Burt Horowitz is in his early eighties, but most people guess him to be a good decade younger. He works out at the run-down gym around the corner, and he’s popular with all the older ladies. He could have his pick, but he has it bad for Barb and won’t give any of the others a chance. Even when he and Barb are in the middle of a break.
Barb claims he can’t let her go because she’s perfected the art of fellatio, only she pronounces it fillet-a-chato, claiming she has a right to call it that since her technique is like licking a gelato. She’s offered to give me pointers, but I’ve turned her down—multiple times—claiming it would be wasted on me since I don’t have a boyfriend.
Lord knows if I ever do get a boyfriend again, I’m waiting until we’re engaged to tell her.
Barb’s butt finally lands in the chair with a thump, and Burt stands next to her, huffing and puffing. I’m pretty sure they don’t have any machines in the exercise room to prepare an eighty-one-year-old man to drag his girlfriend across the arm of a recliner and back into her seat.
Finally, his breathing slows enough for him to wheeze out, “Are you in some kind of legal trouble, Finley?”
“No, nothing like that,” I say, then give him a condensed version of what I need as Mirna brings him a kitchen chair to sit in so he can face all of us.
When I finish, he’s quiet for several seconds before he says, “Let me get this straight. A sexy customer from Beans to Go?—”
“I didn’t say he was sexy!” I say insistently.
“I said he was sexy,” Barb sasses.
I swing my attention to her. “You’ve never even met him.”
She taps her temple. “I’ve met him in here, where he’s sexy as all get out.” Then she purrs and gives Burt a long, weighted look.
“You need to lower the dose of your estrogen cream, Barb,” Mirna says, disapprovingly.
“Ira disagrees.” Barb waggles her eyebrows.
Burt swallows, glancing between the three of us, looking nervous. “Okay, so one of your customers has asked you to spend Christmas with him and his family up in a Christmas town in Vermont…” He makes a face that appears incredulous, then hesitantly says, “so he doesn’t have to sleep on a sofa bed?”
“That’s the gist of it,” I say. “But he says he’ll pay my missed wages and any trip expenses. And—” I can’t stop the excitement bubbling up in me. “I get to spend Christmas in Hollybrook. The town is like a Christmas Hallmark movie come to life!”
He eyes me warily. “And that’s a good thing?”
“Have you no Christmas spirit, Burt?” Barb demands.
“You know damn good and well I don’t,” he shoots back. “I’m Jewish.”
That shuts her down, but who knows for how long, so I take advantage of the silence. “I’ve dreamed of this kind of Christmas since I was a kid. You have no idea how much my mom and I wanted to experience it.” I pause, realizing how pathetic this all sounds. I know I should be embarrassed, but I can’t seem to summon it. Not with my friends.
Burt is still watching me, as though he’s waiting for me to yell, “Prank!” But when I don’t, he nods solemnly. “Okay, let’s make your Christmas dream come true. What do you need from me?”
“I need a contract. I have some requests?—”
“Demands,” Burt says. “If this guy is as desperate as you’ve made him out to be, then I suspect he’ll give you pretty much anything you want.” He pauses. “I take it we’re negotiating the demands?”
“This isn’t a divorce, Burt,” Barb says in disgust. “Way to take the romance out of it.”
“There’s no romance involved,” I tell her, then turn my attention back to him. “This is not romantic. It’s a business agreement, but I want it to be amicable. I’m going to be spending nearly two weeks with him and his family. So, maybe we don’t call them demands.”
“Okay,” he says with a frown. “Does he have an attorney we’re dealing with?”
“No, he told me to have the contract drawn up, but he needs it by tomorrow night.”
His white wooly eyebrows shoot up. “Tomorrow night?”
“We leave on the twenty-second, and he still needs to book my plane tickets.”
“Do you have the demands”—he makes a face—“I mean, requests ironed out?”
“Mostly, but I wanted to talk to you before I addressed some of them.” I shrug. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”
