The LandLord

Posted on Fri 19th Jun, 2020 @ 6:32am by Yuliette Marayan Dr.
Edited on on Sun 11th Apr, 2021 @ 2:31pm

1,105 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Resolution
Location: Brown Sector: Zodiac
Timeline: MD11

Yuliette was gawking. She’d never been on a station with anything quite like this place. It was as if the universe had dropped a raw underclass city block inside. Several different sources of music clashed on the air, almost cancelling one another out as noise. Carts full of food stuffs or materials rolled by. Clashing signage in multiple languages seemed to compete for her attention everywhere she turned. People were moving around talking and buying and selling from tents and street carts. She’d never seen so many races all in one place. Some of the races she didn’t even have names for, which was humbling, since she’d taken a score of xenobiology courses. She followed Findley’s directions and came to a stoop where three white whiskered Bajoran men were drinking ales, listening to a sub-space radio, and playing a game she supposed was akin to dominos.

“Excuse me?”

The men looked at her and their pleasant demeanor died off. The radio continued playing Bajoran folk.

“Sorry, I’m just looking for... Tamrinch?”

“You owe him something?”

“Not as of yet.” Yuliette joked drily, freshly sore about the cost of the secret flight and the customs bribe and uncertain how far her once fat wallet was really going to take her before she had to figure something else out.

One of the old men cracked a crooked smile at the girl’s moxie and buzzed the door. “Half a Cardie here to see you, Tam.”

“Send him up.”

The narrow double door popped at the latch and one half of it swung loose. Yuliette saw herself inside and took the stairs up two flights. Each landing on the second and third floor was a passage full of doors going in both directions and sometimes with people moving through or loitering in them. On the third floor, she was uncertain which way to turn, but there was a boy, Flaxian, maybe twelve years old, in the hall playing with a little remote flyer.

“Excuse me, I’m supposed to talk to someone named Tamrinch. Would you know him?”

“Ehpapow!” The boy shouted towards a doorway. The rest the boy said in Flaxian, which Yuliette didn’t understand.

A shirtless Flaxian young man with a patch of a beard and a knife on his belt opened one of the doors and scanned her up and down with squinty eyes. Yuliette couldn’t help but notice how the young man was built out of lean muscle, and how his taught skin had a green cast to it.

“It’s not the schmoozer, Uncle Tam. It’s a half-cardie *girl*,” he shouted back in the direction of the open door.

“She wants what?”

“Maybe ask her yourself.”

“What kind of back-birth you are? You send her in, I do just that!”

“Boss’ll see ya.” The green Flaxian stepped out of the doorway and put a worn-out toothpick back in his teeth.

Yuliette moved past him, aware of his tracking gaze. He pulled the door shut beyond them and she jumped a little at the sound of the latch.

Inside, Yuliette found something of a livingroom-turned-office, with antique furniture and a smell like some sort of heavy food odor. Tamrinch was a middle-aged Flaxian with a double chin and a potato sack physique. He sat behind a table where he was counting a considerable amount of money and making marks in ledgers. From another room, Yuliette heard a holo-program that she didn’t understand the words to, but, from the emotive inflection was likely some kind of soap opera. There was a thin trail of smoke rising from an ashtray on the desk where Tamrinch had just extinguished something he’d been puffing.

“Is nephew. Needs job, I love my sister so, I give.” Tamrinch explained. “Knuckle bones for brains. But wins lightweight matches, and no one stick a knife in him first, so. What you want?”

“I was looking for accommodations and someone directed me to you.”

“How many rooms?”

“Just one.”

He held out a hand and motioned for her to hand over papers. “Let’s see ID, references.”

Yuliette shifted her weight to the other foot. “I lost my identification.”

“Okay. We look you up. Is name?”

“I lost it.”

“Your name you lose now? What you, uh--uh” He snapped his fingers a few times and barked something to his shirt-less nephew in Flaxian.

“Am Knee Zee Uh” The younger man said.

“Amnesia! You amnesia like this holonovella?”

“Look, I’ll pay you upfront, three months. I don’t expect I’ll be staying the time in its entirety, but I won’t want the difference.”

“Is good, because I no give refunds.” Tamrinch stroked his facial fins while thoughtfully regarding her. She was trying to look calm, but he saw a scared little rabbit, the way she clutched the strap of her bag and her eyes shifted around at every little sound. “I help out, I think. Not everyone as understanding.”

“What’s the going rate for a studio apartment?”

“No references? No ID?” The Flaxian folded his fat fingers together. “Depend. How much you have.”

Yuliette looked in her wallet and came up with what she was willing to pay, reserving some for necessities. She laid out the credits on the table. Tamrinch looked up at her.

“One month rent? You say three.”

Yuliette sighed and reluctantly counted out another month's worth by Tamrinch’s reckoning. It left her with very little. Just change, really. “That’s all I have.”

The Flaxian pursed his lips and thought. “I have unit for this price, I think.” He raised his voice to be heard through the walls and bellowed the boy’s name. “Ryvan!”

The boy came running in. “Ehpopaw?”

The two of them spoke back and forth in whatever tongue must have been their first. Yuliette looked over at the man with the knife, which he had unsheathed and was rotating around in his hand idly. He seemed pretty relaxed, leaning on a door post and watching the holonovella in the other room from where he stood.

Ryvan, the boy, tugged her hand. “Ehpapow say I show you room. You follow?”

Yuliette looked back to Tamrinch as he was folding her cash in with the rest of his money. So it was done.

He threw her a ratty old travel pamphlet and said “Welcome to Zodiac. Enjoy stay. You want longer stay, or trade up rooms, or you find somebody ID, come, talk to Tamrinch again, yeah?”

“Thank you, I’ll do that.” Yuliette said as she followed the boy out.

 

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