CHAPTER FIVE
The next morning Perry and I both felt like death. I don’t know what it is about draft beer, but it gets you every damn time. Well, draft beer and copious amounts of Jack Daniels and Irish whiskey.
We woke up around ten when Fat Rabbit demanded to be walked or he’d piss all over the house, and because it was my dog and I was a gentleman, I got up and took him for a quick walk in just striped pajama pants and a stained white tee, ignoring the nipple-tweaking wind. The fresh morning air did perk me up and when I got back inside, and I told Perry, who was still huddled under the covers and craving grease and water, that I’d be taking her out on her second date: Pike Place Market.
Yes, it’s the quintessential tourist trap of Seattle, but fuck if the market didn’t have good shit. Besides, now that we were living together and Perry wasn’t moving out, we needed to get some good grub for the place. We couldn’t survive on my famous macaroni and hot dogs forever.
It took a little coaxing to get her out of bed, even after making her bacon and eggs, but soon we were heading out the door and walking down the street toward the water. I grabbed her hand, already cold from the wind that wouldn’t quite latch on to Spring, and held it tight. This was nice. This was right.
“So what do you think Jimmy is going to say?” she asked as we turned left onto First Avenue.
“I really don’t know,” I admitted. “Are you nervous?”
“Kind of. What if he cancels the show?”
I took in a deep breath. I’d been trying not to think about it for the last twenty-four hours. After Perry quit the show, I was a complete and utter Cheetos-covered mess. That was due to her absence, of course, but I think not having the show messed me up a bit too. Like her, it had given me a new purpose, and a life without the show seemed odd and meandering.
“I know I was hesitant about getting you back on the show,” I told her, “but I was more concerned about your safety than anything else.”
“I suppose you had a right to be,” she said under her breath. She cleared her throat. “That…beast was…”
Yeah. That was bad judgement for both of us, thinking that Sasquatch wasn’t real. We should have known better than that.
“But even so,” I went on, “I do like doing the show with you. I feel like it’s something that makes sense of who we are and what we see. It gives meaning in a way…I just wonder if maybe there’s a better way of doing this. Not ghost hunting but…well, I don’t know, this sound ridiculous, but maybe there is something to ghost whispering. We’ve already confirmed that you have the breasts for it.”
She smacked my chest. “I’m more than my boobs.”
“Yes you are, but they certainly help,” I said. “But I’m serious too. If Jimmy does cancel the show, maybe there is something else we can do—together—to make sense of what we have. I don’t think we need him like he wants us to believe we do.”
“But a sponsor would make things so much easier. I could actually bring in an income that counts.”
“Hey, kiddo, you know you don’t have to worry about that stuff with me.”
She stopped in her tracks, pulling me back a bit. Her expression was grave. “Dex, earning an income is important to me. I know you have your inheritance, how else could you afford a new Highlander and a nice apartment, but that doesn’t mean I want to be taken care of.”
“It bothers you, huh?” I asked.
She nodded. “Well, yeah. My parents always treated me like a freeloader and I just don’t want you to think I am too.”
I played with her hand. “Perry, I don’t think that of you at all. I want to take care of you. I’ve never been able to take care of anyone in my whole life. I’m more than happy to do it.”
She seemed to consider that. I pulled gently at her. “Come on, let’s go get some fish thrown at you.”
I led her down the road until it turned to brick. We ducked into the market, and despite it being a weekday and off-season, it was still packed full of people. Luckily they were locals who didn’t gawk and shuffle along like they’d never seen fresh food before. We pressed past vendors selling jewelry, farmers with their rows of green vegetables, a woman yelling at us to buy chocolate fettuccini. Perry looked adorably wide-eyed, and once we got to the main attraction—the fish people—I got one of them to toss a salmon right at her. To her credit, she actually caught it and instinctively tossed it to someone else. They didn’t work at the market but it was still pretty impressive.
I grabbed us both a fresh crab cocktail, which worked surprisingly well for hangovers, and we were munching on it outside the bronze pig statue when Jimmy called.
I handed her my cocktail and said, “Here we go, kiddo,” while answering my cell. “Jimmy.”
“Okay, I’ve had time to think about it,” he said.
“Twenty-two hours exactly,” I told him.
“Yes, well I had some things to figure out. Anyway, I have a proposition for you, Dex.”
“And Perry.”
“Yes, both of you.”
“You know I’m not a fan of being propositioned, Jimmy, unless it’s by a very breasty woman.”
I winked at Perry, who was watching me stone-faced, oblivious to the people all around her, fighting to touch the pig.
“This is how it is,” Jimmy went on with a sigh, clearly as sick of dealing with me as I was with him. “And there are no other options. You got that? It’s this or it’s nothing. Either you do it my way or it’s the highway. It’s this or nothing. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I hissed into the phone, grabbing Perry by the elbow and leading her away from the crowd. Satisfied we had some privacy, I eyed her and said, “Jimmy says he has an option for us, just the one option. If we don’t take it, we don’t have a show.”
She nodded, grim but curious. “Okay, what is it?”
“Lay it on us,” I said to Jimmy.
“I have someone I want to add to the show.”
The fuck? No. And I almost said no flat-out, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t screwing myself over by being so impulsive.
“Go on,” I said tersely.
“Dex, you and Perry, to put it mildly, cannot be trusted. You can’t be trusted with delivering a good show, let alone a show in general. You keep screwing up or acting unprofessional. I mean, how many cameras and phones have you two lost so far?”
“No more than the average person.”
“Right. And I think you know what I’m talking about, too. You just don’t have a leg to stand on at the moment, and if I trusted you enough to let you go on as is, you’d just disappoint me all over again.”