Zipper Fall (13 page)

There was a bit of a back-and-forth on the other side, and then Reyna said, “Okay, here he is.”

“Mr. Gaudens,” the familiar, smooth voice intoned. “Why are you snooping on Mr. Azurri?”

“Oh… um… hello, Mr. Pillory. I am not exactly snooping. It just occurred to me that his apartment looks… disjointed, you know? So I wanted to know if something had happened in his recent past… just so I don’t step in it.”

There was a prolonged silence before I heard the familiar baritone again. “His sister died. It was in the papers. Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

“Yes, and no. Thank you though.”

Silence stretched for a few beats. “If you would care to stop by the office, I might have a client for you. A small bakery—we’re too big for them.”

I felt relief wash over me—relief and gratitude. “Ah… thank you. Thank you very much.”

“I take it you’re keeping to our deal, then? You didn’t poach BW&B from me?”

I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. “Due to my actions—which I do not regret, by the way—Mr. Azurri is too embarrassed to set his foot inside your offices ever again. He… he sort of… strong-armed me into doing the work for free. So, technically, it’s not poaching since I’m not getting paid.”

“Gaudens.” His voice said it all.

“Had you not barged in like that, he’d have stayed, and I’d have stayed, and you wouldn’t have to put up with Reyna.”

“Mr. Gaudens, you will be pleased to know that your friend is more than an adequate replacement for you.”

I heard Reyna’s suppressed snickers in the background and Pillory hung up on me. When I worked for Pillory, he’d never have let me snicker while he was on the phone.

There was no use delaying the inevitable. I called Jack next. “Hey, it’s Wyatt.”

There was a prolonged silence on the other end before Jack replied. “How are you feeling… Gaudens?”

“A lot better than last night. I wanted to apologize… for everything. And I wanted to thank you.”

“Are you still at my place?”

“Yeah.”

“When did you wake up?”

“Two hours ago.”

There was a pregnant pause. “
Two hours
?”

I moved the phone away from my ear. “Yeah.”

“What did you take?” Exasperation warred with curiosity as he contained himself, giving me enough space to formulate an answer.

“You mean except for your black silk boxers?”

Another pause. “You kept my underwear.”

“Yeah….” My voice got kind of breathy there, and I felt a blush rise to my face again.

“Is there anything,
anything
at all, you’d like to confess while I’m still speechless and in a fairly good mood?” His voice was a sensuous purr, affecting my sense of reason.

Maybe.
I had a lot to confess. I didn’t know how he’d take it, though. He’d probably just break up with me, but we were not officially together in any capacity, and even if we were, that was likely going to happen from the very beginning anyway.

Okay, here goes. “Ibrokeintoyoursafe.”

“Huh… go again?”

“I broke into your safe. Just to see if it was hard, you know… it wasn’t. But then I got curious and wanted to see what was there….”

“Go on.” His voice was measured, as cold as the rain the night before.

“I’m so sorry about your sister, Jack.”

“You fucking snoop.” His voice was incredulous.

“I wanted to find out more about you.”

“What the hell for?”

“’Cause… ’cause I’m fatally attracted to you. Moth to flame, Jack. Nothing else seemed to matter at the time.”

He was quiet for a bit and all I could hear was breathing. “Has it occurred to you, Gaudens, that you might have a bit of a problem?”

“I know I have a problem, Jack. You’re not the problem, though. You’re the vacation from my problem.”

“Stay where you are. We need to talk about this in person.”

Yeah, right. My death wish didn’t extend that far. “I can’t. I called Pillory and he’s expecting me. He has a client for me.”

“You told him about poaching me off?”

“I told him about working for you for free and explained it wasn’t poaching.”

“What’d he say?”

“He wants to take me apart personally…. If you’d like to see me in person, take a number and hope I don’t come back to you in pieces.”

I heard him cackle. “Alright then. I’ll catch up with you later. Probably when you least expect it.”

R
EYNA
sat across from me, handling her dinner with unusual restraint. Our past and long-lasting acquaintance led me to expect her to treat everything—with the possible exception of soup—as finger food. She would normally have disposed of her crab cake with unbridled enthusiasm, picking it up in her long, manicured fingernails. Now she was cutting it up with a fork and knife. I watched her handle the utensils with awkward determination, chasing down the last lump of crabmeat.

“These are the best effin’ crab cakes I’ve ever had, Wyatt.” She said
effin’
instead of using her ubiquitous f-word. My curiosity was piqued.

“Reyna. Why aren’t you eating with your fingers like always?”

She was silent for a while as she continued chasing the tidbit across her plate. “We all had this client appreciation banquet. Did he do that when you worked for Mr. Pillory?”

I nodded. “Yeah. An annual shindig to encourage existing clients to give us referrals to their friends and colleagues.”

She gave up in frustration, picked up the desired morsel with her long red nails, and popped it into her plump mouth. “I felt like such a redneck cow, y’know? I sat right across from him and… I dunno, he’s just so
refined.
It’s like everything he does, every single motion, has a purpose. It’s… perfect.” Her brown eyes acquired a dreamy expression as she leaned against the back of her barstool.

“What’s perfect?” I asked, trying not to show my irritation.

“He is….” She took a swig of her beer straight out of the bottle and flipped hair over her shoulder, letting her spider tattoo peek from under her ear. “Every single thing he does is
just so
. And he looks perfect, too. His hair is just shoulder-length and smooth and shiny—and he smells like fresh air, didya know? He had to lean over me to take a look at my screen today, and his hair fell forward and brushed my cheek….”

My irritation gave over to amusement as Reyna slumped in her stool, her head thrown back in abandon, her eyes rolling back. My snicker gave me away—she sat up and pierced me with a defensive look.

“Well, for your information, he says I have a lot of potential. He says I’ll get to interact with clients pretty soon, so I have to make sure I’m up to the task and take care of those ‘rough edges’ my grandma has been complaining about as long as I can remember.”

She hadn’t mentioned who “he” was in her diatribe, and there was no need. My best friend was crushing on my former boss, and if she said another “He says…,” I was going to explode.

My frustration level knew no bounds. Here we were, on Friday night, having our customary drinks and a small dinner in order to unwind and bitch about life—but Reyna was wasting our night out singing praises to my former boss, Cold Fish Pillory. Meanwhile, I’d been sweating out the remainder of this week without a single contact from her former boss and sex-idol extraordinaire, Jack Azurri.

I’ll catch up with you. When you least expect it.

I sighed and drank my Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, its heady hops filling my nose with a citrusy bouquet. I loved beer. I knew beer. It was familiar and refreshing and relaxing—and a lot more predictable than, say, a martini. In moderation, of course. A climber my size can’t have too many indulgent dinners or beers every week without having to haul all those extra beers and chips up the rockface.

Reyna honed in on my change of mood, redirecting her focus onto her own former boss. “So what are you gonna do about him?” she asked before she maneuvered a fork full of french fries into her plump mouth. “I mean, won’t you try to find out if he’s still interested?”

“He’s pissed about the safe.” Oops, that slipped out all by itself.

“What safe?”

Now, the bad news is, the cat was out of the bag. The good news was, there were many cats in my bag and only one escaped. “He has a safe at his place, and I snooped.”

“He left it open?” Reyna frowned.

“No. I cracked it open! Of course he won’t be leaving his safe open.”

“You did?” Reyna squealed, amazed. Her cinnamon eyes lit up with the excitement of adventure. “Super! When did you learn how to do that?”

“I was born knowing,” I said in a flat, nonchalant voice.

She rolled her eyes and pulled on her beer again. “So… what was in it?” Her eyes shone with eagerness—after all, Azurri was the asshole who fired her, and she wanted some dirt.

“I can’t tell you that. Nothing bad, though. It’s just, I snooped and he’s probably giving me the cold shoulder, being pissed and all.”

“You didn’t take anything, did you?” The words spilled out of her mouth fast, and it occurred to me that my friend probably knew me a lot better than I gave her credit for. I saw her frown again, reaching for her overpriced Czechvar lager.

“Nothing except the black silk boxer shorts he put on me the night before.” I grinned.

“Oh, tell!”

My secret was just too juicy to bear. After all, how often does one get as thoroughly embarrassed as I have? Resigned, I gestured for our second round, and the story spilled out of me like beans out of a broken bag. It seemed prudent to edit the facts a bit as I went along, seeing no need to enlighten my best friend about my addiction to outright burglary. I told her just the good parts.

She sat there transfixed, her expression incredulous. Crimson rivulets of hair spilled down her shoulders, the way “he” liked it—as indicated by an offhand comment he probably didn’t even remember making—as she leaned back, wide-eyed and motionless. “You used your mountain-climbing skills to break into his bedroom to deliver a report.” It wasn’t a question. Her eyes shone as she hung on my every word.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Let’s not go there. Anyway….” I continued with my sordid tale of embarrassment and high adventure. By the end of it all, Reyna was leaning forward on her high stool with her elbows planted on the table’s scarred wooden surface and her eyes ready to pop out of her head. I finished my story of waking up all alone and finding my laundry done and rope retrieved—and the last phone call to Azurri, including his incensed reaction to my lack of restraint and spying.

“So that’s what happened,” I ended in a measured tone, then finished my beer.

She set her bottle down with a clank and burst out laughing. Tears of mirth flowed down her high-boned cheeks. “Shit, Wyatt. I would’ve died.”

“I almost did—especially when I woke up wearing nothing but his underwear.”

Reyna finished her second beer. “My question stands, Wyatt. What next?”

I’
D
GONE
to see Pillory early the following week and, true to his word, once he raked me over hot coals for “poaching” BW&B from him, he said he had a client for me. The new business owner, Mr. Novack, had been trying to expand his Oakland bakery by diversifying into light lunch items aimed at college students and office workers. His latest novelty, trendy Parisian crepes, were slathered with Nutella and garnished with sliced strawberries. Almost as soon as we shook hands, he served me one to taste-test the product, and I agreed they were positively addictive. He fed me several more samples to convince me of their virtue, and we proceeded to formulate an advertising strategy. Mr. Novack was kind enough to send me home with a whole plateful of crepes. Now, after the extra beer with Reyna a few days before and a plateful of crepes at the bakery, there was no way I was keeping this loaded calorie-bomb to myself, no matter how sinfully delicious it tasted. I needed to share them around to stay at my optimum climbing weight—it was the only way, because throwing them out was out of the question. That would have been a sin. I called Jack as I walked home.

“Yeah,” he said, answering his phone.

“You home?”

“No. Stayin’ late. There’s a big push. We have some regulatory requirements we need to fulfill.” His voice was an irritated growl.

“Sorry about that. I’ll call later.”

He hung up on me. Again.

It was rather obvious Jack was in full-blown work mode, but I still didn’t like being ignored with such high-handed arrogance. Reyna wouldn’t have done that, not even if she were snowed under with paperwork. Pillory? Well, that depended on the circumstances. Pillory was good about returning calls, unlike Jack. I had to get the handsome menace’s attention again… somehow.

T
HE
bakery in Oakland wasn’t too far from Jack’s apartment building in Shadyside. Half an hour later I was in without the usual fuss and drama. Why hang off a building with a plateful of crepes when you can pick the locks?

I locked up after myself, put the crepes in his half-empty refrigerator, and put a big sign on the fridge itself:
Heat to room temperature before serving.
I stood there, debating whether to sign it or not. If I signed it, I would sound needy. If I didn’t, he might not even notice.