Beth held up the plate in her hands. “So… how’re you boys on this fine May morning?”
“Why are you so chipper?” Max asked. “You’re talking like a fairy godmother.”
Beth snorted. “I am not. You’ve just spent too much time around your boss, whose good moods resemble most people’s bad moods.”
“They do not,” I grumbled.
“Be nice,” she responded. “I’ve got cookies.”
“Were you going to share?” I asked. “Or were you just taking them for a walk?”
“I don’t know why the hell I put up with you sometimes, Sebby.” Beth handed me the plate. “I come bearing gifts and you give me sass.”
“It’s my default setting,” I replied. I picked up a cookie and took a bite.
“Well, you’d better watch it,” Beth continued, “or that’s the last cookie I share with you.”
I held the plate out of reach. “No take backs,” I said around a full mouth.
Beth was always complaining that customers were stealing her pens. I noted she had three or four stuffed into her bun that morning but decided to let her find those on her own. She was wearing a feline-inspired top, although subtle today—just a cat nose and whiskers—but she also wore leggings with creatures on them that looked half-taco, half-cat, so… a typical wardrobe day for Beth.
“Are you dating a mechanic?” I asked, pointing at her clunky boots.
Beth looked down briefly. “My cat barfed in my Birkenstocks this morning.”
“Charming,” I answered.
Beth put her hands on her hips and walked toward the Kinetoscope. “What have you got here?”
“This is a whatchamacallit,” Max said, pointing at the cabinet.
“A what?” Beth asked.
“Kinetoscope,” I said around the final bite of cookie.
“What does it do?”
“It’s a one-person movie viewer,” Max answered, parroting my explanations back to Beth. “It even came with a 120-year-old film.”
“You don’t say?”
“My money is on porn or cats,” he continued.
“I like those odds,” she agreed.
I set the plate on a nearby table and wiped crumbs from the front of my sweater-vest.
“Sebby.”
I looked up. “Seb, Beth.Seb.”
She ignored me. “You look so handsome in green.”
“I thought this was blue.”
She and Max shook their heads.
“Christ,” I muttered to myself, looking back down.
