Annette:And I'd want the same.
Brooke:I'd trust you to give me an at-home Brazilian wax.
Annette:That's special.
Brooke:But I don't want you matchmaking for me, dearie.
Annette:And why is that?
Brooke:Because you believe in love and relationships and knowing the person's name before you have sex with them.
Annette:You deserve that, you know.
Brooke:I recognize what you're doing. You're giving me all the shit I gave you.
Annette:You are the smart one in this relationship.
Brooke:But the difference between me giving you shit then and what you're doing now is you had a man carrying your panties with him as a good luck charm, and I am not the subject of anyone's obsession.
Annette:That did not occur.
Brooke:Mmmm agree to disagree. Let's get back to the storage room before I have to deal with the fallout over Dad rejecting whatever his caregivers made for dinner because all of his triggers seem to be food-related. Please.
Annette:I don't like bringing work home. I'd rather do it at the shop, but the back room is depressing. It needs some warmth and motivation.
Brooke:In my old office, in New York, I had a huge reproduction of a Georgia O'Keefe painting framed behind my desk. A complicated red flower. Actually huge. At least 5 feet wide, probably 8 feet tall.
Brooke:People (and by people, I mean men) would stare at it. As per male usual, they never knew what they were seeing.
Annette:Pussy power much?
Brooke:My workplace was filled with men who used their penises to activate touch screens. Men who insulted each other with stories of fucking each other's wives and mothers. Men who loved a good rape joke.
Brooke:You bet your ass I decorated with pussy power.
Annette:Where is it now? I'm not sure I have the wall space for a giant red vagina painting, but I like the idea.
Brooke:It's in a storage facility outside Manhattan.
Brooke:Along with the remains of my hold on reality.
Chapter Eleven
JJ
Collateral: assets which can be repossessed in the event of loan default.
There werea lot of things I didn't know about starting a business. It was no skin off my back to learn, as I'd been doing that since taking over the Galley from my aunt and uncle years ago. But there was a substantial difference between figuring out the food and beverage business as I went and banging my head into walls because it was better than making sense of building codes and licensing permit paperwork.
That was how I found myself chucking a binder at Sheriff Lau's head.
"Whoa there," he called, swerving in the doorway to avoid the offending binder. It hit the wall and thumped the floor. "Should I take that personally?"
I leaned back in my chair, regarding him as he stood before my desk. "Give it a try and don't tell me how it works out for you."
Finding no humor in my suggestion, he went on staring at me with a cool, flat expression I was certain he received with his badge and uniform. "Can I borrow a moment of your time?"
"Only if you intend on returning it." He offered more of that cool flatness in response and I wished I had another binder to throw simply for the purpose of snapping him out of it. "What do you need, sheriff?"
