The Landlord Opened My Hangar With The Lease Beside Her

The equipment agreement was six pages long. Foster had signed the last page and initialed every list.

Page two said the machines remained my personal property. Page three listed their serial numbers. Page four gave the company permission to use my cutting templates while the hire agreement remained in force.

The templates were work aids I had made from the makers' repair instructions. They weren't new balloon designs. They saved hours of careful layout, and I had built them over years.

Nothing in that agreement gave them away.

Our company, Valley Seam Balloon Repair, paid $600 a month to hire three machines. Or it was supposed to. Foster had told me the last three payments would come when two large invoices cleared.

I wrote $1,800 on a sheet of paper.

Foster had also signed a personal guarantee for unpaid hire and reasonable enforcement costs.

Then I opened the company agreement. We each owned half. We each had put in $8,000. Our capital list named cash. It did not name my machines, templates, or private lease.

I photographed the pages and sent them to an attorney named June Salcedo, whose office had prepared the agreements.

At eight the next morning, she called.

"You still have the originals?"

"On my kitchen table."

"Keep them there until we make clean copies. Don't write on them."

"Can I enter the hangar?"

"Your lease gives you access. Let's have the landlord handle the lock, with notice to Foster. No shoving match."

June charged $325 an hour. I paid a $1,500 deposit and tried not to think about groceries.

By ten, Foster had received a letter disputing his claims, demanding records be kept, and telling him that changing a lock had not removed a member from the company.

The hire agreement also allowed me to stop machine use at once if I was denied access to my property. June invoked that clause. She gave the company the written notice required for the unpaid rent.

At noon, I met Celia outside the hangar.

She held my lease in a clear sleeve.

"I own the building," she said. "Camila rents this unit. Your company uses it under my written consent. None of that changed yesterday."

Foster stood in the doorway.

"We have a partnership. She contributed the space."

"She allowed the business to use it," June said. "Show us a transfer."

He looked at the sleeve.

"Our bookkeeper has it."

"Send it today."

Celia's locksmith fitted a new cylinder while we waited. Both company members received keys. Celia kept one. June made clear that access did not settle our company dispute or let either of us take a customer's property.

That mattered. I wanted my place back. I didn't want an excuse for Foster to call me a thief.

Inside, my long-arm machine sat crooked on its table. Someone had changed the upper tension and left a bent needle beside the foot.

I rubbed a yellow scrap between my finger and thumb.

Cheap, stiff cloth. Shop cover material.

"What's this for?"

"Training a replacement," Foster said.

"With what experience?"

"People learn. You're not the only person who can sew a line."

June photographed the machine plates against the serial list. I put dated notices on each machine stating that use was suspended under the agreement. We left the company tools in place.

Then I went to the blue balloon bag.

The orange loop was gone.

"Where is Imogen's open work order?"

"Filed."

I found it in the completed tray. My name sat on the approval line beside my certificate number.

The date was Tuesday, while I had been in Denver.

My stomach seemed to slide down through the floor.

"I didn't sign this."

Foster turned toward a shelf.

"You must have forgotten."

June held up her phone.

"Leave that paper where it is. We'll photograph both sides."

I called Imogen. She arrived without her usual joke and brought the original maintenance entry Foster had mailed her.

It carried the same false approval.

"I never flew it," she said. "Weather kept me home before I came yesterday."

I sat on an empty thread carton until my knees worked again.

That evening, I laid my home copy beside the hangar copy. My Friday sheet said: Stitching complete. Final inspection pending. Orange loop on bag.

The two documents shared a job number. They did not share a signature.

I opened the next weekly packet.

Then another.

At 9:16, I called June.

"It isn't just Imogen's balloon. I found two more jobs marked open at home and approved at the shop."

"How many owners?"

"Three so far."

"Send me their contact sheets. Then keep looking."

Under the third packet lay a courier receipt bearing the name of a pilot already on the road to a dawn launch.