While Cielo and Samura toured the dream apartment, Jayanti talked a mile a minute, describing everything they could plainly see.
She walked the price back twice, at one point saying, "Did I say 37,000 before? Oops, it was supposed to be 37,500 a month. I misspoke, but I will honor what I said before."
And she kept hitting on the same point: "Better if I don't have to come back and show it to someone else." Better if the first prospective tenants to see it snatched it up. It would save her time.
Then she offered them an extra move-in week before the first of the month, rent-free. "If you want to take it, we'll send you the lease to sign, and you'll make a 5,000 solidae deposit. Once we get the deposit, we don't show it to anyone else, and we run background checks. If you're approved, it's yours!"
The couple left with nervous butterflies in their bellies. If they didn't jump on this place, someone else might take it. Two more housing appointments that day underwhelmed. Samura hadn't even wanted to go to them. "We have to make the deposit. We'll get it back if we don't get approved. We need to pay the deposit and lock this place down. I've never wanted anything so much in my life." Then she laughed at her own drama, but there was a tension on her face, like she was only partly joking now.
Like she had never wanted anything so much in her life.
#
It would be foolish not to think it over. Returning to the Shade, Cielo and Samura stopped for a meal, hungry for something that wasn't food. Both wanted that place, bad. It made them nervous not to make the down payment immediately, but they had to think it over. It was the mature thing to do. The smart thing.
Amazingly they got a patio seat at Las Arepas de Luz, out on the sidewalk where the panhandlers would come by every three minutes to ask for spare solidae. No sooner had they sat down quietly, out of things to say out loud, thinking the same thing we need to pay the deposit, we need to lock that place down, we want that place, than another couple sat behind them at the next table with plenty to say, plenty for Cielo and aer esposa to overhear.
"It's shitty here," said a voice whose face neither could see, because the speaker had her back to them. "Straight up, I can't take the shit smell in the street and the cold weather every day anymore. If we lived in Breeze Edge we could link to Ely's. But who am I kidding, the rent's too high here, and it's higher everywhere else. It drives me crazy being here, the city doesn't do anything about the panhandlers, and the homeless problem, and it's like all the poor people in Soliara live in this one neighborhood, and we're here with them for some reason. Do you think they bus all the homeless people back here every time they try to move somewhere else? Is that the city's solution to poverty? I just can't."
Eating in silence, Cielo and Samura listened to the tirade that was all anyone ever talked about in the Shade anymore. The drugs, Story getting rampant, the dirt, the grime, the cold. On and on. Eating slowly, listening, they waited until the pair, in a hurry like every other Shadeslicker these days, had finished and left before speaking.
Samura said, "You can't stop change from happening, but I don't want to be here while it happens. Maybe we'll be back one day, once it's over."
She took Cielo's hand. Cielo said, "Don't worry. We don't have to make a decision right this second. It sounded like Jayanti doesn't want to bother going back today to show the place to anyone else. It's unlisted. No one else has seen it. We can take our time. We'll sleep on it."
Samura's eyes looked worried.
Going home to sleep on it, the worry was tainted with an enthusiasm, the couple feeling ecstatic about what the future would hold if they got this place. Over a simple magic cast speghetti dinner in Cielo's microstudio in the Shade, Samura said, "Come on, let's do it! We have to give them the deposit. We can't let anyone else snap that place up!"
She said the same in bed that night, staying over. The microstudio didn't have enough space for all her stuff, but the bed had room for two tangled up together.
"Let's go back to the drawing board," said Cielo, yawning and waving the light off with a lazy arm. "We'll skip our appointments tomorrow and stretch the budget to 37,000, see what else the classifieds show for that price. If we're going to stretch the budget and put off getting pregnant, let's make sure we see what else is out there."
But then aeh dreamed of the little home they saw today, dreamt that they raised their baby there, and in the morning, the two woke up, met each other's smiles in the clouded sun rays let in through the small window of Cielo's place in the Shade, read each other's minds, and over a rushed breakfast they wired the deposit over, and signed the lease.
For a minute the orange juice went down like heaven's nectar. A blissful breakfast filled them, and they cheered the bright future . . . and after about a minute, the first worry hit.
Could it have been a scam?
Everything about the appointment had felt off. Strange. It had put Cielo on edge, filled aer with anxiety about the housing stock available, that they would never be able to afford anything decent. Then the broker shows up, offers them their dream apartment with 500 off the rent and a free week? Unlisted, before anyone else could view it?
Without letting aer worries on to Samura, aeh looked up the unit on the Stellar, but it was, in fact, yet to be listed.
Leasing profiles for Jayanti and Drishti looked legit. It seemed they were real people, and not made up identities. The lease came back, signed and dated . . . and so when Jayanti asked for first and last . . . out of fear of losing the place, Cielo wired it to them.
A key dropped out of a link portal, and fell into the palm Cielo held out. Closed fingers around it felt the touch of Samura's hand closing over aers. Eyes met with ecstatic hope.
On the first day of their moving week, they came to the building with suitcases in a soaring taxi car and hit the 'pent' button in the elevator. Flying high into the sky and watching the streets sink, they grasped fingers again even if it made it harder to hold their luggage.
The key didn't work on P3. A number printed into the metal read 5B. Taking the elevator back down to the fifth floor while Samura stayed with the suitcases, Cielo tried the key in 5B, but it didn't work in that door either.
A message to Drishti on the Stellar received no reply. A link call went unanswered.
Speechless, they waited outside the door, demoralized, for minutes that dragged and dragged, occasionally helplessly trying the lock again, pressing on the door again, begging it to open.
Unable to look at each other, they were unable to express their worry, their foolishness, that they had been duped, that they were entirely, totally, completely fucked out of . . . about . . . seventy-nine thousand solidae.
It was beyond speaking, beyond thinking, there were no words, just a vague stunned shock and paralysis.
Time passed and then a voice came from behind them, the pregnant parens they had seen before (Lilac??) came out of the elevator talking on a link call, the mouthpiece portal floating along inches ahead of aer mouth, with a bag of groceries. As aeh fumbled to get out aer key, Samura helped aer with the groceries.
"Thanks," aeh said, and to aer link conversation, "Can I call you back, Echo?"
The key turned in the lock, unlocking P3 and allowing the door to open, and inside the wide entryway appeared not the apartment that the couple had rented, but a little cubby studio. All of it visible in one glance through the doorway.
"Do you live here?" asked Cielo. "Why didn't you say anything when Jayanti showed it to us?"
"Who?"
Peeking back inside, Cielo had to admit, this had to be the parens' apartment. A homey lived in place filled to the brim with personal belongings, decorated with colorful yet muted old hangings, family pictures, rare pottery and unique antiques, it clearly was occupied.
Every bit of counter space taken up by appliances, oils and spices, smelling of the parens' cooking and living, every bit of table top covered in a coat of magazines and newspaper, a baby's cama in the corner ready for the starborn who would soon come into this small home.
That instant Cielo's dream home vanished from the world, smoke and mirrors, aer heaven a shattered dream. It didn't exist, and it never had.
Thank you for reading Cielo's Star. This concludes Episode I! Tune in on Friday for more Constellation short stories. Please spare a star if this story brought you any feels. Episode II of Cielo's Star will be available . . . at some point!