So screw the niceties.
I pulled the door shut, removed Dillon’s leash, and switched a few bank lamps on as I walked through the shop. I dropped my bag and winter attire onto the register counter, walked to the bathroom in the back, and called over my shoulder, “Excuse me for a second.”
I closed the door, flipped the toilet lid down, and sat. I took a deep breath before leaning over and putting my hands in my hair. I hadn’t actually considered what I was going to say to Marc. It’d been an instinctual thing—to protect Calvin. I had to be careful, especially if this was an honest attempt being made on Marc’s behalf to reunite the family. But I also couldn’t—wouldn’t—be a pushover.
My brain felt like a library card catalog, and I was in a mad rush to find theonetitle that would help me navigate this sensitive situation with relative success.
Filed under social sciences. Should I start with 302.2—Social interaction, communication? 305.3—Groups of people, by gender or sex? Hold up, 306.7 has a footnote—for problems and controversies concerning various sexual relations, see 363.4.
“This is why no one likes you,” I muttered while raising my head. “You’re in the bathroom making Dewey Decimal jokes to yourself.”
I removed my phone from my pocket and sent Calvin a text to let him know I’d arrived safely.
I felt a little queasy as I stood again, but it was nerves. I left the room and poked my head around the corner. Rossi was standing beside my closed office door, leaning against the wall. He texted on his phone with one hand and occasionally raised his head to watch Marc. Marc hadn’t moved very far from the front door, but he was looking around the showroom floor with obvious curiosity. I tried to imagine seeing this place for the first time through his eyes. Cavernous, jam-packed with oddities from a previous century, hectically decorated for the holidays, and run by a sarcastic oddball fucking his brother.
The thought, while self-deprecating in delivery, was certainly true.
But then, in that same second, I realized: I didn’t care.
I was exactly the guy he saw, and I wasn’t trying to be anything more.
I was a weird, cynical, borderline-asshole shop owner, and the only damn person whose opinion mattered besides my father’s was Calvin’s.
Marc was not Calvin.
And it was that awareness that put confidence into my step. Maybe Calvin would be upset. Upset that I weaseled my way into a conversation he should have been having, but I had nothing to gain and Calvin had everything to lose. Sure, if Marc was cruel, the words would hurt me. I was human. But I didn’t have a history with him for those words to tear me apart and make me bleed. They’d be superficial wounds.
Nothing I hadn’t heard before.
I squared my shoulders and made my way through the maze of displays. “Sorry about outside,” I said to Marc, stopping about two feet away from him. “Rossi is a cop. He’s been assigned to protect me.”
The tightness of Marc’s mouth softened a little. “Oh… ah… I see.”
I glanced at Rossi, who quickly looked at his phone again, and pretended he couldn’t hear us. “So you want to see Calvin.”
“Yes.”
“Why now?”
“What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “Is it the convenience of being in the city?”
“No. I live in Philadelphia. I travel to New York for business quite often.”
Wow. Wrong answer.
But Marc was still talking. “With the holidays approaching, it seemed like as good a time as any to at least reach out.”
“So for the last twelve months,” I began, “Calvin has been patently ignored by your entire family, with the exception of his ailing uncle, because your conscience hadn’t acquired enough guilt yet? Amazing what ’tis-the-season does for some folks.”
“It was not my intention—”
“I somehow doubt that.”
Marc was being surprisingly composed, all things considered. He put his hands into his coat pockets and stared at me. “When Calvin was in the hospital last year, he said he had met an antique dealer while working a case.”
“Uh-huh.”
