Page 30 of Catch a Kiwi
She sighed. “Excuse me. Which of us is concussed? The truck. Sorry, the ute. On the one hand, it’s not a campervan. On the other hand, we can probably sleep in the back if we have to, it’s not approximately thirty-seven years old, the tires aren’t half bald, and zero warning lights went off on the drive down here, so I’d call it a net gain.”
I asked, “How much do I owe you?”
Roman pulled out a bill of sale and handed it over. “Seventy-nine hundred,” he said, and ate some more fish. Extremely casually.
The signature lines were blank. Also, he was listed as the seller.
“Where’s the original bill of sale?” I asked. “You know, from when you bought it?”
“It was a casual arrangement.”
“Awhat?I told you?—”
“All firms have excess equipment at times,” he said. “When that happens, they generally sell that equipment cheaply to a middleman, because they’re not in the equipment-selling business, and take the tax writeoff. I’d rather offer my employees the deal. It’s no skin off my nose, and it creates goodwill. Cheaper than bonuses, and Kiwis love a bargain. That was my first company, in fact. How I made my start. Bargains.co.nz. You could say I’m a pro at providing bargains. This time, I provided one to myself and passed it along to you.”
“That can’t be …”
“And yet it is. What d’you think happens when some firm goes bust? All their equipment and fixtures, right down to the wiring, have to go somewhere, which is why those Aeron chairs that cost them three thousand get unloaded at a hundred or less to somebody who resells them foronethousand. Somebody like, for example, me. In the past. All it took was a warehouse and some transport. Amazing that nobody got in there before me with the idea, but there you are, they didn’t. ‘One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.’ Dogen. Turns out that’s good business advice as well. You heard it here first.”
I looked at Delilah. Still innocently eating fish and chips. “Is that true?”
She shrugged. “How do I know? I just went along for the ride. He picked it up from some guy who works for him who’s getting a new truck, so I guess so. The guy was hot, by the way. Lots of muscles. Much manly.”
“The guy was thirty,” Roman said.
Delilah sighed. “As you’ve mentioned. Didn’t some monk ever point out that you can’t control everything and everybody? Wait—that’s all of Buddhism. Huh. Guess you’re not very good at it.”
“We only practice,” Roman said. “We do not perfect.”
Delilah narrowed her eyes at him. “Who said that?”
“Me,” he said, and ate another chip.
“All right,” I decided. “I’m accepting all this, because I can’t think of any reason you’d do me any more favors than you already have. Text your banking info to Delilah’s phone, and I’ll transfer the first payment. I can pay you five thousand now, and five hundred more every month.” I wasn’t going to worry about it. I wouldn’t have to pay for accommodation while we were here, and all I needed to do after that was survive. In that tent, or, of course, I could go for the software-engineer job after all. Why did I assume anybody was still looking for me? Why did I think they’d care?
Roman could probably help me with the job search, in fact. He wanted to be competent and helpful and powerful? There you go.
“Do that,” he said. “For my records. And then I’ll transfer it back to you so you can pay for everything you’ll need to clean this place. Text me if you need more. Get the wreckers out to pull the van up and get it out of here, and buy food as well, will you? I’ll be back next weekend to check how things are going, and it’ll help if there’s something reasonably healthy to eat. A bit much on the burgers and fish and chips lately.”
All my Spidey-senses were tingling, and I was completelyoff-balance, but I truly couldn’t work out what his nefarious purpose would be here, so maybe he was just rich and stupid. And lucky, of course, because you normally didn’t get rich by being stupid. Or he’d been rich to start with.
Stupid and lucky? Maybe. But that wasn’t how he seemed.
Roman
You’re thinking, why didn’t I check this woman out? What kind of a businessman was I?
I did check her out, and not just because Delilah hissed, “Much lying,” at me before heading off to bed again, and also, “but then, Summer’s been lying like crazy too. Why am I the only one who ever tells the truth? And, wait, the only one who’s always been poor? I think I just answered my own question.”
Which was why, when I was meant to be putting in a couple of long-delayed hours going over the profit projections for the new wind turbines, preparing for that decision on their problematic location, I was clicking away from the complicated spreadsheet that would help me make said decision, opening a browser window, and typing inSummer Adair UK.
You could say there were hits.
13
LISTENING TO VOICES
Roman
