Chapter Three
THREE
Annie
“Good morning, Baltimore!” I sing to myself as I step out into the deliciously crisp autumn morning.
Then, as I lock the front door behind me, “Good morning, Baltimore!” Because that’s actually all I remember from that song since the only time I’ve seen Hairspray was in theaters when I was fourteen.
Not that it’s stopped that single line from getting stuck in my head on repeat all morning.
I arrived in town late last night, just in time for Uncle Harold to hand over the keys to his yellow brick rowhome and give me a few instructions concerning which plants to water and when before he and his bride-to-be (a petite woman with waist-length, silver hair and light brown skin) hurried out the door to catch their flight to Milan.
Then I spent an hour or so wandering around the house, admiring Uncle Harold’s furnishings and practicing how I would sell them to someone.
“This stair-step design here at the top makes this secretary desk a great example of the Arts and Crafts movement,” I said to a monstera that I’m supposed to water once, about halfway through my monthlong stay.
The monstera wasn’t particularly interested, though.
Hopefully I’ll do better with actual people.
I’ve been selling antiques and things made from them for years now, but all online.
It’s different, I’m sure, than having someone come in to browse and answering their questions or directing them to the proper piece.
That’s why I jumped at the chance to help out at Virtu while my uncle is away; I’ve been dreaming of opening a real-life storefront of my own in Asbury Park where I live for a while.
I even have everything in place to make it happen: the savings, the knowledge, the business plan.
Everything except any actual experience running a physical shop and dealing with customers face-to-face.
What is the day-to-day of it all? Is it everything I’ve been dreaming of, or am I romanticizing it? We are about to find out!
My phone vibrates in my purse. I pull it out to see my sister’s contact photo (one she hates of her around age six with her face all contorted by Scotch tape) on my screen.
I accept the call and say, “Yellllllow?”
“Did you make it to Harold’s?”
“Uncle Harold’s, Bridge. Just because we’re adults doesn’t mean we stop respecting our elders,” I say because I know it will annoy her.
“Ugh, you sound like Mom,” she responds, just as I predicted. “Uncle Harold’s, then. You made it?”
“Yep. On my way to the antique store now.”
“Isn’t it weird that Har—Uncle Harold decided to up and leave the country for a month with almost no warning? Are we sure he’s not actually, like, on the lam?”
“Nah, he’s just in love. It’s called being a romantic.”
“Any chance he’s gotten her in trouble?” Bridget asks. “You know, had to marry her?”
“ ‘Gotten her in trouble’?” I echo. “Now you sound like Mom.”
“Well?”
“She’s, like, sixty-something, Bridge! If yours is considered an old lady pregnancy at thirty-five—”
“It’s called a geriatric pregnancy,” she corrects. “And my OB says it’s just an insurance coverage thing and that I’m actually a totally normal age for a first-time mom. But maybe you’re right.”
“About you being elderly?”
“About Harold,” she says. “Maybe it is love. Though I haven’t ruled out it being a cover for international art crime.”
I roll my eyes as I reach the bottom of the stairs. Which way is 36th Street…? “Hold on,” I say, “I need to look at a map to know where I’m going.”
“You are so bad with directions, I don’t know how you—” I hear her complaining as I pull the phone away from my ear and type in the store’s address. Okay, left, two blocks up to the main drag, and then left again for a block. I can probably manage that.
“It’s hard to pay attention to where I need to turn and in which direction when my brain is just looping the same line of a song over and over again,” I say, moving the phone back to my ear.
“ ‘Good Morning, Baltimore’?” she guesses.
“I hate that you know me so well,” I say. “I wish we were estranged.”
“That would be nice.” She sighs dreamily, as if imagining it. Then: “So this will be your first time meeting that Callahan guy, right? What are you wearing? Something slutty?”
“Fishnet bodysuit,” I say. “With two holes cut out in the front for my tits.”
“And two holes cut out in the back for your butt cheeks.”
We both laugh. “Yeah, exactly,” I say. “Gotta make a good impression on my future husband.”
“Seriously, though,” Bridget says. “What are you wearing for your first day of work?”
I look down to make sure I’m remembering my outfit, as if I didn’t meticulously plan it out before I packed it and again last night when I laid it out. “Teal blue twill swing dress. Yellow suede heels.”
“All thrifted, I assume,” she says with a note of judgment.
My older sister’s vibe has always been full-on preppy, increasingly so since she married a tennis pro.
I think she’s still resentful that I used to steal her little pleated miniskirts as a teen and she never liked any of my stuff enough to swipe in return.
“Don’t know why it’s such a problem that my clothes have a bit of character and preferably cost less than twenty dollars a piece.”
“They also sometimes smell like cat piss.”
“That was one beret, twelve years ago. And I wound up throwing it out,” I say.
Then add, “Eventually.” I come to a stop beneath a black awning with white lettering: Virtu Antiques he reminded me a little of Santa, and he gave me a lollipop that Uncle Harold then warned me not to eat inside their store under penalty of tongue removal.
Then Callahan appeared on the screen, and I thought, Wow, who is this guy?
My eyes drifted down to his name and I was surprised to see “Virtu Antiques and Collectibles—Baltimore, MD” beneath it.
That’s when I remembered that Graham passed away three years ago and left his half of the business to his and Harold’s young protégé.
“He’s also not old. I think he’s in his early thirties. ”
“Wait, seriously? You? Attracted to someone born after the Ford administration?”
“Hey, Russell was born in ’78. I’m pretty sure that’s Carter. So rare, but not unheard of,” I tell Bridget. “I have to go inside now. What did you want, anyway?”
“To make sure you were alive,” she says.
“Oh, right. Yeah, I am. Talk later.”
“Maybe,” she says before I hang up on her.
I scan my reflection in the window, planning to adjust my hair and check my lipstick.
Instead, I’m struck by the entirety of myself staring back at me, the wholeness.
I spent so much of my life wearing a mask I knew was more likable, desirable.
And now it’s just me, as I am. As I always was, probably, underneath the disguise.
“You are enough,” I tell myself, and am pleased to realize I almost completely believe it.
Feeling properly gassed up, I reach for the front door’s handle.
Bells jingle as it creaks open, making me feel like I’m about to sit through a middle school holiday concert, and I’m greeted immediately by the warm, slightly musty scent of old things mixed with citrus wood polish.
It’s exactly how I remember it smelling when I visited twenty-something years ago, and my lips part in wonder as I glance around at all of the furniture, ceramics, art, books, and miscellany tucked into the modest space.
“Good morning.”
“Baltimore,” I whisper-sing to myself as my distracted gaze slowly drifts from an art deco pendant light suspended from the ceiling to the source of the greeting.
Oh.
It’s as if my brain flickers off and back on again, unable to register the reality of someone I’ve only seen on television (and also on my phone screen as I innocuously stalked the business’s Instagram account to catch glimpses of him) standing in front of me.
Callahan Leitner as a real-life person. One with dark hair and fair skin and eyes the exact color of the type of olives they put in martinis.
Standing in front of me. Ripe for the picking.
I mean. For the learning from.
Although the idea that I could learn anything from this man about running an antique shop seems foolish right now, as I’m pretty sure there’s no room in my head for anything except a thick lust-based fog, permanently settling into all the crevices.
Somehow, despite that, I’m still looping “Good morning, Baltimore.” But now it’s transposed over the footage of him carefully running his fingers over the fragile shade of a Handel lamp some guy in Philadelphia brought for televised appraisal that I’ve watched way, way too many times.
“Can…I help you?” he asks politely when I don’t respond.
“Oh. Sorry. Brain broke for a second,” I say, moving toward him. I reach out my hand. “Hi. I’m Annie O’Neill, Harold’s niece. Reporting for duty!” My free hand comes to my forehead and I find myself saluting. It is too enthusiastic, too weird. Too me.
Ideally, Callahan Leitner’s first thought upon meeting me would have been, Wow, this woman is smart and sexy. But instead he’s probably thinking, This woman is a nut.
Despite the immediate impulse to throw up my shield, to protect myself from judgment and say something else that will make him warm to me, I instead cling to the hours and hours of therapy and self-reflection that got me this far.
Being too me is kind of the whole point of everything I’ve been working toward.
If he thinks I’m a nut, well, that’s better than having to pretend I’m not for the next four weeks.
He takes my hand, a frown on his face. “Callahan, but you can call me Cal. It’s easier,” he says, releasing me as soon as we get the cursory amount of shakes out of the way.
“Sorry you had to come here with so little notice. If this whole thing is at all inconvenient, please don’t feel the need to stay. I’m sure I can handle it.”
Wow. I know that was not the best first impression I have ever made, but I don’t think it was bad enough that he should be actively trying to get rid of me already.
“Not at all.” I smile back in a way that may actually just be baring my teeth. “I was so glad that Uncle Harold asked me to come help out while he’s away. You know, I visited Virtu once when I was a little girl and I’ve secretly always dreamed of working here since.”
“Similar thing happened to me. Except I actually did work here,” Callahan says distractedly as he turns back to the counter and scribbles something down on a legal pad. “And now I own it.”
Okay. What the fuck are these vibes? I can’t tell if he’s being standoffish, or apathetic, or…I don’t even know. I like to think I’m good at reading people, but whatever language this man is written in is not even remotely coherent to me so far.
“Well, you half own it,” I say.
This gets his attention, his head popping back up so that he can glare daggers at me.
“Right?” I ask innocently. “Uncle Harold owns the other half. You’re equal partners.”
“We are,” he says, writing again. A moment later he adds, “Harold tells me you ‘upcycle’ antiques and sell them online.” He does not say this as if it’s a good or impressive thing. In fact, I think I can hear the dismissive quotes he’s mentally placed around the word “upcycle.”
“I do. It started as a pandemic side hustle and now it’s my full-time job. Which is nice, because it gives me flexibility to hop in the car and drive three hours to Baltimore on a moment’s notice to help rude men with the stores they half own.”
His pencil freezes for a second. Then it starts back up.
Callahan—Cal, I guess—continues focusing on his task, ignoring my barb long enough that I have time to start wondering if I maybe shouldn’t have said it.
Finally he finishes, tears the lined sheet of yellow paper off the pad, and holds it out to me with a little jut of his stupidly handsome chin that says, Come on, I don’t have all day.
I snatch the page and look it over. It’s a to-do list.
Dust all items.
Vacuum floors.
Take photos for potential social media use.
“Let me know if you have any questions,” he says. “I’ll be in the office. Down the hall, to the right.”
Then he simply walks away, shattering every single fantasy I ever had about him into the tiniest shards that reflect myself back to me in a way that I’m not sure is particularly flattering.
“Good morning, Baltimore!” I sing quietly to myself again, even though I’m absolutely sick of it.
I barely see Cal the rest of the day.