Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Amara woke up in one of her favorite places: Gray’s office.
His home office, to be exact. After dinner they’d come to his quadruplex, an old Victorian the owner had split into four apartments; the top floor was Gray’s. Except the apartment directly below was nearly always empty, so most of the time Gray essentially had the run of half a mansion.
It didn’t hurt that Amara had figured out where the owner’s late wife had spitefully hidden their combined assets before succumbing to renal cancer.
“No prenup,” the owner said ruefully. “That was my mistake. That and overlooking her documented history of fraud. She was gonna take it all and leave me with my dick in my hand, but she got sick . . . so when d’you want your friend to be able to move in? ”
The sofa bed in Gray’s office was, shockingly, comfortable, thanks to the two feather mattresses plopped on top and no fewer than three comforters. She sat up and yawned, blinking at Gray’s back.
“Morning,” he said without turning around, already at his desk though it was only . . . shit! Ten thirty! She heard the click as he stopped the recorder with his foot, typed something, then hit the play button again. “Gotta finish this transcript by noon. Eat something.”
She did, first stopping by the bathroom to wash up and brush her teeth; about a third of the items in the medicine cabinet and the cupboard beneath were hers.
The owner, Mr. Lowe, had come up not long ago to fix the leaky faucet, and observed that Gray and Amara were practically roommates.
“You can have the lower unit if you want. I’ll give ya a deal. ”
“You’re wasting your breath, Lowe. Amara’s infatuated with her shithole studio.”
“Infatuated’s a strong word,” she’d muttered.
Mr. Lowe was correct; they were practically roommates. It was the rare month when one of them didn’t crash at the other’s apartment for a night or two. And sure, she’d love to share a mansion with Gray. But that was the problem: love.
Living with him . . . too much. For so many reasons.
She’d keep her shithole, thanks; the gross carpet, cracked sink, lack of counter/closet space, fourth-hand furniture, and view of the 35E overpass suited her well.
Just like her used Ford Fusion with stained seats (on rainy days, she could smell the banana from a long-ago spilled smoothie) and a cracked windshield suited her.
The kitchen boasted the usual breakfast suspects: a plethora of Pop-Tarts, half a loaf of artisan bread, not-quite-expired coconut yogurt, two cases of LaCroix in passionfruit (passable) and apricot (vomit-inducing), half a dozen eggs.
She scored a strawberry Pop-Tart, found her purse, grabbed her keys. “Job interview, gotta run!”
He heard her; she’d caught him between stopping and starting the depo recording. “Why don’t you take a break from the temp jobs? It’s not like your trust fund’s gonna run out anytime soon.”
“I like to keep busy.”
He chuckled, and she heard the click as he rewound some tape. “You wanna grab a movie this weekend?”
“Sounds good.” But then, so did everything with him. She would have had the same response to “You want to help me organize my graphic novels by year of publication?”
* * *
Amara switched her phone back to Bluetooth and was startled to see she had 429 voicemails.
As she’d been studiously ignoring calls from Minot, she was more than a little surprised at the total.
So low. The last two times her folks tried to lure her home for a family reunion and a fictitious garage sale (“If you want your things, best come home”), she had eight hundred voicemails in seven hours. And that was just on day one.
She shook her head and glared at her phone. C’mon, guys. You gotta want it! Me. Whatever. Since she abhorred a vacuum as much as nature did, she shut off her phone. It would be fine. It wasn’t like she needed directions. How hard would it be to find a fifty-acre park?
Fifty-two minutes later, she was apologizing for being late because she had, in fact, needed directions. Parks are hard to find!
“No biggie,” her next boss said. “There’s all kindsa stuff going on right now, I didn’t even notice you were late. Lots to do, y’know?”
“I gathered from the posting.” Help help HELP WANTED ASAP, must be able to read and write and other stuff as needed!!! She’d never seen such a shrill demand for help, and she’d been reading online job postings every week for over a decade.
“So watcha see is watcha get,” the boss du jour continued with a vague gesture that encompassed the Angry Beaver RV Park.
It likely would have looked a bit depressing even in high summer, which this was not.
Frush (parking lot slush hardened overnight in the shape of tire treads, which made for treacherous walking) was everywhere, the tree branches were bowed down with ice that would sullenly drip only to refreeze that night, and overhead the sky was a blinding blue.
There were about a dozen RVs that Amara could see, as well as an empty playground off to the left.
The miniature red barn to the right contained the manager’s office and a small grocery store.
A six-foot-high stack of wood ran the length of the barn, all neatly cut and shielded with a snow-covered tarp.
“Off-season right now, o’course. Chance t’get a handle on the job before we get real busy. ”
“Sounds fine.”
Her next boss, a petite woman with short, graying blond hair who would be dead in thirty-four months, was a recent widow who had scammed her stepchildren out of their inheritance.
“A lot of the job is basically bein’ a landlord .
. . if they’re here long-term, you’ll have to run their card every thirty days, and if it don’t go through, you gotta knock on their door.
You’re also gonna knock on their door if they break any of the rules.
And they’re gonna, because these people are—”
“Hi, Mrs. Bennett!” A chubby brunette in her thirties popped out of the nearest RV. “Wanna come over for lunch? I made too much hot dish again.”
“No thanks, Miz Dooley, already had lunch.” To Amara: “Jackasses. What’s with the Mrs. Bennett shit? I been divorced for a decade. Dooley knows that.”
Amara had been unaware that RV parks were hotbeds of jackassery, but it explained why her new boss was lying about eating lunch at nine forty-five a.m. She’d stolen the Angry Beaver from her husband’s children, though perhaps that was a blessing.
“And see? See?” The former Mrs. Bennett pointed to overflowing garbage bins, beside which were a dozen or so pizza boxes, neatly stacked. “Not even in the cans!”
“Maybe because the cans are full?”
“Yeah, that reminds me, you’ll also be in charge of accounts payable. First check you cut you gotta send to Tennis Sanitation.”
“Can the second check go to the porta-potty people? I can’t see them, but I can smell them.”
“West side, behind the office,” was the absent reply. “That reminds me, keep an eye on the toilet paper situation.”
“The jackasses get testy when they can’t wipe their bottoms? Or is it a one-ply vs. two-ply situation?”
“Like you never seen and— Jesus!” Mrs. Bennett flinched back so hard, Amara had to sidestep. “More of ’em? Shouldn’t they be hibernating or whatever?”
Amara felt a chill, mostly because it was thirty-nine degrees outside but also because a dozen white-tailed deer had come out of the tree line beside the park.
“Never seen so many this close to the highway.” Her future boss gave the ruminants a long stare, which they all returned, then turned back to Amara. “Anyways. When can you start?”
Amara blinked. “That’s the interview? You complained about your tenants and want me to write checks and now I’m hired?”
“Well, I don’t wanna do any of those things.”
Amara smiled. “It’s refreshing to hear that.”
“I read your résumé, you seem decent in person, let’s get on with it. Besides, you can—what the hell is that?”
Amara sighed. Bennett was gaping at a sizable raptor that hailed from Bahrain. “It’s a Eurasian eagle-owl.” Over two feet tall, with the characteristic black ear tufts, tawny feathers, and orange eyes of the winged predator. “Mostly found in Eurasia.”
“But this isn’t Eurasia.”
“Correct, ma’am. This is not Eurasia.”
“Not a ma’am, call me Bette. Welp, if that’s not the weirdest thing I seen today—”
“Wait.”
“What?”
“Never mind. When should I start?” Please say immediately.
“How ’bout right now?”
“Great, fine, that will . . .” Amara trailed off and sighed, then added, “Before you ask, the ones that just landed are vultures.”
Bette gaped. “Those things are vultures? I thought they were pretty big . . . well, I dunno what I thought. What the hell, is there a circus in town?”
Amara chuckled, which went a little way toward easing her dread. “You think circuses routinely travel with vultures and white-tailed deer?”
“Huh.” Bette put her hands on her hips and squinted up at her. Amara was used to it. She’d been fetching things from high shelves for people since she was thirteen. “Are you gonna have a smart mouth on you the whole time you’re here?”
“Guaranteed.”
“Oh.” The new boss shrugged. “Hokay. Long as you do your job, I s’pose.” Before she could elaborate, the calls of a dozen whippoorwills sliced the winter air. “Now what’s this shit?”
Her dread, which had started as a small fiery ball in her belly, was growing.
And moving up. If more messages to call home showed up, Amara was sure the dread would move to her throat.
She had an urge to call Gray, and squashed it.
He couldn’t help her. She couldn’t help her. “It’s fine. They’re psychopomps.”
“Psycho-whats?”
“I shut my cell phone off and didn’t return any voicemails, so. Here they are.” Before she could elaborate or prevaricate, a sports car rumbled into the far parking lot, then screeched to a slippery stop several yards away.
Ah. There’s the dread in my throat. If I tried to talk, I’d probably choke on it.
“Maybe call the City of Savage about getting a plow down here, too,” Bette added. “Now what’s this?”
“It’s a Porsche 911.”
“That thing’s a Porsche?”
That thing was a rear-engined sports car with a flat six and torsion-bar suspension; fast and dangerous and as famous for winning races as for getting people killed. In other words, the polar opposite of an RV. So what was it doing here?
The driver’s side door popped open and there he was, impossibly tall, impossibly immaculate, impossibly asinine and now (impossible!) strolling toward them. She could see his sharp, sharp teeth from where she was standing. He wasn’t smiling.
He’d never come to Minnesota before. Never. It was one of many reasons to love the land of 11,842 lakes.
“That thing would be impractical for anyone else, but not this guy,” Amara mused aloud. “It’s only a two-door, because it’s not like he’s known for carpooling. And it’s in the top ten of deadliest cars to drive, because he’s not subtle, either.”
“Who’s that now?” the new boss asked, sounding not a little dazzled, which was annoying. “Ummm. Nice suit, too.”
“Oh, sorry, I should have mentioned. That’s a death god. He’s here to nag me into going to North Dakota.” Amara reached out and patted the woman’s arm. “Don’t worry. I’ll get rid of him and I won’t be asking for any time off. Now where’s that checkbook?”