before biting back a groan and coming on the office floor.
I hastily righted my trousers and bent down to kiss Calvin. “I can’t believe you did that,” I whispered against his mouth.
“This is absolutely not a conversation you’re going to have with Max after I leave.”
“Not on my life.”
“Boss,” Max snapped.
“Good God, Max,” I shouted.
Calvin got to his feet, made himself presentable, then turned his back as I opened the door.
I brushed past Max and walked to the register, where a stocky man—early sixties, bad comb-over—waited, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Is the year 1865, Mr. Michaelson?” I asked, sidling up to the counter.
Michaelson blinked a few times. “Uh, no, of course—”
“Then due to 150 years of inflation, and the fact that this particular artifact from the War is completely intact—no easy find as far as paper antiques are concerned—it is one hundred and fifty dollars.”
Michaelson pointed at the small wooden box on the countertop. “But it’s been opened.”
“Yes, I suspect a Union officer likely polished his buttons and buckles with the contents.”
“So then it’s not mint condition.”
“Nothing that was shoved into a saddlebag and used while sitting beside a campfire during a war is going to be mint,” I growled.
“I won’t pay one fifty,” Michaelson protested, voice growing shrill.
“Fine. One forty-nine and seventy-five cents.”
Michaelson slapped the palm of his hand on the counter. “I won’t ever shop here again!” he declared before stomping toward the front door.
“Good,” I called after him, leaning forward on the counter to watch him go. “We deal and sell in antiques, sir. Those cost money.” The door slammed shut and the overhead bell rattled obnoxiously. “I have rent and employee health insurance to pay for!” I continued, even though Michaelson was long gone.
Calvin appeared just then, leaned between Max and me, and set the container of assorted sushi in front of me. He put a pair of disposable chopsticks on top, then said, “Before your low blood sugar scares off any more customers.”
“Twenty-five cents,” I said with a snort, grabbing the chopsticks and yanking them apart. They didn’t snap evenly. “This paper’s still got color, right?” I asked next, directing the question at Max while pointing at the box with the chopsticks.
He obediently nodded. “Yup. A bright orange.”
“Intact paper, text still legible, and showing no overt discoloration from sunlight exposure or age. And he wanted to spend…. I mean, the buying power of a quarter alone nowadays—”
Calvin nodded, took my chin, and gave me a chaste kiss. “I know. Eat your lunch.”
“Fine.”
“I’ll call you.”
“You can just come over tonight,” I suggested instead.
Calvin smiled. “I’ll see what I can do.”
After he had said goodbye and seen himself out, Max said without any prompting, “Aren’t blowjobs supposed to put you in a better mood?”
I had a mouthful of salmon and rice, so I didn’t say anything. I merely picked up my food and returned to the office.
Max made a slurping noise in my wake.
Credit Scores and Cohabitation
—
After The Mystery of the Curiosities
POV: Sebastian Snow
—
After the events of the Curiosities case—most importantly, the part where former flatfoots Lowry and Brigg planted a homemade explosive device in my building and blew it up—I’d been crashing at Calvin’s too-small-for-two studio and surfing Pop’s couch for nearly two months.
Which was two months too long, if you asked me. Not that I wasn’t grateful. If I hadn’t had either of them to provide a roof over my head, I’d have probably racked up an unbelievable hotel bill, a debt I wouldn’t have been able to afford, while I’d spent every spare moment I had on what seemed to be a totally fruitless search for a new apartment. But, I mean, minus the hotel-debt part, that was the exact situation I was in. Which sounded nuts. I lived in New York City, a place that nearly nine million called home. How on God’s green Earth could I not find a new apartment?
Heh. Well. There’s a reason Pop hadn’t moved in forty years.
The rental market in this city was so absurd that once you managed to plant your flag in a kingdom to call your own, it’d take an actual bomb to make you give it up. Realtors and brokers were always looking for the wealthiest potential client, so for your average Joe like me, who just wanted a decent apartment in Manhattan and not some multimillion-dollar penthouse on the Upper West Side, they tended to run the gamut of shady, rude, condescending, or outright noncommunicative.
And with the