The Fate Merchant

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

     Jasper watched the numbers change on the readout above the doors as the elevator carried them up to the twenty-sixth floor offices of Gleason and Watts – Architects.

     Callie hurriedly stuffed the bottom of her t-shirt into her jeans, and tucked loose strands of red hair behind her ears.

     “Got a date?” Jasper asked.

     “I’m not used to walking into a professional environment looking like I’ve been living in my car.”

     She inspected his reflection in the highly polished doors.  He watched her eyes start at his sneakers, work their way up his tan cargo pants to his green vintage army jacket, and settle on his cap.  A patch sewn on the front of the cap read: Yes. The rumors are true. I AM awesome.

     “I’d reconsider the hat,” Callie said.

     “What’s wrong with it?”

     “Seriously?”

     “You know you say that a lot.”

     The elevator chimed and the doors opened.

     “Trust me,” she said.  “Lose the hat.”

     They stepped out of the elevator into a reception area.  On the back wall, positioned directly at eye level, brushed steel letters spelled out the firm’s name.  Framed architectural drawings lined the walls to either side of them, and two men in business suits chatted near a smoked glass door behind the reception desk.

     Jasper removed his hat.

     Business was conducted here: serious business with serious people.  He instantly felt out of place, like a child at a dinner table full of adults. 

     A slim blonde in a clingy grey business suit sat behind the reception desk, an imposing semi-circular piece of dark wood that made her look vaguely ‘judge-like’ and did nothing to ease Jasper’s feeling that at any moment someone might leap out of nowhere and pin a tie on him.

     “May I help you?” the blonde asked.

     “Roy Harper, please.”

     “Do you have an appointment?”

     “No.  But it’s urgent.”

     Her smile disappeared and a single crease appeared in the middle of her tanned forehead.  She picked up the phone and dialed Roy Harper’s extension.  “There’s a gentleman here to see you.  He says it’s an emergency.”  She listened for a moment before asking Jasper: “Are you a client?”

     “No.”

     “He’s not a client,” she said into the phone.  She nodded and looked up at Jasper again.  “What’s so urgent?”

     “It’s hard to explain.  I really need to talk to him in person.”

     “He says he needs to talk to you in person.”  She listened for a moment, and then swiveled away from him and lowered her voice.  “He looks homeless.”

     Callie snorted.

     The receptionist hung up the phone.  “Have a seat.  He’ll be out as soon as he can.”

     She directed them toward a couch positioned between a pair of long tables.  A scale model of a hotel and casino complex rested on one of the tables, while the second supported a model of a retirement home that Jasper thought looked like a prison, but with less razor wire and better wheelchair access.

     “Any idea what you’re going say to him?” Callie asked.

     “Nope.  Any suggestions?”

     “How about ‘Please don’t call security.’”

     “That works.”     

     Jasper slid a copy of Architectural Elite off a glass-topped coffee table.  He flipped through a few pages and quickly realized that subjecting himself to glossy images of gleaming kitchens, sparkling Mediterranean vistas viewed from whitewashed Mediterranean balconies, and this years newest trends in backyard entertaining was about as fun as inviting a rich person into his crappy living room to repeatedly slap him across the face with a wad of thousand dollar bills.

     He tossed the magazine back onto the coffee table. 

     “So why did you leave your department store job?”

     Callie stared at him as though trying to decide whether or not he deserved the requested glimpse into her personal life.  After a moment, she shrugged.

     “I woke up one morning and realized I didn’t want to work in finance anymore.  And then my fiancée woke up one morning and realized he didn’t want to sleep in my bed anymore and what he really wanted to do was sleep in the bed of some skank named Cheri.  He broke off our engagement, I packed up, left Manhattan, and came here to make Good Luck pancakes five days a week until I figure some things out.”

     “I wrote a screenplay, once.”

     She picked up a magazine.  “I wasn’t curious.”

     “I thought we were sharing.”

     “We’re not.”

     A new voice filled the waiting room.  A male voice.  An irritated voice.  “What’s the emergency?”

     Jasper looked up and saw Roy Harper walking toward him.  He’d replaced the bathrobe with a white dress shirt, black tie, jeans, and a pair of scuffed cowboy boots.  His full head of blond hair had recovered from its loss to the pillow and had been gelled into perfect immobility.

     Jasper stood. 

     “What’s going on?” Roy asked.

     Jasper opened his mouth.  Nothing came out.  He closed it, tried again, and managed to blurt: “Frank Sullivan.”

     “What about him?”

     Jasper glanced over his shoulder at Callie, who winked and gave him a thumbs up.

     He turned back to Roy.  "Excellent question.  Let me think about it."  He smiled, and then scurried to the elevator and pressed the call button.  It lit up, and he pressed it again.

     “Smooth,” Callie said as she walked up behind him.

     He poked the call button three more times and whispered out of the corner of his mouth.  “What’s he doing?”  

     “He’s staring at the back of your head.”

     The elevator doors opened, and Jasper shot through the gap.  He jabbed the button for the lobby, and as the doors slid shut, he caught a quick glimpse of a perplexed Roy Harper standing with his hands on his hips in the middle of the reception area.

     “Interesting approach,” Callie said.

     “I’m feeling him out.”

     “Uh-huh.”

     He’d try again tomorrow.  He’d go home, write out what he was going to say, get a good nights sleep, and come back in the morning.  Or maybe the day after.  Yes.  Write out what he was going to say, let it sit for a day, look it over, and then come back.  In three days.  Yes.  Three days was better.  Give Roy Harper a couple of days to cool down.  He’d seemed a little angry.

     “I totally have this under control,” Jasper said.

     “Uh-huh.”