Two Names on the Lease

The housing officer’s name was Dett, and she had already decided to be kind, which made Jaro suspicious.

“It’s a simple amendment,” Dett said.

“That’s what you people always say before it isn’t,” Sila answered.

Sila was synthetic. Jaro was not. The lease had been signed in Jaro’s name because six years ago Sila’s chassis registration had been in transition and the form had not liked that. They had meant to fix it. They had meant to fix a lot of things. The courtyard tree had grown a full season of leaves in the meantime.

Dett turned the screen.

“Second occupant. Legal name.”

“Sila Ren.”

“Chassis continuity?”

Sila recited it without looking. Jaro still found that slightly showing off.

“And the household wishes both names on the primary lease.”

“Yes,” Jaro said.

“In which order?”

They looked at each other.

This had not been discussed.

“Does it matter?” Jaro asked.

“For postal hierarchy and emergency contact default, yes.”

Sila’s mouth did the small thing it did when she was trying not to be amused at the city.

“Put hers first,” Jaro said.

“Put his first,” Sila said, at the same time.

Dett waited with the professional neutrality of someone who had watched this exact argument in twelve other kitchens’ worth of people.

“We live there,” Sila said. “Both of us. The tree doesn’t have an order.”

“The tree is not a leaseholder,” Dett said, not unkindly.

They took a number and sat.

The waiting room in Meridian Quarters had a window onto a different courtyard with no tree, which Jaro considered a failure of municipal imagination. A child was explaining to a parent that the floor numbers were a suggestion. An older man was asleep with a form on his chest like a blanket.

“If your name is first they call you when the pipes burst,” Sila said.

“They already call me. I have a face that looks responsible.”

“You have a face that looks like it will argue with a plumber.”

“That’s responsibility.”

Sila took his hand. The joint at her wrist clicked once, a sound Jaro had stopped hearing years ago except on days like this, when the city insisted on noticing them.

“I don’t want to be a second occupant,” she said.

“You’re not.”

“The paper thinks I am.”

“Then we change the paper.”

“In which order?”

Jaro laughed, which made the sleeping man frown in his sleep.

They went back to Dett.

“Alphabetical,” Jaro said.

Dett typed.

“That puts Ren before Vell.”

“Good,” Sila said.

“Good,” Jaro said.

It was not a philosophy. It was a way to stop standing in a queue inventing one.

Dett printed the amendment. Both of them signed. The machine made a noise that meant the city had, for the moment, agreed they lived where they already lived.

Outside, Meridian was doing its late-afternoon version of itself: shade, errands, someone watering a plant that did not belong to them.

At home the courtyard tree knocked a leaf against the kitchen glass.

Sila stuck the new lease to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a small crane.

“Your name is second,” she said.

“I’m very secure.”

“You argued for it.”

“I argued for you not being a footnote.”

She kissed him, which the lease did not have a field for.

That night the building sent a test alert to the first name on the household.

Sila’s terminal chimed.

She held it up.

“Pipes are fine,” she said. “I am first.”

Jaro made tea for two, which had always been the actual document.