“Em. How goes it?”
“Whatcha doin’ for dinner? Want to grab a pizza?”
I looked down toward the girls’ patio. James was laughing, drinking one of their green labels, and they seemed to be amused at something he’d said. “Sure. I think my roommate has plans.”
“Oh, so I’m runner up?”
“No. Just an observation. Sure, let’s get a pizza. I want to run a business idea by you.”
“Me?”
Her, indeed. Emily’s dad owns a construction business in Carol City. Carol City Construction. He’s built some of the most palatial homes in the Miami area, and runs a very successful company. When Em graduated from the University of Miami with a computer engineering degree, she was offered about a zillion jobs, with salaries approaching $150,000. But she went to work for Dad and figured out how to make the main guy in her life another gazillion dollars. If anyone knew good business, she did.“You.”
“What about Jaystone?”
“I’m not quitting. Jaystone Security is still paying the bills.”
“Barely. You know you could always work construction, Skip. Dad could put you on at about a dozen sites right now.” Dad didn’t realize I couldn’t drive a nail even if I had a sledgehammer. And furthermore, he didn’t like me a whole lot. It wasn’t necessarily that I was dating his daughter or that I had a crummy job. It was more about not dating his daughter seriously. And I’m not sure he knew that was by her choosing. Em liked different guys. She liked to flirt, to party, to have her little affairs. She’d been that way since she went away to some hot-shit private school as a junior in high school and we’d broken up. But she still liked to get together with me and just get comfortable. And sometimes it was very, very comfortable.
“James has an idea-”
“Oh, Jesus.” I could picture her shaking that pretty little head, her short hair bouncing around that kissable face. “He’s always got ideas. You’re not buying into something with him are you?”
“Em, let’s go get a pizza. We can talk when my minutes aren’t on the line, okay?” Cell phone minutes, just like money, meant nothing to her. It’s the problem with rich people. They don’t think about how tough it can be on the others, trying to keep up. Every now and then I’ve got to bring her up short.
“I’ll be by in half an hour.”
“Dutch treat, Em. There haven’t been a lot of sales this month.”
“Then I hope to hell this business venture pans out, Skip. If it doesn’t, you might just starve to death.”
Did I mention that besides being rich, she has this sarcastic streak a mile long? Still, when she’s comfortable, she’s very comfortable.
Half an hour later to the minute she picked me up in the T-Bird convertible, the tan top already down and the red paint job waxed to a blinding shine. If I have to rely on a woman for my ride, I’m glad it’s a classy ride.
CHAPTER THREE
P AULIE’S HAS THIS GREAT CRUST that’s crisp and thin and has enough flavor to make you wish they’d just forget about the toppings. Seriously. Sometimes we just get a twelve-inch without anything and eat the crust.
Em ordered a fourteen-inch mushroom and Italian sausage with a pitcher of beer to wash it down, and we sat out on the faded wooden deck under a cheap umbrella, the sun cooking everything that wasn’t covered.
“So what is this big venture?”
“Promise me you won’t laugh?”
“No.”
“No, you won’t laugh?”
“No, I won’t promise you. Skip, that’s one reason I keep seeing you. You make me laugh.”
She laughed.
I read one time that if you can get a girl to laugh, you can get her into bed. I’m always afraid that they’ll laugh while we’re in bed.
“I’ll tell you anyway. James wants to go into the hauling business.”
“The what?”
“Hauling business.”
She was silent for a moment while she rolled that idea around in her head. “Well, he’s had to haul his ass out of a lot jams and he’s always been pretty successful.”
“He bought this box truck, and-”
“A box truck?”
“A box truck.”
“Like a U-Haul?”
“Yeah. Sort of. It’s this fourteen-foot aluminum box on the back of a cab. And you can haul just about anything.”
A smile played on her face.
“You’re gonna laugh.”
“No. Actually, it’s not a bad idea. For a sideline. And you could use the extra income.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. But James is thinking more than a sideline. He wants to have an entire fleet. He says people have too much stuff and they always want to move it.”
“Or store it.”
“Huh?”
“Skip, there’s this lady, Jackie Fuentes, and she’s got a ton of stuff she needs to store. You could haul it for her.”
There it was. We hadn’t handed out the first business card, and we already had a customer. This was going to be easier than I thought.
She sipped her beer and crossed those awesome tanned legs of hers. Her shorts rode up another couple of inches. I started to wonder if we were going to get comfortable tonight.
“She lives near the causeway off Indian Creek Village. Dad built her house about five years ago. God, Skip, it’s this huge mansion.”
Em’s dad lives in a 10,000-square-foot home in a gated community called Silver Bay, so when Em’s impressed with the size of a house, it must be awesome. And Daddy’s little princess lives in a condo that looks out over Biscayne Bay and South Beach from twenty stories up, so she’s not doing so bad herself.
“Her husband is involved in financing. I think he’s like a venture capitalist. He arranges high-interest loans to fund new businesses. And apparently he arranges extramarital affairs, because Jackie caught him with a little blond and threw him out of the house.”
In my relatively short life, I have always found it hard to fathom people who live that kind of life. And even with Emily, my own little rich bitch, I have to bite everything off in very small chunks. Christ, the apartment James and I live in isn’t 600 square feet, and our combined income is about $30,000 a year. Ten thousand square foot homes on fancy islands and high-finance engineers just don’t register.
“Eugene?”
She caught my mind wandering. Whenever she was serious she’d call me by my given name. I wish my mother had given it to someone else. And Skip? When I was younger, people would ask my name and when I said Eugene they’d invariably say “What?” I got to a point where I’d just say, “Skip it.” Over the years the name Skip took hold and I am so thankful for that. Of course, people I’ve known for years sometimes revert to Eugene. Sometimes when they’re serious and sometimes when they just want to piss me off.
“Yeah. Go on.”
“As I was saying, Jackie Fuentes threw her husband out.”
“And?”
“And she’s throwing all of his stuff out.”
“Stuff. That’s what James was talking about. People needing to move stuff.”
“She’s been going through his closets, the storage rooms, and she’s got a huge pile of stuff that she wants to move out. You could call and offer your services.”
Em gave me a big smile. I love that mouth. “Em, how do you know all this?”
“She confides in me. I see her at the club, and-”
The club. Em’s friends belong to the club, and how can someone like me identify with the “club”?
“She told me.”
The waitress brought the pizza, the steam still rising from the hot, melted cheese. I took a whiff. I believe that God created pizza for the regular people. Em can be regular when she wants to. It’s cheap, it’s filling, and there isn’t a bad pizza out there. There are great pizzas. There are pizzas that aren’t as great as the great, but there are no bad pizzas. That’s what I believe.