“I live here,” Joe answered slowly and carefully. He’d never had a conversation with any of his neighbors, but if forced to choose, this wouldn’t have been his first choice of neighbor to talk to. The only reason Joe knew this was the garlic-cabbage neighbor was that the scent doubled now that his door was open with his bald head sticking out of it.

“But they arrested you,” he barked out, his bald head and face infused with red, like he was one grunt away from a heart attack.

“They did, but I’m out,” Joe told him, not sure why he was saying anything at all to this blowhard.

“The management assured me that they had a strict no convict rule,” stench-neighbor growled, and light bulbs went off in Joe's head.

“You turned me in?” Joe accused him, his tone mild. At least half of Joe wanted to thank him for it.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” stench-neighbor’s voice rose, and he eased just a bit more of his bulk out his door. “And if you accuse me of anything again, I’m going to file a restraining order against you.”

“What did I ever do to you?” Joe asked, more curious than mad.

“All that mad stomping up and down those stairs at all hours is what you did,” he blustered, hands on hips around a stained white T-shirt that stretched over his girth. “Always your nose in your phone. If you had looked up even once, you could have seen me glaring out my window at you every time you go rattling the whole building with your rude stomping madness! And now it’s back!”

“You turned me in for social ineptitude because I stomped up and down the stairs?” Joe gave him a baffled look. Joe looked down at the stairs. Joe hadn’t thought about it. Joe just felt like he was walking. Joe took a step and the stairway rattled. It was just a step.

“Stop it!” stench-neighbor yelled at Joe, shaking one finger.

“I didn’t do anything,” Joe argued, still calm.

“The apartment complex said they couldn’t stop you from stomping up and down the stairs, but that if I had a complaint about the noise, I should contact the police,” he fussed. “Do you even know how loud you are?”

“Have you heard yourself walk up and down the stairs?” Joe tried, not trying to fight but truly curious. Joe was pretty sure it was the stairs themselves, and not his stomping that caused all the noise.

“Of course not,” stench-neighbor insisted. “I haven’t been out since they passed the stupid social laws. Do you know how many crazy people are out there?”

Out there? Joe thought, but he was kind enough not to say it.

“And no one else thumps as loud as you think I do?” Joe asked, still trying to find the logic.

“No one else is on the second floor,” stench-neighbor scoffed at Joe.

Joe scanned a look from one end of the balcony to the other. Come to think on it, Joe hadn’t seen another tenant in a while. Joe hadn’t paid attention.

“I’ve lived here for more than five years and there hasn’t been another person on the balcony since that woman who worked the night shift as a janitor,” stench-neighbor crossed his arms and looked way too much like a cartoon dog to Joe at the moment. “She and her obnoxious kids moved out just weeks after moving in, thank God!”

Part of Joe was stomping around in his mind going on about all that torture being about stairs. That childish part of him imagined stomping up and down those stairs for an hour just to be petty. The adult part of Joe considered it, but then he thought better of it. Then again, Joe would have a chance to do just that when he moved out his stuff. Not that he knew where he was going to move it to. That deflated Joe’s inner tantrum enough to be civil, if only a little longer.

“Probably the smell,” Joe muttered. “I still don’t think it’s possible to go up and down these stairs without making a lot of noise.” Then Joe thought of his garbage. “How do you get your garbage out if you don’t go up and down the stairs?”

“I have a pulley system from my back window, if you must know,” stench-neighbor turned his nose up at Joe like Joe was stupid.

“You’re stuck with me for now, buddy,” Joe shook his head at him, refusing to alter his steps on the stairs even as stench-neighbor scowled at Joe the whole way. He was neither louder nor softer than he had been before. This was different Joe. Besides, how bad could it be to be tossed back into the prison system if he called them again? Could that happen?

Joe watched stench-neighbor slam his door and had to grab the railing to keep the action from shaking him right off the balcony. Then Joe laughed and walked back into his apartment. Here Joe had been wondering how to get his friends back and all he’d had to do was take out his trash. Joe checked his phone for the time and then rang up his new driver-buddy. Joe was getting out of here before garlic-cabbage had him rearrested. There had to be a solution out here that could get his program back that was better than getting rearrested.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Joe waited for the familiar EV car to drive up before daring to clatter back down the stairs with a duffle in hand. Joe had packed up what he wanted to keep, just in case he didn’t have to come back. If Joe woke up to the Mickey Mouse Courthouse again, he thought he’d have to get out just to burn down garlic-cabbage’s apartment. Joe had looked up the laws and tried to issue a complaint right back at cabbage-head, but there were no-retaliation laws that protected the bozo from it. As long as stench-neighbor had shot first, he'd won. The repeat-offender laws were scary enough to have Joe ready to go home to his parents rather than come back here again.

“Overnight trip on the menu?” the driver’s winning smile said as she winked at Joe. The duffle was pretty small, but it almost didn’t fit in the tiny car.

“Just living on hope, man,” Joe shook his head at her and buckled his seatbelt around the duffle.

“That’s one way, I suppose,” Winning-smile almost got Joe to learn her name by saying quietly. Then she smiled again, and it reminded Joe of his cowboy buddy. Winning-smile was enough since Joe probably wouldn’t see her again after this ride.

“I’m looking for a place near our meeting place where I can grab a bite to eat and wait out the time until the meeting without breaking some vagrancy law,” Joe smiled back at Winning-smile to see if he could match her wattage. If Joe's stats were all in his head, maybe he had some charm.

“You got more than the five bucks you had an hour ago?” she bantered back, her smile slipping just a tad. Joe wasn’t sure if that meant he’d succeeded at that smile or not.

“A little,” Joe answered, waving his phone. “Since I’m not paying next month’s rent anytime soon, I’ve got a last paycheck to spend.”

“So cheap, but not homeless shelter yet,” she joked, and Joe laughed, thinking how different conversations with real people were.

“That sounds about right,” Joe agreed, and she puttered away from the curb of Joe's old apartment building. With any luck, Joe wouldn’t be back. Ever. Joe tried to believe that he still had that negotiating skill somewhere in the back of his mind because he was about to head out into the shark tank of show business.

“Mr. Denphry,” and low and behold, it was Ms. Slick.

“Why am I left with the feeling that I should have known it would be you,” Joe answered, taking her real hand, and shaking it like a normal person instead of staring at her from across the room. At least this time Joe had worn shoes.

“Ms. Comtolle,” she reminded Joe. “You can call me Michelle if you’d like.”

“Michelle,” Joe nodded, and told his libido to shut up.

“Moving?” she asked, eyeing Joe's duffle.

“That might depend on how charming you or one of your competitors are today,” Joe bantered and maybe he did have skills. Could he have had them all along?

“Then I’m going to have to be extra charming,” she chuckled, her blonde bangs falling over blue eyes in a way that made Joe wish he’d gone shopping with Glenda before this meeting instead of dawdling over a cup of coffee across the street. “Mr. Wallins, would you mind taking Mr. Denphry’s bag until we finish our meeting?”

“Not at all, Ms. Comtolle,” the secretary smiled, and Joe could tell Ms. Michelle Comtolle would never have trouble with social ineptitude.

Michelle Comtolle escorted Joe into a small meeting room where the small talk of several people came to a halt at their entrance. Two women and one other man sat at the table, all smartly dressed in the latest lawyer fashion. Joe's sneakers scrubbed the floor like he was the janitor as Michelle led him to the head of the table and sat him down. They rattled off names, but Joe would be lucky to remember Michelle Comtolle and that was only because he’d already immaturely imagined their names merging. He was okay with Michelle Denphry or Joe Comtolle. They weren’t awful options. Joe wasn’t serious, but it was a way to force himself to remember a name.

“Water or coffee?” Michelle asked Joe, and he was struck by the image of Ms. Slick waiting on Mr. Scruffy.

“I just came from the café across the street,” Joe tried for a casual answer, but flubbed it by adding, “if I drink much more, I’ll need to remember how to use a bathroom.”

They were pretty cool about it. They just chuckled a bit. Joe would have gotten a one-liner bonus for it, but that was more proof that he wasn’t in a VR dream. Michelle poured some water for Joe and slid a chocolate Danish near his left hand. It looked flaky and Joe wasn’t in VR. If Joe ate that, he’d look ridiculous with flakes of chocolate and stuff everywhere.

“Thanks,” Joe smiled at her, trying for casually amused.

“Just to get to the point, Mr. Denphry,” the woman with a perfect real-world smile that had used expensive whitening agents said to Joe to break the tension. “We are interested in being your agents. We are aware that you haven’t wanted an agent thus far, but we’d like a chance to change your mind.”

“I thought you were a parole officer,” Joe accused Michelle, lacing his fingers over his stomach and leaning back.

“You were rather adamantly against agents, so I decided to get creative,” her mouth twitched with a smirk that she hid easily behind a nice smile.

“We didn’t mean that we wanted to trick you,” said the other woman with perfect hair scooped up in a delicate bun held in place by fancy chopstick looking things. “Michelle has made it clear that you are far too smart to fall for that sort of trickery. We just want to make sure you saw a good offer before you were deluged with a bunch of mediocre ones.”

“We offered the prison system a hefty finder’s fee for a chance to offer you a parole work-release program,” smiley-woman said. They were a good team, but they reminded Joe that Tami and Jean were a better team, at least for him.

“Michelle shot me a lowball offer where I would end up a slave to the system,” Joe accused, not liking the whitewashing act.

“I’m sorry for that, really,” Michelle sounded sincere. “The prison system had some nasty conditions for an early release, and I was trying to work them into our package. I can see where it looked like a raw deal. We’d have negotiated you out of it as soon as your program was making money, but without the prison system getting a cut of anything, Dr. Phendal was adamant that you be subject to some nasty side-effects.”

“The halfway house?” Joe prodded, ticking off a finger.

“It would only have been for the first month, then we could buy out,” she shrugged.

“The prison pods?” Joe went on, ticking off another finger.

“We’d have updated them,” Perfect-smile nodded. “We’re pretty good at buying off the prison system, but it seems like you did a better job of screwing them than they normally do screwing your fellow inmates. We’re impressed.”

“Not to be rude, but you being impressed doesn’t pay my rent or get me my crew back,” Joe tried to sound reasonable, but was there a reasonable way to say that?

“Actually, young man, it does,” the lone other man spoke up, and if Michelle was charming, this man was scary, like in a he owns half of Hollywood way.