“These are not two hundred dollars.” I rolled my eyes.
“Um, yeah, they’re not,” McKenna said, looking up from her phone. “They’re a thousand.”
I choked on my spit. “These are what? How?”
“Next time you trip, break something so he’ll buy you a new wardrobe,” Grenadine suggested.
“You have to give these back,” McKenna told me.
“I can’t give these back,” I fretted. “I don’t have any shoes. I threw away my other shoes, and now I don’t have anything to wear to work.”
“If Anthym finds out about Grayson’s gift, she’s going to flip out,” McKenna warned.
“What the hell kind of name is Anthym?” Connie asked, annoyed.
“A terrible one,” I concurred.
“Probably why she’s always such a cunt to you,” Grenadine said, ushering the other three older women inside. “She never got over her childhood name trauma.”
Connie shrieked as Gizzy lumbered over to her, his long tail almost knocking over the card table.
“I cannot understand how the landlords have allowed him to stay.” Mrs. Turner tapped her cane on the floor.
“You like getting all those fresh herbs?” Grenadine threatened. “Zip it. If the landlords are going to be raising rent, Lexi should be able to keep an exotic pet.”
“They’re raising rents?” McKenna asked, sounding upset.
Neither she nor I were going to be earning a raise anytime soon, if Anthym had anything to do about it.
“They just raised rents for the year. They can’t do it again,” I informed everyone. “There are laws.”
“They’re trying to get around the laws,” Connie argued.
“I heard that they were going to tell us to pay up, or they will have the building condemned,” Grenadine added.
“I heard they were just going to burn the whole thing down,” Connie said pessimistically.
“We need to just think positively,” I told them. “Let’s not fearmonger. It’s all going to be okay. I’ll email the city’s tenant protection agency.”
McKenna was hyperventilating.
“Why don’t you help me think of something nice to do for Grayson so I can thank him?”
“I can’t believe you’re on first-name basis.”
“Saying Mr. Richmond bought me an expensive pair of shoes makes it sound creepy,” I told her.
“Fair.”
“A thank-you note doesn’t seem to cut it. I need to do something really nice. A thousand dollars is a lot of money.” I wrinkled my nose.
“You mean like all the unpaid overtime we do?” McKenna snorted. “Give him a certificate for that and call it even.”
“Grayson’s finally emerging out of his shell and starting to venture out into society. He’s a fragile baby bird and needs a protector. I want to prove to him that when you do something nice, it comes back threefold.”
“You’re going to spend three thousand dollars on him?” my friend asked.
“Absolutely not. I was thinking about just ordering him some food from his favorite restaurant.”
