“Oh, yeah. I guess I justthoughtit was a bad idea.” Margie’s lip-twitch explodes into a proper grin at my glare.
My shoulders sag.You did this to yourself.“I made it all worse. I’m such an idiot.” I rub my temples and begin pacing.
“Stop,” Avery says. “It’ll get fixed.”
“And cheer up,” Margie adds. “At least he’s nice-looking. What if you lived next door to a Gorbachev and had to seethatin his boxers?”
“Why Gorbachev?” I ask wearily, rubbing at my eyes.
“He took down the Berlin Wall. I guess I thought it was fitting.” Margie shrugs and crunches on carrot sticks I didn’t know I had.
“I’d be Gorby in this scenario,” I mutter.
“I need to get out of here,” Avery says. “Got to go shower.”
“Not showering once after work won’t unleash a plague on New York,” Margie says, mocking Avery’s daily ritual after finishing work in the lab.
Avery hefts himself up from my plush sofa with effort. “Incidentally, a woman is being treated for the plague right now at Beth Israel Hospital. There’s an average of about seven cases in the country each—”
“Why are you standing? Are you giving a lecture? Or leaving? What is this?” Margie demands.
“You’re a plague.” Avery chuckles and kisses her forehead before hugging me, interrupting my pacing. “I’m headed home to shower, eat, and pretend I’m not best friends with people whose problems include holes in their wallsthat they put there.”
The door closes behind him, and Margie turns to me. “I love that stick-in-the-mud. So, this distracted me from what I wanted to tell you, but we’re filming in your office next week.”
“Oh, no kidding?” I say, trying my best to show interest. “I think I’m the one who gave your location scout the idea when I visited you. Boardroom scene?”
Margie nods and crunches slowly on a carrot. “Lucas asked about you.”
“Yeah, okay. Sure he did.”
“Whatever, Gorton’s Fisherman. Believe it or not. He said you reminded him of Sophie Turner.” She sets her plate down. “I told him you’re not down to mess around.”
“If you ordered her from SHEIN, maybe. And good—I’m not. I’m done with dead ends.”
Margie makes a skeptical sound in the back of her throat and pulls out her phone. “New phone. Give me your wifi pass—” She chuckles.
“What’s so funny?”
“Your wifi network name is…”
“‘Penny for your thoughts.’ And?”
“Guessing this one is your neighbor’s?”
She holds up her phone. I grab it out of her hand. Right under my network name is one that reads, “Dollar to go away?”
I shake my head and set Margie up on my network. “That’s some of his weaker work.”
“You two are a mess.”
“I’m serious. Last month he put globs of Vaseline on my doorknob. Or lube. It was so fucking gross. And then he denied it when I confronted him and said maybe I’m just naturally greasy.”
The memory teases me out of my funk for just a moment. “So I told Mrs. Russo down in 2B, who is the sweetest lady and the most religious person I’ve ever met, that I hear him through the walls worshipping Satan. Maybe sacrificing chickens. She was horrified. She’s taken it upon herself to save him, I think. I’ve heard her in there trying to pray over him a few times.”
Margie accepts her phone. “Just another day at the zoo.” She abruptly shifts and kneels on the sofa to peek her head into Jack’s apartment.
“Get down! If he comes home and sees you…”
