After a few more volleys, April headed back to her apartment. This was the last thing she needed. Maybe for some people it would be “only $120,” but chances were, if you lived on Imperial Valley Drive, you didn’t have that kind of money lying around. If you did, you’d be looking for another place to live.
“You go in there and tear that kid a new one?” Rene had finished his cigarette and was leaning back on his front door.
“Hell yeah.” April lifted herself up onto the ugly brown fence around the patio and sat on it for a moment. “Still gotta pay it, though. And by the time it’s due, I have to pay rent, too.”
“That’s some stuff, girl. Is your door fixed yet?”
“Nope.”
April swung her legs around and dropped into the patio before heading into the apartment through the window. The place was a disaster, of course. The last creeps who had broken in hadn’t taken anything, but they still managed to rifle through every single thing she owned, left boot prints everywhere, busted her doorframe, and scared her dopey pug. April picked her way through the mess to give her little black kitten some food, and then flopped down on the blue chair—with the stuffing falling out of it—and propped her feet onto the cracked coffee table.
Her eyes drifted to the remains of her door. Instead of fixing it, the complex had the handyman slammed so many nails into the frame that it might take a battering ram to open. She couldn’t hire a repair man herself. She couldn’t pay this extra bill. All of her last paycheck had gone to skimming the interest on her student loans.
And to top it all off, she’d been fired from her awful job today. April had been at the top of her class in her design program at Parsons, and now she’d just been fired from a job that hinged on how ambitiously she could arrange her cleavage.
“What a life.”
***
Lana Bennet stood by her window, running her fingers through her long, shiny hair as she looked out over the Montrose.
“Okay, let me get this straight. You called your boss an impotent, wrinkled tangelo?”
“He made a deep grab for my ass and said he was ‘brushing off a hair,’” April protested.
Lana turned and crossed her arms. “That’s grounds for a lawsuit.”
“Lawyers are for people with the money to hire lawyers. If I could hire a lawyer, the first people I’d hit up are my apartment complex.”
“I will never get over you living in Gunspoint.”
April smirked. “It’s Greenspoint. And the rent is cheap.”
“Until you take into account that your television was stolen, and you can’t keep your valuables there.”
“Well, the TV was the only thing worth stealing. The latecomer thieves just made a mess.”
“You are too blasé about this! What if someone came in while you were there?”
April shrugged. Someone had come in through her balcony window once, but she wasn’t about to mention that to Lana. The girl would have a fit. “I have a taser.”
“You’re the worst.”
“And my neighbor, Rene, has his eye out for me.”
Lana wrinkled her nose. “The drug dealer?”
“To be fair, he’s the nicest drug dealer I’ve ever met. And yes, I’m counting your boyfriend from college.”
“Cheston was not a drug dealer!”
“He gave his friends speed for money.”
“Well... Yale is a hard school. They were struggling.”
“Not enough. I’d love to see a guy like that really struggle.” April ran her palms along the soft, plush fabric of Lana’s sofa. She and Lana met in college, but the circumstances of their lives were radically different. If anyone had told her growing up that her best friend would be a fashion major and a trust-fund baby, she might have smacked them.
“You know what? You should come stay with me! We had so much fun rooming together at Parsons!”