Chapter 6: The Name That Shouldn't Exist
Winston Bishop arrived on my third day in apartment 4D, and the loft immediately got louder.
I was in the kitchen attempting to make eggs—a technique I'd copied from watching Nick cook the morning before, though my execution was still shaky—when the front door burst open and a figure swept in carrying two duffel bags and radiating complicated energy.
"My people!" Winston announced to the room at large. "Your boy is back from the frozen wasteland of professional basketball disappointment!"
The reunion that followed was genuine chaos. Nick emerged from his room half-dressed, Schmidt descended from wherever he'd been grooming himself, and Coach materialized with the energy of someone who'd been waiting for this exact moment. There were back-slaps and half-hugs and the kind of insults that only worked between people who actually loved each other.
"Latvia," Nick said, shaking his head. "You actually went to Latvia."
"I went to Latvia," Winston confirmed. "I played basketball in Latvia. I was very bad at basketball in Latvia. Now I'm home, and we're never speaking of Latvia again."
"The Latvian league," Schmidt mused. "Honestly, Winston, the networking potential alone—"
"Schmidt. Never speaking of it again."
"Right. Understood. Never."
Jess had joined the gathering by this point, hovering at the edges with the particular energy of someone who wanted to be included but wasn't sure of her status. Winston noticed her immediately.
"And who is this delightful human being?"
"I'm Jess!" She offered a handshake that Winston bypassed entirely in favor of a hug. "I'm new. Like, very new. Three days new."
"Winston. Four years of friendship, several months of European exile, and zero days new." He released her and surveyed the room. "Wait. Where's Steve?"
"Steve moved out," Nick said. "Two months ago."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"You were in Latvia. Communicating with Latvia is apparently impossible."
Winston's gaze landed on me. I'd been hanging back, spatula still in hand, watching the dynamic unfold. The assessment in his eyes was different from the others—less competitive than Schmidt, less suspicious than Nick, more genuinely curious.
"And you are?"
"Chase. Other new roommate. Even newer than Jess."
"Two new roommates." Winston processed this. "The loft has evolved. I've been gone too long." He looked around the apartment with something like wonder. "It's the same but different. Like coming back to a house that got rearranged while you were sleeping."
"That's what you get for abandoning us for the glamorous world of Latvian athletics," Schmidt said.
"The glamour was exactly zero. There was no glamour. I lived in a building where the hot water worked maybe twice a week."
The conversation flowed around me as I finished the eggs—not perfectly, but edible. I made enough for two and left them on the counter, retreating to my tiny room while the reunion continued.
Through the walls, I could hear them catching up. Winston's voice dominated—stories about Latvia that he'd sworn never to tell, complaints about European plumbing, observations about how weird it was to be back. The others filled in the gaps with their own updates. Jess contributed enthusiastically whenever given an opening.
I sat on my bed—a mattress on the floor, really—and let the sounds wash over me.
This was real. These were real people, not characters on a screen, and I was living in their space, hearing their voices, becoming part of their story whether they wanted me there or not.
The Memory Palace pulsed with information—everything I knew about Winston's trajectory. The marketing failure. The radio failure. The eventual path to becoming a police officer that would define his later seasons. The cat that would become his closest companion.
Ferguson.
I knew too much. I knew things I couldn't possibly explain knowing, and eventually that knowledge would slip out. Eventually I'd say something that didn't track, reference something I shouldn't know, reveal the impossible depth of my familiarity with people I'd supposedly just met.
The Ferguson name was one such landmine. Winston would get that cat eventually—would fall in love with it, would build his entire emotional support system around it. And the name Ferguson was specific, personal, meaningful in ways that a stranger shouldn't be able to guess.
I needed to be careful.
---
[Day 12 — 8:34 PM]
Dinner in the loft happened communally whether anyone planned it or not. Schmidt cooked something ambitious involving fusion concepts and ingredients I couldn't identify; the rest of us contributed presence and occasional cutting board assistance.
"So Chase," Winston said, settling into the couch with a plate that was somehow already half-empty. "What's your deal? Nick says you're 'quiet and weird.' Which in Nick-speak could mean anything from serial killer to just regular socially awkward."
"Regular socially awkward," I confirmed. "No serial killing planned."
"That's exactly what a serial killer would say."
"Statistically, it's also what a non-serial killer would say."
Winston laughed—genuine, appreciative. "Okay. I like this one. He's got a logic thing going."
"He does data entry," Nick said from the kitchen, where he was watching Schmidt cook with the expression of someone waiting for a disaster. "Remote work. Very mysterious."
"Freelance data entry," I corrected. "Not mysterious. Just boring."
"Everyone in LA claims to do freelance something," Coach observed. "Half of them are lying."
"The other half are telling a version of the truth they prefer," Schmidt added. "Freelance is code for 'between things' which is code for 'unemployed but with dignity.'"
"I'm between things with dignity," I agreed. "But I pay rent on time. That's all that matters."
The conversation shifted to safer topics—Schmidt's work drama, Jess's classroom stories, Winston's careful avoidance of any Latvia-related subject matter. I listened more than I spoke, cataloguing dynamics, noting how the group functioned now that two new variables had been introduced.
Jess was integrating faster than me, her aggressive friendliness creating openings where my quiet observation created distance. Winston had embraced her immediately; Schmidt was clearly interested in ways that would become complicated later; even Nick's grumpiness seemed to soften around her genuine enthusiasm.
I was still being assessed. Every interaction felt like a test I might be failing without knowing the criteria.
The pet discussion started innocuously. Jess mentioned wanting a fish—"something low-maintenance that doesn't judge my life choices"—which led to a debate about loft pet policies.
"The lease says no pets," Schmidt noted.
"The lease says lots of things we ignore," Nick countered.
"I've always wanted a cat," Winston said, almost wistfully. "Growing up, we couldn't have one. Allergies in the family. But now? I could have a cat. An emotional support cat. Just me and a cat, working through life together."
The words left my mouth before I could stop them.
"You seem like a Ferguson kind of guy."
The room went quiet.
Winston turned to look at me. "What?"
Too late to take it back. I kept my voice casual, deflecting. "Ferguson. Common cat name. You just seem like someone who'd have a cat named Ferguson."
"That's..." Winston's eyebrows drew together. "Weirdly specific. Like, really specific. Most people say 'Whiskers' or 'Mittens.' Ferguson is an actual name."
"Scottish surname," I said, pulling facts from nowhere to build a plausible explanation. "There was a cat comedian or something, Ferguson... I don't know. It's just a vibe I got."
"A vibe." Nick's voice had sharpened. His eyes were on me with renewed intensity—the bullshit detector, which had quieted over the past few days, suddenly fully active again.
"Just a random thought. Forget I said anything."
Winston was still looking at me strangely. "Ferguson," he repeated, like he was testing the weight of it. "Huh. I don't hate it."
The conversation moved on. Schmidt made a joke about naming cats after condiments; Coach mentioned someone he knew who had a dog named Chairman Meow; Jess laughed too loudly at something that wasn't quite funny.
But I noticed Jess's eyes slide toward me during the laughter. A quick glance, evaluating, filing something away. She didn't say anything. She didn't forget.
---
The confrontation with Nick happened later that night.
I was in the kitchen making tea—a habit I'd adopted from the original Chase Reed, whose muscle memory still surfaced in small ways—when Nick appeared in the doorway.
"Can't sleep?" I asked.
"Not tired." He leaned against the counter, arms crossed. Body language deliberately closed. "Question for you."
"Sure."
"The fifth room thing. The way it just happened to work out, both of you getting in when we only advertised for one. The email from the building manager that arrived at exactly the right moment." He paused. "That doesn't bother you?"
"Should it?"
"Things don't just work out like that. Not here. Not anywhere. There's always a catch, a reason, something you're not seeing yet."
I poured hot water over the tea bag, watching steam rise. "Sometimes luck finds the desperate."
"That's a deflection, not an answer."
"It's both." I turned to face him. "Look, I don't know why the timing worked out. I needed a place, the ad appeared, the room situation resolved itself. Maybe it's coincidence. Maybe I'm lucky. But I'm not hiding anything sinister. I just needed somewhere to live."
Nick studied me for a long moment. His bullshit detector was good—better than I'd given him credit for. He could tell something was off, even if he couldn't identify what.
"The Ferguson thing," he said finally. "That was weird."
"It was a random comment."
"It was specific. Too specific for someone who just met Winston."
"I told you—common cat name. Scottish origins. It just came out."
"Uh-huh."
He didn't believe me. Not entirely. But he also didn't have enough to push further, and something in my calm deflection seemed to satisfy his immediate suspicion.
"I'm watching you," he said. "Not in a creepy way. In a roommate way. Something seems off about you, and I haven't figured out what yet."
"Fair enough."
He grabbed a beer from the fridge and disappeared toward his room without another word.
I stood in the kitchen, tea cooling in my hands, and ran calculations I didn't like.
Day three. First major slip. Nick's suspicion activated, Jess's observation documented, and I was already on the defensive.
The Memory Palace offered the obvious analysis: I knew too much. Eventually that knowledge would leak. I needed strategies for explaining impossible insights, frameworks for deflecting questions that got too close to truth.
Or I needed to start being wrong sometimes. Deliberately imperfect. Let them see me fail at things I could easily succeed at, so the successes that slipped through didn't stand out so starkly.
Being competent was dangerous. Being obviously competent was deadly.
---
[Day 13 — 11:42 PM]
I passed Jess's room on my way to bed. The door was cracked, light spilling into the hallway. Through the gap, I could see her sitting cross-legged on her bed, writing in a small notebook.
Nothing suspicious about that. Jess was a journaler—the kind of person who processed life through written words. I'd known that from the show.
But as I watched, she paused. Tapped her pen against the page. Looked up, her gaze drifting toward my room.
Then she bent back to the notebook and wrote something with deliberate focus.
She was documenting. Not everything—probably not consciously even, just... noting things. Observations. Inconsistencies. The kind of careful attention that came naturally to someone who taught children and had learned to spot when something didn't add up.
I was on her list now. The Ferguson comment. The convenient housing situation. The way I knew things I shouldn't know.
First entry. There would be more.
I retreated to my room and closed the door, the loft settling into nighttime quiet around me. Through the thin walls, I could hear Winston snoring faintly, Schmidt's white noise machine, Nick's restless movement.
The people I'd watched for comfort were now the people I lived with. And one of them had started watching me back.
The question wasn't whether more slips would happen. The question was how many I could survive before the list grew too long to explain.
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