“Okay, thanks. Yeah, please hold it for me. I’ll be by this afternoon.”
The look on Hunter’s face as he hangs up is one I haven’t yet seen.
Pure delight.
“That’s one helpful goddamn knack you’ve got there,” he says.
My smile reflects his. “Oh?”
“Well, it turns out someone ordered a very specific load of wood, gave a down payment, and decided not to pick it up. They need it out of the yard, so it’s crazy cheap. Look at this number.”
I do.
It is a very, very good number.
I am not scared of this number.
“So this will make my Beast Bookshelves?”
He nods, grinning. “And I have to admit, it’s going to be a lot more fun for me. How about this for the total?”
He writes down another number.
“That’s not enough,” I say.
“I told you, the wood is cheap. And you already have all the fittings I need in the hardware store. Provided you don’t want a bunch of really intricate molding—”
“I don’t.”
“Then it’s honestly a pretty simple job. Although there won’t be enough for the center rolling shelves…” He trails off, and his eyes fly wide. His teeth flash in a feral grin. “Hot damn! It just occurred to me—the antiques market already has them!”
“Has what?”
Hunter pumps his fist. “Grab your big key ring and come on. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.”
Once I’ve got the keys, we exit out the front door and head tothe antiques market. There’s plywood completely covering the glass storefront, so I have no idea what’s in there, but now I’m starting to get excited. It takes me several tries to find the right key, and then I’m smacked in the face with the smell of old mothballs and something animalistic and musky. In the darkness behind the plywood, everything is a monstrous jumble, and something furtively skitters in the back corner.
“Raccoons,” Hunter says. “I think. Not a bear, though.”
“As long as it’s not turkeys.”
The air is dead and still, and a thick layer of dust shifts under my shoes. When Hunter finds the switch, the old fluorescents flicker to life, and the penny pincher in me wonders how much I’m paying to keep the electricity running here. Once I can see, however, my tune changes. This place is…
The most glorious trash heap I’ve ever seen.
The space is bigger than the video store. There are tables and chairs, armoires, saddles, chandeliers, glassware galore, some weird mannequins, a dress form, a carousel horse, several moth-eaten deer heads, and one very perky taxidermy squirrel staring down at me from the cobwebbed walls—and that’s just what I can see on this side of several dividers.
“How?” I mumble.
“The little old lady who rented the building used it as a front for selling the meth her grandsons made in her barn. They all went to jail and quit paying. Maggie was too old and tired to do much by then, so she had me put the plywood over the glass and just let it sit. But look!” The space is chopped up into booths, and he leads me around a corner. There are two rolling shelves, double-sided, filled with old books. “So that’s two shelves. I think there’s another one somewhere….”
“There’s got to be two hundred books here,” I say, carefully and lovingly picking up a yellowed Terry Brooks paperback.
“We’re not done.”
My heart lifting, I keep walking, seeing more possibilities with every step. I find lamps, tables, lots of smaller shelves, and a wooden bench painted with flowers that would be great for a children’s corner.
Hunter points at a huge chandelier. Most of the bulbs on it are glowing, and the area around it smells of singed moth. “How about that one?”
