But damn. He probably doesn’t know it, but he couldn’t have told me a better story if he’d claimed he was helping seniors and baby ducklings cross North State Street during rush hour.
I toss my pen on my desk and start rattling through drawers, looking for my gum. I don’t smoke, but by God, this is a vice just as bad, because I can’t kick it. I go through four packs a week, or at least I did. In the last two days, I’ve managed to burn through two packs. That’s a hundred and fifty sticks—each. The outlook for the rest of the week ain’t looking good. Actually, as I come up empty, right now is not looking good either. Gom gosh almighty, I will not make it through this shift if I don’t have something to crush with my jaws in the next thirty seconds.
“All right,” I tell Jason as I drag file folders forward in case any loose sticks dropped out of a pack and are swimming around the back of the drawer. And thank all fuck—some are. I’m ripping off a wrapper, shoving the stick in my mouth, and balling up the crinkly blue foil for a wastebasket dunk when I say, “Here’s what we’ll do. You get into work when you can. You’re late, you’re late. I’ll pay you for whatever time you put in, cover for you when a room needs the hands, and you won’t get cut for showing up after your shift starts.” I hook him with my gaze. “But don’t fuck me over. Don’t mistake my generosity for being a pushover. I ever find out you bullshit me, I’ll ream your ass, then fire you so hard your shoes will be smoking.”
Jason’s blinking fast and looking absolutely earnest when he vows, “I won’t. Sir, I wouldn’t do that.”
I dip my chin and glance down at the desktop to give him a moment to gather himself. “When you’re here, if you’re not busy and you see something that could use doing—like the trash nobody takes out—”
Jason winces, because this is his and Sal’s job. I bust their balls from time to time, but I’m not a prick like I apparently need to be in order to motivate them, so seven times out of ten, I just take out the trash myself because it takes just as much time to call them on the carpet as it does for me to take care of it.
“—then pick it up and do it. I’ll consider it square. Good deal?”
Jason’s voice cracks. “Good deal. Th-thanks.”
I grab my phone. Not because I intended to make a call, but because the kid looks like he’s about to cry, and everyone has their pride. I want to help him, not mortify him. “Get out of here. And if you see Stacy hasn’t left for her lunch break yet, tell her to pick me up some gum. Don’t care what kind as long as I can chew it.”
He must see Stacy, because thirty minutes later, she brings me the brand she knows I like. “You’re such a good kid,” I tell her.
“Remember that the next time I screw up a purchase order,” she teases.
***
The next morning, when Inara and I walk up to the door together, I find a manilla envelope taped to the glass.
“What is that?” Inara asks.
“Don’t know.” An envelope taped to our door where anybody could peel it up and walk off with it? Or rather, an envelope anybody could fill and tape to our door for any shady reason. This isn’t like a delivery FedEx is leaving without a signature. This is an unmarked package left when no one was around, meaning it was done last night after we left or sometime this morning. You could say it’s a weird occurrence. Immediately, I’m on guard.
“Hang on,” I tell Inara. I hand her my keys. “Go sit in the car.”
Inara looks at me then at the envelope. “Are you serious, Matthew?” She frowns. “It’s only a tiny package.”
I move to take her elbow, but before I can do that to steer her back to the car myself, she sighs and sashays where I asked her to go in the first place, her tail twitching in a way that I now know means she’s irritated, but only slightly.
I turn back to the weird package. I peel up the tape, freeing it from the door. I open it with care, trying to touch it as little as possible in case there’s something in here that’s going to require police involvement and print-taking…
But it’s just gum.
Inside of the envelope there are packs and packs of my favorite gum.
I’ve bought a lot of the shit over the years, so I know there must be thirty buck’s worth here.
In amongst the plastic-wrapped cardboard sleeves of chewable goodness is a simple note written on lined notebook paper. In Jason’s messy high schooler scrawl, it reads, Thank You.
I collect a slightly huffy Inara, unruffle her feathers by thanking her for letting me feel safer by keeping herself waiting in the car, shove a stick of gum in her mouth which delights her, and when Jason shows up at the back entrance for his shift—on time today—I don’t call him into the office again. I don’t say a thing.
When I get to my desk, I open up the software that cuts employee paychecks, and I bump Jason’s up, giving him a thirty-cent raise.
CHAPTER 19
Fridays aren’t usually this quiet, but our last customers were out the door almost an hour ago, and we’ve had zip for walk-ins and only like three bookings since. For us, that’s flat-line dead. Thankfully, it’s almost closing time. We shut down officially in T-minus 30 minutes.
“Maaaatt?” Stacy calls. Her voice is cajoling, and I know what she wants.
I check my watch and grunt, “Your boy-man out front?”
Stacy sighs, instantly all bad-tempered. “My boyfriend is waiting for me, yes.”
I fondly recall the day I learned his name. When forced to address him, I call him Norman, Ogden, Brandon, Adam, Lucius, Leonard, Silas—take your pick, really.
And the first time Stacy heard me roll call in reference to him, she’d growled.
I’d given her a look of perfectly patent confusion. “Tristan?”
“Christian!” she’d hissed.
“Whatever.” I liked mine better. N.O.B.A.L.L.S.
She peeks around the doorway now, making a face. “Do you have to be so mean to him?”
“Yes. I’m helping him build character.” I make a show of checking my watch, but I’ve already made the call. I give her a smile. “Get out of here, sis. Enjoy your night.”
I turn my attention to my computer.
Stacy squeals, “Thank you! You’re the best boss ever, and I totally consider this a good b-day gift, you don’t have to get me anything else now. Have a good ni—”
I jerk my head up. “It’s your birthday?”
Stacy’s eyes go wide.
“You turned… eighteen?”
My little Mediterranean-blooded sidekick has gone still as a statue, not saying a peep.
I’m up and out of my desk. I storm out of my office.
“Ahhh,” Stacy squeaks in dismay, messily throwing her purse strap over her shoulder, or trying to, as she rushes for the door, for freedom from the scene I’m heading out of the front to cause.
She hits the door first despite the fact that she’s wearing platform wedges, the clack! clack! clack! they make as she races me for the door makes her shoes sound terrified.
I glare down at the backs of her feet. Scarlet red siren’s heels adorn her, the blood red color starting just behind her toes and snaking high on her ankles in a crisscross pattern. How did I not notice that she was wearing these? “You change your shoes before you asked me to leave?”