Page 52 of Bears Behaving Badly
Annette smirked. “Soft. Not stupid. Remember?”
“Christ, the smirk.”
“I’ve earned this smirk.”
“So you have.”You’re even pretty when you’re being smug, dammit.
“Holy crap, you’re Batman!” Dev murmured, goggling at the studio setup. “How much money-dinero-argentdo youmake?”
Family money,she’d said.
“Remember? Don’t go into social services for the money.”
Pat helped with the renovations, she’d said. Which was why this was Pat’s studio and not “their” studio. What did the guy even do? Besides organic gardening? Which he’d started yesterday?
The building was corrugated galvanized steel on the outside, like any silo, with broad windows cut along the side, unlike any silo. The windows all faced south, keeping heating costs low (for Minnesota, at least), while the main floor had a small kitchen, a living–dining area with couch and chairs and table, and three deep cubbies in the side. Each held a twin mattress and two pillows, with a curtain that could be pulled for privacy.
The floor was crimson rubber, which was practicalandlooked nice, and the interior walls were painted tan with red accents. Virtually all the furniture was curved, and David couldn’t begin to think what that must have cost. Had to be custom, and he had an idea why a steel building meant solely to store grain in bulk had been refurbished like this, then beefed up with security.
Pat led them downstairs, and the space underground was large, open, and stark: just an architect’s table and some counter space (curved, of course). The first thing Pat had done was show Caro his sketch pads, easels, pens, pencils, chalks, paints, other paints, still more paints, and tons of other artist junk. “You’re welcome here to talk anytime,” he said, and Caro nodded and reached for a pad.
“What about me?”
“Dev, you’re welcome here also. I just didn’t know if you’d be into art.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Plus,” Pat added, “there’s the fact that you can talk, so you don’t have to rely on art supplies to get your point across.”
“I can do art! I will art all over this place if you don’t watch out.”
“Stop making art a verb,” Pat commanded. Meanwhile, Caro had scribbled something and showed it to him. Pat read it, reached forhispad, and wrote something in return.
“Why are you doing it that way?” Annette asked, puzzled. “You can talk.”
Pat sighed and wrote something that got a smirk out of Caro. He showed it to Annette:
This is why bears are goddamned savages.
And out loud: “It’s polite to talk to a guest in their own language. It’s called class, you shaggy-haired cretin.”
“I donothave… Well, I might be a bit overdue for a trim.”
“I’d hoped my residual class would have rubbed off on you—”
“Rude.”
“—but you just suck it in,” Pat lamented, “like a classless black hole from which nothing can escape, including class.”
“You’rea classless black hole,” she muttered like a kid getting ready to pout. David could guess what was bugging her. (Besides the stress of multiple attacks in a shockingly short time, which anyone would find off-putting.) He’d noticed over time that people liked Annette and trusted her, more or less on sight. Even the hardest, saddest survivors. Even the most nitpicky of supervisors. Even the most enraged of carfentanil users.
Caro, though? She was making Annette work for it.
“Well, your terrible plan worked, at least. What?” Pat asked. “Why are you looking at each other but not me?”
“Because as it turns out, our plan was moot.”
“Did you tell the dead guys in our kitchen it was moot?”
