Page 3 of Gold Rush
“Thanks. I like to diversify.”
The mangey little office the man, Leo Bent, occupied most days at the very end of his cheapest and most dilapidated strip mall. The sign never read open and instead had a perpetual back in fifteen sign on the door. He was too busy in the back, counting his coins, to do business without a strict appointment.
“That’s it, that office there on the end,” Goldie said as they walked along the strip mall. “But don’t give it much of a look when we pass.”
“Sure. I’m looking at that nail place we just passed. Fifteen-dollar nails?”
“You don’t want them. They don’t clean their equipment.”
“How do you know?”
Goldie just smiled.
“Right,” Abs said, poking a long, thin finger into his side. “You do your research.” He then asked, “How long have you been scoping this place?”
“Five months, on and off, when I have some free time.”
“You never have free time. Your free time is rehearsing or working out.”
Goldie nodded but said, “When I can’t sleep, I walk. Mornings I don’t work out right off, because Cosmo needs me to spot him with the weights.”
“Okay, well, now where?”
“Down to the end of the next block, then around to get behind the strip mall. I need a better look at the doors, and with you here, you can scope the security.”
“Ooh, project. Awesome, but I should have worn more comfy shoes,” he said, and Goldie looked down to see pointy-toed boots.
“Abs…Jesus.”
“Well! I wore boring clothes! Did that have to extend to the shoes?”
They went down the next block, past an abandoned Blockbuster that had been seventeen other businesses since the nineties, when he’d first walked that neighborhood as a very little kid. He remembered the Blockbuster, though, the rows of his favorite cartoons.
“I used to live about ten blocks east of here,” he said to Abs. Abs was the only one who knew much about him. He didn’t open up to the others often. He just… didn’t.
“I know. You showed me the building once.”
“I forgot. I remember a grocery store up that street that we would go to, and the lady cashier would give me a cookie every time she saw me coming.”
“I love those kinds of people. I always thought I’d be one of them.”
“Yeah, I try, but we don’t get a lot of little kids that need that kind of thing at the pub.”
“True,” he said with a sigh. “I love you, Goldie. You know that, right?”
“I do. You’re my little brother now, and if you ever need a cookie, just let me know.”
“Ass,” Abs accused with a giggle.
They walked past a couple that were walking fast, both with backpacks and tattooed necks. The girl was tiny, and her boyfriend, whose hand tightened on hers the moment he saw Goldie and Abs, was huge. It was the het version of Goldie and Abs, and it made him laugh.
“What’s funny?”
“That would be us if you were a girl.”
“We’re not together,” Abs said. “Remember we tried?”
When they’d first become friends, they got a little drunk one night and made out, which nearly led to sex, but they’d snapped out of it in time to realize they didn’t feel that way about one another.
