The Morning My Partner Changed The Locks On Our Float Shop

My key stopped halfway into the new lock.

Behind the warehouse door, an air hose snapped against concrete. Someone laughed. Our unfinished heron stood high enough that I could see its white head through the dirty window.

I knocked with the hand that held a clay armadillo.

I was Bowen Chen, a thirty-three-year-old Chinese American man with straight black hair, round glasses, and a narrow face usually dusted white from carving foam.

I built parade floats. Before I touched a full sheet of foam, I made a model small enough to sit in my palm. That morning's armadillo had a hollow under its chest where my thumb had held it up.

I had learned to leave that hollow alone until the legs could carry the weight.

Travis Hume opened the door three inches.

Travis was a broad, white man of thirty-six with sandy curls, pink cheeks, and bright blue glasses he wore on top of his head.

"New lock," I said.

"New plan, buddy."

He said it with the same grin he used when selling a float to a committee with a small budget.

"Move. I have to set the heron's neck brace."

"You don't work here anymore."

Across the yard, a train rolled south behind the scrap fence. Our warehouse sat west of downtown San Antonio, where the wind carried dust and the smell of hot tortillas from the corner kitchen.

April festival season was six days away.

"We have three floats due," I said.

"I have three floats due."

He opened the door wider. Six faces turned toward us. Saanvi Rao stood beside the tool cage with our time sheets tucked under her arm.

She was thirty, Indian American, and our crew forewoman. She could stretch one roll of aluminum tape through a whole afternoon and tell from a motor's sound which wheel bearing needed grease.

That morning she looked tired.

"Travis," she said, "we agreed to talk before anybody changed access."

"Bowen carved the animals," he told the room. "Let's quit making that more than it was. He never owned any of Lantern Spur."

Milo bent over a wheel hub. Reed looked at his phone. Ada stopped pulling fabric across a flower frame.

Nobody laughed now.

I set the armadillo on the outside windowsill.

"Our agreement is in the company book."

"Your sweat-equity thing?" Travis laughed. "You didn't finish it."

"The last delivery was yesterday."

"Some crates showed up. That doesn't make you an owner."

I looked past him. The three steel storage racks stood beside the loading scale. Each held gray mold sections, bolted flat and marked with my blue paint pen.

Twelve animals. Twelve sets of molds.

The first pages of our agreement had given me forty percent. The last milestone added twenty points when I supplied the complete mold set listed in Schedule B. We had both signed the transfer in advance.

Travis had called it boring paperwork.

I had kept the signed original at home.

"Can I get my tools?" I asked.

"Make a list."

"My clay is in there."

"Make a list, Bowen."

Saanvi started toward the door. Travis caught the edge and pulled it closer.

Behind her, the garden's paper flowers lay in rows on the floor. Lena had painted their centers the night before. We had promised the school children they could ride among those flowers. I could still see their teacher's careful measurements taped to the base.

"Crew meeting," he said.

The latch clicked.

For a while I listened to the train. Then I took out my phone and photographed the lock, the warehouse number, and the clock above the receiving window.

It was 8:12 a.m., April 18.

I didn't shout through the door. Our heron's neck was hanging from a temporary sling. A startled worker with a hot wire could ruin a week's work.

My phone buzzed before I reached my truck.

It was Saanvi.

Are you getting paid separately? Friday payroll never cleared.

I typed back: No. Save your time sheets. Don't change anything in the files.

She sent a photo of the receiving desk. Under a coffee cup sat a yellow weighing ticket. I recognized the blue stripe the scale printer made when its ribbon started to fail.

I had asked her to weigh every mold delivery after Travis said we needed a clean asset record for insurance.

He had even signed the first ticket.

At home, I cleared a space beside my little clay models. I laid out the agreement, the attached inventory, and my delivery photos.

Then an email arrived from a man named Caleb Voss.

He said he was purchasing our shop's molds, frames, and floats for $72,000. Travis had promised him vacant possession on Monday morning.

He wanted me to remove my personal belongings by Sunday.

At the bottom was an attachment titled Seller's Statement Of Sole Ownership.