The Lease Came Out On A Table Above The Gulch

I took my lunch tin to Nessa Vale's office above a closed pottery shop. Nessa was a lawyer who had helped write our business agreement. She charged me $240 for the first hour and let me eat my sandwich while she read.

"He thinks cash means there was no sale," I said.

"Cash is how you paid. It doesn't decide who owns a thing. What else have you kept?"

"Most things."

I spread them across her table.

There was the auction bill for my stitching horse and strap cutter: $4,860, paid in cash, with the auction clerk's signature. There were photographs of their serial plates. A second seller had written me a receipt for $2,100 in hand tools.

The rest of my equipment had similar records. Together, the items on the lease had cost $18,460.

Nessa tapped Bram's signature.

"And he acknowledged the whole list."

For $150 a month, our partnership could use my tools at the shop. The lease said ownership stayed with me. It also said no one could remove them without my written consent.

"He read this," I said. "I watched him."

"Then we won't spend your money guessing what he remembers."

She turned to the pattern schedule. It listed twenty-three sets I had brought into the business. Each envelope had a number. Bram had agreed they stayed mine, and that the shop could use them only for work I made or supervised.

He had also agreed to keep the measurements and build notes private.

"This isn't a claim that you own every saddle shape," Nessa said. "It's his written promise about these sets and how he could use them. That's what we'll enforce."

My mark registration was useful for another reason. It linked that open circle and needle to my business. It didn't prove every tool was mine. The lease did that. But Bram couldn't simply stamp my name on work I had never touched.

Nessa checked the registration date against our opening date. Then she put the early sample photographs behind it. The same mark appeared on saddles I had finished before our storefront existed.

Nessa made copies while I called Paloma.

"I'm sending a notice," I told her. "Those four saddles aren't my work."

"Put that in writing. Our producer needs it."

"Will you lose your shoot?"

"We can move a scene. We can't move a horse's spine."

She had separated Bram's saddles from the rest of the tack. Nobody would ride in them until they had been checked.

Nessa sent a demand for the return of my listed property, the pattern envelopes, and the unfinished film order. She asked Bram to preserve his sales messages, invoices, and account records.

She sent it to him and his lawyer. I signed a plain statement for the production saying which work I had done and which I had not.

There was no grand speech. My hands shook anyway.

"Where can you work if he gives it back?" Nessa asked.

I thought of the empty assay office below my aunt's house. Years ago, ore samples had gone through its thick brick walls. Lately, pigeons had used it more than people.

My aunt had bought it with the house. She had once offered me the back room for storage.

"Maybe somewhere," I said.

I called her from Nessa's stairs.

"No furnace work," Aunt June said. "The old chimney is closed."

"Leather work. Same as always."

"Then use it. Pay the lights until we agree on rent."

By evening, I was sweeping grit from a brick floor. The water worked. So did the overhead lights. June's electrician came down, checked the outlets, and replaced a cracked cover for $85.

I paid him and bought a $46 folding table.

The old sample drawers had little brass slots for labels. I slid one strip of scrap leather into a slot and tried three more ladder stitches while I waited for the floor to dry.

They still leaned.

Bram called at eight.

"You hired a lawyer over some used tools?"

"Send the address."

"You're throwing away a partnership."

"You took my key."

His breath rasped against the phone.

"I can say those saddles are mine. I can say you learned everything from me."

"You can send that to Nessa."

I ended the call and wrote down its time and his words. Then I sent the note to her.

At nine, her email arrived. Bram's lawyer had agreed to a supervised pickup the next morning. The property would be photographed and counted, with no release of either side's claims.

An address followed: a rented garage outside town.

Then came an attachment Bram had apparently meant to leave out.

It was an invoice for four finished saddles, bought for $780 each, with an extra line that read, "Copy supplied photographs. Add customer logo."