeted, gesturing to one of the chair's across her desk. Then her eyes narrowed just slightly. “Who's in jail now?” she asked, a slightly impish grin in her eye.
"No one," he replied smoothly, pushing off of the doorway and taking the seat she'd offered. "Not yet, anyway. Looks like a busy day. I wanted to see if you'd had lunch yet. I always find that asking things in person usually yield a better result."
“You're not wrong, I asked Jessica to hold my calls this afternoon. Besides, how did you get in here by the way?”
From the outer office, Jessica called out “sorry Nish, he's super cute. I had to let him in.” Nish smirked and shook her head.
“I have not had lunch,” she said, looking at her watch with a sigh. She had work to do, but he was a client. That was work too, wasn't it? “What did you have in mind?”
Chris shrugged, settling happily into the chair and in no rush to leave now that he'd only arrived. "How do you feel about Thai? There's a nice little spot a few blocks away from your offices. Very centrally located, I might add. How'd you end up with this spot? I imagine you had to grease quite a few wheels."
Her eyebrows rose just a little, catching his meaning pretty clearly. “It's called money,” she evaded with a little smirk, “I hear it's universally accepted in exchange for goods and services.” She flipped the file in front of her closed and put it back on top of the pile in front of her. “You know these dockets need attention before court tomorrow,” she said, “but I love Thai food.”
"Shall we adjourn for recess, then?" Chris rose slowly from his seat, his leg lagging behind the rest of him. He paused by the door, an attempt to be gentlemanly to mask his limp. "Any interesting cases?"
She grabbed her purse and her coat, nodding to Jessica as she headed after him. She took his arm, subtly lending support to him and also as a slight joke. “None that I can talk about, you know that,” she said as they headed out of the building “I assume you're gonna be the man and drive?”
Chris pressed a hand to his breast, looking shocked. "Do you think I'd deny you the pleasure of driving me around? I'll have you know, I'm a Planned Parenthood supporter. Women's rights, rah rah rah." She laughed, swatting his arm playfully.
He pulled his arm back, proving he could motor under his own power. Once they were out on the street, he pulled his keys out. "Of course, if the lady is demanding, I can provide. You know what assuming does."
“Yeah,” she chuckled, “it makes an ass out of you and ‘ming,’” she said, purposely murdering the expression. She pointed ahead of them, “that your car?” she asked with a smirk, “you're braver than I thought.”
"It runs," he said defensively. True, he could have had something nicer, but Chris always erred on the side of caution. Or at least he did now. Leaving Nish to walk herself to the passenger side, he took his usual spot in the driver's side and brought the car to life. Once they were both seated and belted, he pulled away from the curb.
"How's business been?" She shrugged, sitting back and watching out the window.
“Pretty good,” she said, then chuckled. “Actually, very good. You know you’re doing something right when you have a reporter hounding you for a story.” She was almost at the point now with her own clients that she could soon start paring down the amount of public case she took on, which was of course the plan all along. “You?”
"A reporter?" Chris' brows climbed his forehead. "The hell did you do? And no, I don't have anything like that going on. Just the usual." He turned into a left, taking them down a near alley before circling to find another parking spot.
“I didn’t do anything,” she laughed. “My client, on the other hand…” she let the sentence trail off without finishing it, not wanting to get too much further into that. She looked up at the place he was parking at. “I haven’t been here before,” she commented, though that wasn’t hard. There were practically as many restaurants as there were people in the area, she’d have to eat out every day for months to try them all.
Chris finally spied a parking spot and cut across another lane to grab it before a rival could reach it. They were serenaded by the sound of a screeching honk, but Chris looked unflustered. "Oh come on, you can't leave me hanging like that. Not even a hint?" He tried a half pouting look as he put the car in park, one hand reaching to unbuckle his seatbelt while the other removed the keys from the ignition.
She smirked, unbuckling her own seatbelt, “nope,” was all she said. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.” As they walked to the restaurant, she added, “would you want me telling other clients about what you do?” Chris shook his head with a smirk, and followed as Nish held the door open for him. She went inside behind him.
He took no offense to her generosity, walking into the restaurant with as much nonchalance as he could muster. A table for two was quickly arranged, and Chris gratefully sank down into a chair that didn't require him to work pedals. He picked up a menu, studying it closely.
"I think the Gaeng Daeng is one of their specialties," he said, glancing up as the waiter brought them glasses of water. He ordered a coke, abstaining from anything harder. Nish didn’t, ordering a hard iced tea and opening the menu.
“I think I might just go with pad thai,” she said, perusing the menu, “it’s the one dish I always order to judge new thai restaurants by,” she added with a grin. After a moment she closed the menu again and looked at him. “So to what do I owe the pleasure of this impromptu lunch date?” she asked, eyebrows raised with an expression that said ‘spill it.’
Chris mirrored her and put his menu down as well, fixing her with an innocent smile. "You don't think I just enjoy the pleasure of your company? It's not often that I make a new friend." He used the word lightly, teasing her just a little. Her eyebrows rose, her expression showing how very little she believed the words coming out of his mouth. "But since you asked, I was going to see if I could lure a little more legal advice out of you. This is a fair barter, don't you think? Food for advice? A tradition as old as time." She chuckled.
“Of course,” she said, looking up as the waiter came back with her drink and they put in their lunch orders. She took a sip and glanced at her watch. “Alright, shoot, you’re on the clock,” she chided with a smirk, though it was clearly a joke. She’d gladly barter advice for food and alcohol, she was easy to please.
Pulling his glass closer, Chris shook his head ruefully.
"Full disclosure, I don't think it's your area of expertise," he offered, taking a drink before continuing. "I need a little real estate advice. I'm considering this property, but some of the documentation I've seen from my appraiser implies there's a few defects in the construction. If I buy this place, how much trouble do you think I'm in for, trying to figure out who's at fault?" She sighed. He was right, it wasn’t her area of expertise, but she’d retaken the bar exam just a few months ago to be able to practice in California, and there was some of that on there.
“Well, first of all I’d need to see the Agreement,” she said, toying with the straw in her drink. “Everything in these documents is to the letter, and it’s a lot of legalese. You can set conditions on the purchase, for instance that they have to fix the defects before closing. It’s how you protect yourself, but...if they don’t agree to it, the sale won’t happen. They’ll just find someone else to push it on.” She shrugged and took a sip of her tea. “What kind of defects are we talking about?”
He wiped his hand on the cloth napkin provided, removing condensation from his glass. "Nothing out of the ordinary, or so I'm told. The building's older, probably at least 50 years. It's got some point load deflection, the floors are already starting to bow on the second and third floors. And it looks like a plumber cut through some of the joints so he could install piping. That doesn't even touch on the drainage issues... Maybe I will just bring the Agreement by, if you've got the time and the will to look?" His brows arched in question as he sipped his soda. Her brows narrowed in confusion, but she nodded.
“Yeah, I’ll have a look, but...why would you want a building with that many issues?” she asked. She didn’t really want to say it, in case he had his reasons, but it sounded like a terrible deal to her. “Why not go for something newer, or at least with less...problems?”
Chris offered a shrug as a reply. "Cheaper," he said, sipping his coke again. "Plus if I go about things a certain way, fairly sure I don't have to pay, not out of my pocket, anyway." He sat up straighter as their food was delivered. The smell of curry was already strong in the restaurant, but the plate set before him made his stomach grumble.
She shrugged as her plate was set in front of her, waiting until the waitress left before commenting. “Well I wouldn’t count on that...making demands of the seller could significantly raise the purchase price.” She draped her napkin across her lap and started toying with her food, the question she’d had the other night popping back into her head.
“So…” she started, not sure how to broach the subject. “The other night...before you took off, which is something I’m not even gonna ask about,” she added quickly before he could get defensive, “you said something about Pax...the building was closed for a while?” She’d completely forgotten his offhand comment from the other night until they started talking about building defects just now. If there was something wrong with the building she lived in, she wanted to know about it.
Chris pulled his fork from his mouth, brows rising at her question. He'd forgotten all about the offhand comment he'd made on the tenant activity in their shared apartment complex in the wake of Daniel's behavior, but the answer came readily to hand.
"Uh, yeah, it was," he replied, putting the fork down and wiping his mouth before continuing. "You didn't look into the thing at all? I mean, that building's been around for years, even before it was an apartment complex. I've lived here all my life so I saw it when the last time went down, how it closed. I kinda figured that might be what's keeping people away. You know, the murder."
Her brows rose just a little. “No, I...well, I'm new here. It never occurred to me that the building had history…” She ate some of her food, thinking about what he'd said. “Do...I want to know what happened?” she asked. If it made it uncomfortable for her to sleep at night, maybe not. ’Pussy,’ the voice said.
Chris shrugged. "I'm not going to give you lurid details, if that's what you're asking. Just that, one of the tenants was found, you know, and the building's management was apparently found at fault by the police. Well, no one was ever arrested, I should say. The building was just shut down for the past five years, since people were saying strange things were happening even before the final straw broke the camel's back. Things like people hallucinating, feeling strange things, being...manipulated."
’What about hearing voices, darling?’
She swallowed uncomfortably and looked down at her food, if only to delay having to come up with something to say. “That sounds… a little hard to believe,” she said with a forced smile. “Like something out of the X-Files.” She wanted to tell herself that she’d been ‘talking to herself’ for as long as she could remember, long before she moved into the building, but she couldn’t deny that...the frequency and...insistence of that voice was increasing. Becoming more disruptive. Harder to ignore. But she would never tell anyone; she didn’t need to be put back on meds.
“You haven’t seen anything strange, have you?” she asked, masking her sudden awkwardness with an impish grin.
Chris arched a brow. "No, I think the people who complained were just trying to make the best of a poor scenario, maybe milk a little money out of a management company that was charging them too much. Why, have you?"
She immediately chuckled at the absurdity of the idea. “No, of course not,” she lied, sipping her tea and suddenly wishing there was more alcohol in it. “Unless you count Stephan...he's kind of odd, don't you think?” It was like the guy never slept, never left his post. She'd come in at all hours and he was there, just as dapper as ever. She hadn't ruled out the possibility that there were two of him.
He shook his head. "Nish, this is Los Angeles; if you think Stephan is weird, I hate to say this, but that's def a giant sign that you're not from around here." He attempted to soften his words with a smile. "I'll have to take you to West Hollywood sometime. You'll see ten Stephans for every two blocks, and that's just during the day.” Nish laughed, nodding at the idea.
"Really, though, what happened was just stories. It's not like we've got anything to worry about with the revamp of the building. It's under new management and everything, or so I've been told." He took another bite of his curry, watching Nish for her reaction. She smiled softly.
“Who's worried?” she asked, the laugh about Stephan had cleared some of the tension, and now she was feeling a little silly at her reaction to the story. “Besides, who doesn't enjoy a good urban legend now and then?” She finished off her lunch with a satisfied sigh and a glance at her watch. She wanted to stay and chat longer, but she really had to head back to work; all that paperwork wouldn’t finish itself. She watched the waitress bring the check and nodded to Chris when he insisted on paying.
“Thanks for this,” she said, standing next to their table. “Get that paperwork to me and I’ll have a look at it, but I gotta get back to work.” Instead of riding back with him, she decided to walk the few blocks back to work to clear the alcohol from her head.