Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
“Right. So,” Max said, and handed Zach another beer, “am I gonna get sued?”
Before answering, Zach scanned the label like it wasn’t another of the exact same IPA he’d just finished. He nodded slightly to himself before taking a sip. “About what?” he finally asked, leaning back into Max’s couch.
“For, I don’t know, besmirching the character of the Hotel Bellwether,” Max said. He paced the length of his living room, laptop and empty takeout containers on the coffee table between him and his best friend.
“I’m about ninety-five percent sure that’s not a legal term,” Zach offered.
“Libel, then.”
“Did you write anything down?”
“What?”
“Libel is written,” Zach explained, sounding very patient and not like he was ignoring the point he knew Max was trying to make just to fuck with him.
Max turned, stared at him, and wondered if you could microwave a person’s brain inside their skull with the power of your mind. You couldn’t. Zach sipped his beer and stared back, unaffected.
“You probably mean slander,” he finally said. “Slander is when you maliciously besmirch in speech.”
“Okay, then,” Max said, speaking slowly. “Are they going to sue me for slander?”
Zach sighed, propped one ankle on the opposite knee, and contemplated the ceiling because he’d been a difficult smartass since the moment Max had met him their sophomore year of college. Max considered, not for the first time, that he might have terrible taste in best friends.
“You know I’m not that kind of lawyer, right?” Zach finally said, instead of answering the question.
“I’m starting to wonder if you’re any kind of lawyer.”
“I work in estate planning! Go ahead, ask me about probate.”
Max sighed and crossed his arms in a way that, he thought, communicated You dickhead, I don’t have any questions about probate.
“They probably won’t,” Zach said, after a long pause, when he’d gotten bored of hassling Max.
“Slander is pretty hard to prove, even when it’s way worse than this, and I don’t think they have much of a case.
What are they going to say, that you drew a pentagram in their attic and then showed it to a quarter of a million people in order to hurt their business? People will love that shit.”
“They’re not gonna love the rats.”
“True,” Zach conceded. “But there aren’t any rats on the screen. I don’t think either of you even say ‘rat.’”
They didn’t, because Max had edited that out.
“It’s pretty clear what we’re getting at, though,” he said.
“Probably less clear than you think. Plenty of people won’t put two and two together,” Zach said. “The hotel will, for sure, and you’re probably not gonna get invited back. But other than that, I wouldn’t worry.”
“I just don’t want to get sued,” Max said, still pacing back and forth. His own beer bottle was three-quarters empty. “I can’t afford to get sued, and also if I got sued for rat-related slander, my job might start caring about my side hustle.”
Currently, the City of Sacramento’s Environmental Planning office couldn’t be bothered about his extracurriculars.
Max didn’t want to find out if they’d mind him getting sued for slander.
Probably not, but still: It paid the bills, let him take his vacation time whenever he wanted, and he liked it well enough.
“Look. In my professional opinion,” said Zach, who was not that kind of lawyer, “I think you’ll probably get a pissed-off phone call at first. Then they’ll get interest and money from the sort of people who want to experience a haunted air-conditioning unit, and it’ll be over.”
Max drained the rest of his beer, thought about this for a second, and then nodded.
“It’s not obvious that the peanut butter footprints are even from rats,” Zach said, but he leaned forward, frowned at the laptop, and hit a button. “Total deniability, probably.”
Max heard his own voice coming from the computer just as his phone buzzed in his pocket, which was a relief. If he watched this video again, he was going to lose his mind.
Sloane
I’ve been asked twice today and once yesterday if we took a ceramics class
Max
what
Sloane
and got felt up by a ghost? Like in the movie?
Max
What movie?
Sloane
It is literally called Ghost. There’s a pottery class, and the ghost erotically hugs a woman from behind while she makes a bowl, I think? I haven’t actually seen it
Max
This is a real movie?
Sloane
Yes! It’s about sexy pottery ghosts!
“That her?” Zach asked, and Max jerked his head up.
Zach was watching him, looking mildly entertained, and Max suddenly wondered how long he’d been watching.
Also, what did he mean her? Sloane was a her, yes, but not in that tone, and not the way that Zach was using it.
They’d hooked up and now they were back in their respective homes and that was all, and absolutely none of that was Zach’s business.
“Her who?” Max asked after the silence had gone on far too long.
“Wow, okay,” said Zach. “So, yeah?”
“It’s just Sloane, asking about the video,” Max said, which wasn’t even a lie. It wasn’t.
“You do know you’re the world’s worst liar.”
“I’m not the worst.”
“I bet you’re close.” There were, what, eight billion people in the world? There was probably someone who sneezed or fainted whenever they lied. Max couldn’t be the worst. “So you did hook up with her.”
Max slid his phone back into his pocket and walked the five feet into the kitchen so he could answer to the fridge instead of Zach’s face. Maybe that would help.
“Just because we went ghost hunting together doesn’t mean we hooked up,” he said, rifling through the fridge and settling on a can of seltzer. “Also, how is that your business?”
Shit, he was being shady as fuck. It wasn’t like Max bragged about the people he slept with, but he also never cared who knew.
He opened the can and took the first few sips with the fridge door still open, awash in yellow light and cool air.
Zach didn’t say anything until he re-traversed those five feet of floor space back into the living room.
“Sorry,” Zach said, and looked…contrite? Fuck, was he dying? “I was just—sorry. Lauren and Delia were speculating after your Insta stories.”
Max had posted a couple of shots of the hotel and then one of him and Sloane out by the pool. Just some regular, bland vacation shots.
“And then the video is, like—” Zach said, and then waved his hand at the laptop, which was apparently the end of the sentence.
“Like what?” Max sat, then turned the screen toward himself, waking it up.
“Nothing,” Zach said, and Max shot him a look because that was clearly untrue. “Okay, nothing for anyone who hasn’t known you for, like, ten years,” he amended. “You’re flirting a lot—it’s cute. Stop giving me the fucking death stare. Why are you being so weird?”
“I’m not being weird,” Max said, weirdly.
Zach made a creaking sound of disbelief.
“No, it’s just—I don’t want Sloane to get blindsided or anything, you know?
She signed up to go ghost hunting, not have everyone know her business.
If there’s something personal like that in here, then I should…
” He trailed off, clicking through the video again.
“Dude, I swear, there isn’t,” Zach said, and stood. “Like, maybe your friends will notice, but everyone else is gonna be distracted by the laundry-symbol pentagram. Your secret is safe.”
“It’s not a secret,” Max called after him.
“Yeah?” Zach said, his beer bottle clinking into the recycling. “Hey, does she know you like her?”
“Shut up,” Max said, and Zach fucking cackled.
Max
My lawyer says it’s obvious we hooked up
Sloane
What? Obvious how?
Fuck, did we leave condoms in a shot or something?
oh god can you see the vibrators in my suitcase
Max
WAIT tell me more about the vibrators in your suitcase
vibratorS? With an S? For a two-night trip?
Sloane
maxwell golding I swear to god
PLEASE edit out the condoms and/or underwear hanging from a ceiling fan
Max
Our rooms didn’t HAVE ceiling fans, no condoms in a shot
My lawyer is also my friend Zach, who says it’s “just so fucking obvious,” that’s all
Sloane
Oh, lol
I’m impressed at your lawyer’s fuckdar
Max
I’ll tell him, he’ll be thrilled
Sloane
BTW today I told one of my coworkers about my ghost hunting vacation and wound up hearing for thirty minutes about the ghost car that he SWEARS is in his garage. I blame you for this
Max
I’m driving back IMMEDIATELY to do a video on the ghost car, tell me everything
Sloane
Sometimes he hears a mysterious vrooming sound at night
Max
Spooky