The Locked East Door Sent Me Back To The County Stamp

I called the lock man and told him my business occupied the rooms.

"I wasn't told that," he said. "I'll hold the job until she clears it up."

I thanked him, saved his message, and went to bed with the gray folder beside my shoes.

On Monday, my east door key no longer worked.

The new brass lock shone against the old brown paint. Through the glass, I could see my machine, its handles wrapped in soft tape where my fingers rested.

Patricia opened the main hall door when I rang.

"A different company did it," she said before I spoke. "The first man was difficult."

"I need my key."

"You can come through here when I'm here. Nine to four. Except during events."

My first customer came at seven before her hospital shift. Fabric deliveries came through the east door because a long box of backing cloth could not turn easily through the hall's narrow kitchen passage.

"My agreement says six in the morning to ten at night," I said.

"Your agreement was with a dead man."

I took a photograph of the lock.

She let me carry Hannah's finished quilt out through the main hall. She would not give me a key.

By noon, I sat across from Leona Reed, a lawyer whose office overlooked a parking lot near downtown Sioux Falls.

She read every page before she asked a question.

"Was Chue authorized to sign for the company?"

I handed her the company papers from the same folder.

Cottonwood Hall LLC owned the building. Chue had managed the company when we signed. After he died, Patricia inherited sixty percent, and Toua inherited forty percent.

Patricia managed the hall now. That did not make its old contracts disappear.

Leona laid my lease flat.

"September first, 2018, through August thirty-first, 2038," she read. "Two rooms, nine hundred forty square feet. East entrance and loading path."

"Prepaid," I said.

"I see that."

Eight years earlier, the hall had stood cold after a burst pipe. Its boiler was dead, and part of its roof needed work. The bank would not lend more until Chue put in cash.

I had spent eighteen months making quilts from fabric people trusted me with. My sister helped organize a sale and a run of paid commissions. After materials, shipping, and her agreed pay, the work left me $72,000.

I had planned to open a studio elsewhere.

Chue offered two rooms in return for that money. Twenty years, paid in advance. I would pay my own business insurance and the power measured on my studio's meter.

He used the money for the boiler and roof. The hall reopened that fall. I had kept copies of those bills, too.

"We can just shake," he had said at first.

"We can shake after we sign," I told him.

He had laughed, then paid to have the agreement drawn up. We recorded it in Minnehaha County. Its attached receipt said the company had accepted $72,000 as full rent for the term.

Leona examined my bank transfer and the company's signed receipt.

"Keep these originals," she said. "I'll work from copies."

She read the access clause aloud. The company had to keep my entrance and loading path open during the listed hours. It could not move me to other rooms without my written agreement.

"Can she cancel because she's found someone who pays more?"

"There's no right to do that in this lease."

She prepared a notice demanding a working east door key and full access. The lease gave the company ten business days to cure a breach after written notice. It also let either side seek urgent court relief if waiting would cause harm.

"We'll document each missed delivery and each cost," Leona said. "No guesses."

"What about the quilts?"

"Can you collect them safely during the hours she's allowing?"

"Some. One is loaded on the frame."

I explained how its layers were pinned to the rollers. Taking it down halfway through could leave a ridge across the back.

Leona wrote that down, too. She asked for the promised finish dates, not just the dollar values. For once, someone outside my shop understood that losing an entrance could mean losing a whole week of work.

I paid a $2,000 advance from my business savings.

That hurt. I had saved it for a new motor.

Toua stood in the kitchen when I came home.

"A lawyer? Mai, she's my mother."

"And I'm your wife. I have quilts in there that belong to other people."

He rubbed the grease from beneath one nail with a folded paper towel.

"Let me try once more."

"You can talk," I said. "My notice still goes out."

It went by the delivery methods the lease required. Leona also sent a copy by email, and Patricia replied within eleven minutes.

"You will regret embarrassing this family."

I saved that, too.

The next morning, a woman waited by my locked east door, holding a white envelope against the wind.

"I'm Elena Ortiz," she said. "I paid nine thousand dollars for these rooms. Why is your name still on the glass?"