And at first, I don’t see Ziggy.
But then?—
“Yeah, it’s a start-up. We’re recycling stickers.Stickers. Do you know how many stickers there are in the world? And like, you can’t recycle cardboard if it has shipping labels on it. And what are shipping labels?Stickers.”
The fuck?
I can hear them, but I can’t see them.
I can see bushes though.
Christ on a kumquat. Is this one of those hedge mazes?
Why would Ziggy go into a hedge maze with him?
“It was my sister’s idea, but she doesn’t have the vision to execute it. You have a sister. You know how it is. So I was thinking, if you don’t want to work for your dad anymore, I could hire you. Can’t really pay anything, but the couple that works together,workstogether. Heh. Get it?”
I’m crashing through the bushes, tracking his voice, when I hear Ziggy too. “Very…jokey. But as I told you at dinner, I’m quite happy with my current job.”
Good.
Good.
She’s okay.
“Come on, Ziggy, you and I both know you had to say that because your dad was watching. It’s just us now.”
“And I’d prefer to get back inside.”
The fuckwank snorts. “Neither one of us wants to get back inside, and we both know it.”
There.
There.
I feel like I’ve gone in six circles, but there they are, at the edge of this row I’ve just turned down.
She’s stiff as a board, half-pressed against a corner of the maze, and she spots me a second after I spot her.
“Problem?” I say.
Her shoulders drop from around her ears, her eyes soften, and the slightest smile turns her lips up. “Not enough bodily fluid tonight.”
The fuckwank squints at her before boxing her into a corner while he turns to face me. “No problem. None of your business.”
“Excuse me, I’d like to leave,” Ziggy says behind him.
“You’re bothering my girlfriend,” the fuckwank tells me.
“You’rebotheringmygirlfriend,” I growl back.
He pulls himself up to his full height, but he’s still three inches and forty pounds smaller than I am. I get the satisfaction of seeing a flicker of fear in his eyes to accompany his sputtered, “She’s not your girlfriend.”
“You’re three seconds from finding out what I do to guys who don’t move their scrawny little worthless asses out of the way so that I can make sure you didn’t hurt a single hair on her head, and if you did, you don’t get warning before I destroy you.”
His jaw works up and down.
“Three,” I count. “Two.”
