Only Chris could poke fun at women who owned five-hundred-dollar coin purses but had never been handed change in their adult lives, then in the same breath casually mention dining at an exclusive, Michelin-star restaurant that required a deposit upfront—and on a Thursday, no less. People with this much money were always a trip and a half to deal with.
“If the night isn’t perfect for her, I’ll be sleeping alone for the next few weeks,” Chris concluded.
“I’ve been regulated to the couch before,” I stated. “I mean, I definitely deserved it, but it sucked.”
Max slowly closed the register drawer with a quietclickand gave me a look.
“Thank you for understanding, Sebastian. What would I do without you?”
“You’d spend less money, Chris,” I reminded him before hanging up and hitting my forehead with the receiver.
“You never told me Calvin’s kicked you to the couch,” Max said.
“Not now.”
“What’d you do?” he asked excitedly.
“Fuck,” I murmured before dialing the long-ago memorized number of We Know Antiques Moving & Storage. “Fuckfuckfuck.” I put the phone back to my ear.
“I bet you had beer and brussels sprout farts.”
I furrowed my brow. “What?”
“Yeast and sulfur,” Max explained.
“I don’t have time to placate Cynthia so Chris can keep motorboating, or whatever it is straight couples do in bed,” I said as the line rang.
“What the actual fuck are you on about?” Max countered.
“I’ve got a reporter who’s borderline obsessed with me, three victims, no suspect, I only slept a few hours, Calvin even less, the spiritoscope has led absolutely nowhere, like a false start, and I told the cops I’d do a search for previously sold Tiffany flatware sets on the off chance one matches some murder weapons—and I might as well look for a needle in a haystack while I’m at it.”
“I see you’ve been busy,” Max stated.
Beth, still holding onto the trash bin, said from across the crowded floor, “Fuck the farts, I think he needs the beer!”
“We Know Antiques,” answered Fran Drescher’s younger sister.
“Pauline, it’s Sebastian.”
“Sebastian!” she exclaimed, nasally lilt and all. “You never call anymore. You aren’t doing business with someone else, are you?”
“And risk your seven brothers roughing me up? Never.”
She tittered. “You still haven’t called in a while.”
“I haven’t had too many big-ticket items moving within the boroughs this summer. Are you guys schlepping out to Jersey yet?”
“As if. What’d you need to schedule, honey?”
“A customer gave me their minor emergency and I need to get a delivery to Fifth Avenue today.”
“So you’re gonna give me your emergency’s emergency?”
“Er… yes.”
Pauline’s nailsclick-clacked on the keyboard, and then she said, “We gots no drivers today.”
“What if I said it was a major emergency?”
