A Good Operation
“Come on, Lonnie, it’s a good operation!”
“No, May, no, every time you rope me into one of your schemes it goes south, and I end up paying your bail. None of your plans ever work.”
“That’s not true, we did actually get cash from that poker game last November – my idea. And I was right about the rat.”
“Lotta good it did us, though, huh. You really fumbled that rat thing.”
“Sometimes, Lonnie, there is beauty in the world and you have to let it be free. You can’t bottle it up and sell to the highest bidder. Plus, those science guys aren’t exactly the most lucrative market if you know what I’m saying.”
“Yeah but we coulda had our names on some fancy building.”
“My name, thank you. I don’t remember you trouncing through New York sewers for the entire month of August.”
“That’s because I have to have a job to keep paying your bail”
“Touché.”
We both paused a minute to take a sip of our drinks – for him, a can of Coors Light; for me, a local IPA because I’m classy like that. In a lot of ways, Lonnie was probably the closest I’d ever get to the love of my life, which was unfortunate because he was as annoying and naggy as they came. Like your baby brother and great aunt rolled into one, not exactly a combination I was after.
He’d been more critical of all my ideas since I’d let that winged rat go free, but he just didn’t understand how good this idea was. The plan was perfect in its simplicity. My ex-cousin inherited an antique store in Saratoga and had no intention of running it, said I could pick through the place for anything I wanted. I told Lonnie with a little bit of elbow grease and a whole lotta good marketing tactics, we could sell enough of the old junk to rich folks in Williamsburg to pay our rent for the next three months. Or finally take that Florida trip I’d been aching for. So what if the store had been run by less-than-law-abiding citizens? Lonnie worried too much.
I broke the silence, finally. “How much would it hurt to just go take a look? Charlie’s got this whole building just full of shit. Maybe there are some priceless heirlooms, maybe it’s all just broken chairs and decorative plates. We won’t know until we see for ourselves.”
Lonnie sighed. “You really have a way of talking me into these things and I don’t appreciate it. I’m not committing to anything, okay? We’ll drive up and look around. That’s it.”
I took another long drink of my IPA to hide the grin spreading across my face. I always got him on board eventually. Just like that, we were off to the races.