Chapter 3 #3
Ainsley raised an eyebrow. She had extremely demonstrative eyebrows and could skewer you with a single pointed look. She had been banned from the poker tables at Dotty’s for employing the eyebrow in a card-counting scheme (or so she said, at least).
Zoey sighed. ‘All right. I’m going to put the mushroom smoothie on the menu tomorrow, and if people are into it, I’ll place another order.’
‘Not via text or email, right?’ said Ainsley accusingly.
All right, so Zoey had a reputation for navigating her life via the digital medium. But it was so much better for conveying what you truly wanted to say without being cut off or stammering like a fool.
‘I’ve been on the receiving end of your walls of text. And trust me, they’re up there with the Wall of Knobs in terms of smacking you in the face with pretentiousness.’
Zoey held up her hands in a please stop hitting me gesture.
‘I’ll call.’ She indicated Ainsley’s paint-flecked face. ‘How’s the sign-painting world going?’
Ainsley drummed her hands on the table: she had an announcement. ‘Guess who’s doing the signage for the Rose City InkWell event at the Lloyd Center? You’re looking at her!’
‘Seriously? This calls for the good cookies.’ Zoey ran into the kitchen, ignoring the globs of spilled smoothie, which could wait. She returned with a tin of chocolate-dipped cookies with a chocolate filling – they were full chocolate overload, and all the better for it.
‘Paul Menendez called just before, asking if I had availability. It’s going to be massive. Billboards, booth signs, wayfinding, all the prototypes for their print material …’ Ainsley kept going, but whatever else she had to say was lost around a mouthful of cookie.
‘Joaquin’s going to have a booth for Inkstigators,’ she added. ‘You should book one, too. It’s half tattoos, half wellness, so you’ll fit right in.’
‘Maybe,’ said Zoey, noncommittally. Part of her worried that the more she committed to the smoothie shop, the more she was stuck there.
She hadn’t even meant to buy it, not really.
She just hadn’t been able to bear seeing Maeve’s life’s work end up in someone else’s hands.
Not after Maeve had been so kind to Zoey over the years, offering her a job that kept her going through the college summers and spending so many afternoons playing Scrabble with her out on The Smoothie Maven’s cramped back patio.
Not to mention that when Maeve had passed, Zoey had just split with Kit and had needed something to focus her wayward energy on.
‘This is our year, babe,’ Ainsley said, topping up her wine. ‘Oh God, this stuff is awful, even by my standards. I’m going to buy some grapes and sit them out in the sun – I bet the end result will be better than this. Wait, was that Romero?’
Mrow!
Romero had bolted from beneath the couch into Zoey’s bedroom, where he was making the most horrendous noise she’d ever heard (and Zoey had been to enough Wall of Knobs shows to have a good point of comparison). It was weird meowing interspersed with a truly visceral hairball hacking.
Ainsley at her heels, Zoey hurried into the bedroom, belly-flopping down on the tufted zigzag rug she’d found on sale at Lounge Lizard.
Romero’s green eyes blazed out at her, their pupils angry and reptilian.
Which was not particularly unusual, for Romero had always been of a rather grumpy disposition, even for a cat.
Mrow! he screeched from beneath the shade of Zoey’s kantha quilt. Then he hacked a bit.
‘Sounds like that time Kit lied about being able to drive a stick,’ muttered Ainsley. (It hadn’t been the first time Kit had lied about being able to do something.)
‘I think he overdid it on the smoothie grooming.’ Zoey scooted under the bed a bit to get a better look at the wary Romero, who was still making odd noises.
He seemed twitchy, but hopefully that was just the hairball that needed to come up.
‘Do you think I need to call the vet? Or Poison Control? I had to do it a bunch of times back in the desert. Gran had a chihuahua who was obsessed with eating oleander.’
Poor old Gran. She’d been a good one.
‘To be fair, I’d also eat oleander if I had to deal with 120-degree days,’ said Ainsley.
Zoey wiggled forward on her belly, trying to get a better look at Romero. Ugh, she needed to vacuum under here: there were dust bunnies and house-centipede carcasses.
Mrow. Romero’s eyes narrowed.
Then, before Zoey could touch him, he sprang out from under the bed, thundering into the living room with a caterwaul.
‘Shit, he’s gone out the window,’ said Ainsley, hurrying over to the open sash. ‘Romero! Here, kitty!’
Zoey joined her, waving to a guy in head-to-toe dayglo attire scooting down the street. ‘Hey! Did you just see a cat go past?’
The guy scoffed, adding a flick of purple hair for good measure. ‘Cats should be indoors-only, you shit cat parent,’ he called, before scooting off.
‘He’s not my cat!’ shouted Zoey. ‘He’s a communal neighbourhood cat!’
Ainsley hefted the wine bottle. ‘It’s not too late to turn this into a Molotov cocktail and throw it at the scooter guy.’
Zoey sighed. Unfortunately it was a high-fire-danger day, so there was going to be none of that.
There was another one for her list of pet peeves.