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“What is this?” I ask hoarsely.
Vicky turns to me, adjusting her glasses in her tantalizing I’m-looking-at-you way.
“Provisions and accommodations shall be made for board members attending meetings,” she says.
Damn bylaws.
My pulse thunders, and it’s not just annoyance.
Kaleb clears his throat. “This is irregular.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Brett bites out. “Mimes aren’t accommodations.”
As if the mimes are the problem.
The mimes are beckoning Vicky and Smuckers over now. Vicky goes and hands Smuckers to the shorter of the two. Smuckers licks a bit of white paint off the one mime’s face in the process of being installed on what I see now is some sort of custom throne, like a high chair with a blue satin cushion. The back of it has some sort of circle picture of Smuckers wearing a Locke-blue bow tie, like a royal portrait.
I swallow.
Smuckers wags his tiny tail as the mimes hook him to the chair via a velvet ribbon, also Locke blue, salute him, and exit.
Kaleb grumbles from the other end. Brett comes to stand next to me. “The hell? Tell me that’s not a throne for the dog.”
“Okay,” I breathe. “How about an elevated, highly decorated dog bed?”
“Not funny.”
No, it’s not funny. It’s scrappy. It’s…I don’t know what. I don’t know how I feel about any of it. It’s been a long time since I didn’t know how to feel about something.
Vicky goes over to inspect.
“Seriously?” I say.
She turns to me.
I shove my hands in my pants pockets. “You want to explain this?”
“Isn’t it self-explanatory?” she says. “Smuckers needs a place to sit, too. I mean, does it seem fair to you that every board member here has their own seat except Smuckers? Who ever heard of an individual who sits on the board of a major corporation having to sit on another person’s lap?”
I go over and inspect the image of Smuckers’s face in the chair-back portrait. “A bit redundant,” I observe. “His portrait, when he’s right here.”
“Smuckers likes people to know who’s in charge. Especially since there was some confusion about it at the last meeting,” she adds.
My gaze drops to her lips. Dimly I’m aware of Kaleb suggesting we call this meeting to order. She’s wearing some sort of a necklace—circles the size of quarters between bright pink metal beads. Smuckers’s face is on some of the circles. Others have cats and foxes, and some have words, like Meow and mofo.
Of all the things she could’ve done with her time over the past week, she’s spent her time making custom jewelry to match the Smuckers throne. This is a move and a half, what she’s doing here.
So outrageous.
“Do you like it?” Her voice is husky. She lifts it a few inches off her chest for me to see better.
My knuckle brushes her throat as I take hold of one of the colorful disks, and I can’t focus for a moment, because the sense of her is overwhelming. My skin feels too tight for my body.
I turn a disk in my fingers. It’s cool and heavy and exquisitely made. On one side is the face of Smuckers. On the other it says Smuck U.
I keep hold of it. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what she is. My knuckles hover just above her chest, my fingers just under her chin.
“Pretty nice, huh?” she says.
