Chapter Two
TWO
Callahan
I inherited from my mentor, Graham, one of the easiest commutes in the entire city when he willed me the apartment above Virtu Antiques and Collectibles three years ago.
All I have to do is close the door, lock it, walk downstairs, and I’m in the shop.
This morning, though, I need to check on the goose, which is hopefully still in the back of my Chevy Suburban (also formerly Graham’s), so I leave through the rear fire escape instead.
After ensuring the bird is still there and fully hidden beneath the hideous quilt that Nicole was plenty eager to also unload on me, I decide to take a brisk walk before heading into work.
The fresh air and exertion will do me good.
Maybe it will even disperse some of the nervous energy that kept me awake half the night thinking about the way things used to be.
Before Graham died. Before Nicole left. Before I agreed to what I think might technically qualify as a criminal conspiracy.
Though I’m already running a bit late after my jaunt through Wyman Park, I pop into the coffee shop a few doors down from Virtu.
I’m going to need my business partner, Harold, in as good a mood as possible today.
Despite being a sixty-year-old man, Harold has always had the soul of a woman in her mid-twenties, so I figure a pumpkin muffin and oat milk vanilla latte will not go amiss.
Mindy’s working the register this morning. Of course she is. When it rains, et cetera, et cetera.
“Hi, um. Good morning,” I say. “Can I get a medium dark roast, a small oat milk vanilla latte, a pumpkin muffin, and a, uh…” What would Inés like? “A lemon poppyseed scone?”
“I don’t know, Callahan,” Mindy says. “Can you?”
I cringe internally at the sharp tone of her voice, but figure I’ll give it another try. “Um…may I get a medium—”
“Or are you just going to take a few sips of the latte before you decide you’re not actually interested in enjoying it and then throw it in the garbage?”
“The latte is for my colleague, so…”
Mindy sneers. “Fourteen fifty-eight.”
The woman behind me in line shoots me a dirty look as I move to the end of the counter to wait for my order, as if she’s decided based on vibes alone that Mindy’s hatred of me is fully justified. Which, of course, it is. But she doesn’t know that.
Mindy was my one and only foray into dating since becoming single, and it was…
well, let’s call it ill-advised. About six months ago, she wrote her phone number on my to-go cup and I thought, Yeah, okay, why not?
I knew through mutual acquaintances that Nicole was recently engaged, and it seemed like the proper time to try to get back out there myself.
If she could move on so quickly, surely I could as well.
The chemistry felt off from the start, but I convinced myself it was only because Mindy wasn’t Nicole.
It made sense that there would be an adjustment period.
A learning curve to being with someone new.
I thought things would start feeling more right if I just gave it a chance.
So I said yes when Mindy asked if I wanted to go back to her place after dinner, and I tried to tell myself I was into it when she kissed me.
That I was having a good time making out on her couch.
In actuality, I was just going through the motions while my brain jumped between comparisons to kissing my ex, whether or not I liked the abstract painting hanging on the wall above us, and an email I’d received that morning about a pair of mid-eighteenth-century Swedish giltwood girandoles.
At a certain point “fake it till you make it” didn’t seem like the proper or wisest course of action.
Mindy was in the middle of pulling down the zipper of my pants when I learned the lesson that, while honesty might be the best policy, when and how you deliver it is also quite important.
I haven’t gone out with anyone since.
It’s not that I’m still in love with Nicole.
I wish I was sometimes, because, in many ways, I think that would probably be easier to accept.
No, the problem is that, like some sort of inadvertent supervillain, Nicole flipped a switch when she left that seems to have frozen me in place.
My first car, a 1996 Pontiac Grand Am I purchased with the money I earned working at Virtu as a teenager, used to stall out at traffic lights sometimes.
That’s what it feels like has been happening to me over the last year and a half, in almost every aspect of my life.
Other cars are moving forward, swerving around me as they honk their horns, and I remain stationary.
I can’t join the flow of traffic no matter how many times I try to restart my engine.
Not that I’ve tried that hard. At least not lately.
Because the more time passes, the more I’ve been able to admit to myself that some of the stalling out is because I’m so desperate to switch into reverse.
I want to go back to the way things were, back when everything felt solid and reliable.
I want the comfort of a fifteen-year relationship with someone I care for and trust, and a thriving antique store filled with the joyful laughter and absent-minded whistling of the wonderful man who taught me everything I know.
Logically, I know things between me and Nicole are over and it’s for the best. And that Graham is gone and there’s no bringing him back. But what my brain knows and what I’m able to make myself feel are two different things.
And the one time I tried to shove my feelings aside and try to get over myself, I managed to skewer Mindy’s pride and make myself seem like the world’s biggest jerk.
“Uh…Cal?” a different barista shouts, sliding Harold’s latte onto the counter to join the rest of the items in my order.
I examine the label and dip my chin in thanks to them for calling out my real name instead of “Dickwad McFuckface,” which is what Mindy put down.
Yeah, after that horrible date, I accepted that maybe it’s better for me to stay off the road completely rather than be an obstacle to other people trying to go about their lives.
And I’ve been doing a fine job of it. Or, rather, I was until Nicole called and unloaded an illicit stuffed goose on me.
Because now it certainly feels like I’m about to start moving. Just maybe directly into a fire hydrant.
I balance the coffees and pastry bags in my arms as I attempt to open Virtu’s front door. Frustratingly, I find it locked.
Damn Harold and his stupid morning yoga class.
I grumble as I rearrange everything I’m holding so I can reach into my jacket pocket for my keys.
But even if Harold fell asleep during savasana again, that doesn’t account for Inés, who’s always in the shop at least an hour earlier than either of us to vacuum and dust. I try to suppress my annoyance; it isn’t as if the wealthy collectors to whom we sell most of our big-ticket items are lined up waiting outside the door.
In fact, I’ve always assumed our best customers keep the hours of nineteenth-century British nobility since I’ve never seen one awake before noon.
Once I manage to get inside, I set my haul from the coffee shop on the mahogany counter tucked beneath the staircase leading up to my apartment on the second floor.
Strangely, the place already looks clean and ready for business.
Maybe Inés took care of it before she left yesterday, knowing she would be running late this morning.
I raise my coffee cup to my lips, but my sip is interrupted by a sudden loud thump, followed by a groan.
Quarter past ten in the morning seems an unlikely time for someone to have broken in to rob the place, but I grab a two-hundred-fifty-year-old British flintlock brass-barrel blunderbuss from its display on the wall just to be safe and head toward the back office.
I fling the door open, wielding the pistol in front of me and hoping our robber doesn’t know enough about Revolutionary War–era weaponry to realize this particular piece can’t actually fire.
“Oh, Jesus, god, gross!” I shout as my eyes take in the image of my business partner’s bare ass undulating with each thrust into our operations manager-slash-bookkeeper bent over the desk beneath him.
“Close the door, Callahan, we’re busy,” Harold grunts without missing a stroke.
I certainly do not need to be asked twice. I slam it shut, then hurry back out to the front of the shop.
“Fuuuuuuuuuck.” I lay the blunderbuss atop the counter and scrub at my eyes with my palms, trying to erase the scene now burned into my retinas.
I’ve always figured there was something going on between Harold and Inés—their bickering is clearly some sort of bizarre foreplay—but in our office?
On the desk we all share? Where I sometimes eat my lunch?
“I’m going to be sick,” I decide, my voice coming out surprisingly matter-of-fact. “I am going to throw up everything I have eaten in the last decade.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Harold chides, retucking his striped dress shirt into his slacks as he ambles into the showroom. “We’re all adults.”
“Why.” I stare up at the ceiling, willing it to cave in on us all and save me from living with this knowledge. “You have a perfectly good, completely private house three blocks away, and yet—”
He shrugs. “We got a bit carried away talking about our impending nuptials.”
I blink rapidly as I attempt to process the words. “Your…what?”
“Nuptials. Elopement. Marriage.” Harold stretches the words out as if I’m a small child possibly hearing them for the first time.
“I know what it means. But…you and Inés? Getting married?”
“It’s so hard to believe?”
“Not hard to believe necessarily, just…I don’t know, a little out of nowhere?”
“Ah. I can see how it might seem so to you, since we’ve been the picture of discretion—”
“Discretion?” I bark out an incredulous laugh that Harold ignores. “Is that what I just witnessed? You being discreet?”