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He said this like paying bills was only something hookers did; his words were dripping with suspicion.
I snorted and hung up my keys on a hook next to my door. “Aw, were you gonna pay to keep my electricity on?” I asked, fluttering my eyelashes at him.
“No,” he replied peevishly, his hands settled on his narrow hips. “Ryan was. Now, apparently, you don’t need him for that. But don’t worry! He’ll be far more useful in defending you when you eventually get caught doing your skeevy Dick Tracy shit.”
“I’m not skeevy. I’m a private investigator,” I reminded him. I liked the sound of ‘private investigator’. It made me feel like I was the main hero in a 1930’s mobster movie.
I felt obligated to help him clean and picked up a nearby trashcan. I found it full, so I abandoned it and went to the sink to find an empty bag and began to start putting trash inside of it. No hard task to find trash for the bag; it was all over the place.
“You keep peeping in windows and breaking into apartments and you’re gonna get arrested or shot. And why? Four hundred dollars here? Two hundred dollars there?” he whined, waving his hands around with frustration.
“What? Do you want me to start working at Starbucks or something?” I asked smartly, wobbling my head like I was a teenager trying to pull her mom into a fight. After all, Zach was sort of a mom. He had certainly elevated himself beyond the simple role of ‘brother’ ages ago.
He made a tsking sound by snapping his tongue against the back of his teeth as he turned back to the sink, looking like he was going to wage war on an old frying pan that was probably beyond saving. “I’d appreciate it if you stopped being a sass-mouth and stopped self-destructing. And Starbucks isn’t going to hire you, because obviously,” he pointed at our surroundings, “consistency isn’t your strong suit. You’d actually need to show up every day and do what you need to do every day.”
“I had a job for a while,” I prompted him peevishly, reminding him of the job I’d had as soon as we’d moved to Baton Rouge after Grandma died.
“And you got fired from it for robbery. Don’t even.” He put up his hand flat in the air, and I pursed my lips together.
“Well, my bills are paid now,” I said after a moment of silence, bringing the conversation back to a point where I was somewhat functional. I pointed at the trail of unopened mail that ran twenty feet from the front door to the kitchen. “I’m not doing too bad.”
“Ryan’s offering you a job. Take it this time.” Finally, he had gotten to the point. I wasn’t living up to his standards, yet again. “He’s coming over, by the way, so move your ass and start cleaning.”
I groaned and began to slam the trash into my trash bag once again, cleaning off my countertops with a swipe of my forearm. “I didn’t even invite you dicks over!”
“No, you didn’t, but you keep saying you’re gonna come over to my place, and you don’t. You’ve no-showed three times. Including last night. Oh, don’t apologize. It’s okay,” he seethed before I even had time to feel bad about it, his words dripping with sarcasm.
“Look, Zach, the reason I don’t like working for Ryan is because he’s a dick-boss who’s on me to start at nine in the morning!” I whined. “Nine! Like what the fuck?”
“Most jobs start at nine,” he replied tersely. “It’s time to grow up and stop working stripper hours.”
“Why even be an investigator if I have to start at nine?” I asked wearily. “I like to move in the shadows,” I added, moving my hand up like I was trying to paint the grandiose life of a superhero. I ignored the fact that I had my camera currently full of photos of a husband who was banging all three of his secretaries, two of whom were very pregnant. Probably by him.
Zach rolled his eyes. “You’re never gonna settle down, never gonna have a happy life…” he moaned. He had been doing that with enthusiasm since he was diagnosed with cancer. He didn’t feel like he was going to make it, and he was going to leave me on this planet to die alone.
And I got it. I was also slightly concerned that I was going to die alone. I really had no prospects at all.
Honestly, the first and last person I was even attracted to was Murtagh, and I’d burned the shit out of that bridge. I’d left, leaving behind no note, no clues, no two-weeks notice, and my old phone number. Like a good girl, I went to restart in another city when I moved in with my brother and his then-boyfriend, Ryan, who quickly after became his husband. I lived with them for around three years before I moved out on my own.
“You need structure, Zazie,” Zach continued, apparently confusing my life with a stray alley cat’s. “You need firm routines.” He turned around as he was drying off the miraculously clean frying pan now. “Routines will make you feel safe, they’ll make you feel comfortable, and they’ll help ground you.”
“I don’t need a routine,” I sighed, puffing some hair out of my face. “I’m not a two-year-old, Zach.”
“No, two-year-olds are way cleaner than you,” Zach replied, as if that was the only thing that separated me from that age group, thereby concluding our conversation for five minutes. I could feel Zach silently judging me for completely trashing my apartment, too, but he had to have been used to it by now. I used to live with him, after all, and so my lifestyle habits should have come to him as no surprise.
Just after I went out to drop the trash down the chute, Zach’s husband showed up, hauling his tall body up the stairs with his briefcase hanging over his shoulder and wearing his tie out of order.
Despite how he acted when he was cleaning my apartment, my brother was a ray of sunshine on most days. Even when he was diagnosed with cancer, he was still very sweet and optimistic. Zach was a pediatric psychiatrist and was well-suited for the job. He always seemed to be uncannily aware of how everyone in the room felt at any given time. It was as if he could see the inner person inside, the person they were, and the person they wanted to be.
In fact, I think I was the only person in the entire world that Zach actually did judge…
I think that was what attracted him to Ryan. Or maybe that was what Ryan was attracted to about Zach. Ryan was normally the grumpiest man in the universe. I didn’t think I’d ever seen that man actually laugh, and I’d known him for ages now. His countenance was downright frightening and ominous. He fought with other lawyers all day and loved it. But Zach saw right through all of that and saw that Ryan was calm, intelligent, wise, generous, and that he had nothing but love for Zach. When I realized this, I finally came around to appreciating Ryan myself.
I also liked jumping on him to give him hugs, because he made a sound like a grumpy Muppet-bear until he was able to pry me off him.
“So, you’re going into work with me tomorrow, Piglet,” Ryan informed me in his usual gruff, no-nonsense way that he probably used at work so that people didn’t argue with him.
“I paid my bills!” I announced, throwing up my arms with frustration.
