Page 19 of The Best Part of Breaking Up

Teddy drags a hand over his face, as if on cue. “I need a drink. You guys want a drink?”

Let the record show it’s ten o’clock in the morning. This doesn’t stop my counterpart from saying, “You read my mind.”

Teddy leads us out of the office, wandering through the maze of wood-paneled hallways that connect recording spaces to control rooms, supply closets to mechanical storage, until we end up in a kitchen with pea green cabinets, cluttered formica countertops, and floral wallpaper that’s so outdated it could almost be considered cool. He pulls a bottle of whiskey out of the nearest cabinet and rummages around until he produces two rocks glasses. He plops them on the counter with a clink.

“It’s important that we stay focused on what you really want out of all this,” I remind him. “The studio. The house. Farkas.”

“I mean yeah, of course, the studio. The house is whatever. I don’t care about the house. This place is home. I’ve been here since I was seventeen. John Qualls left it to me when he died. You know I was behind the board when The Dead Canaries recorded Beyond Buffalo?”

“No shit,” Quentin muses. “What was that? Ninety one?”

“Eighty nine,” Teddy grins. “This place? I don’t know myself without this place. And Farkas. Geej always hated Farkas anyway, unless she was taking pictures with him for her Insta thing. Farkas doesn’t give two shits about the Insta thing.”

Quentin glances between us as Teddy pours them each three fingers of whiskey, no ice.

“Farkas?” he asks.

I nod to where the scraggy, half-naked, salt-and-pepper cat with giant yellow eyes is watching us from the edge of the counter. He looks more like an unkempt goblin than a housepet. Like Teddy, Farkas has practically lived his whole life here at Avid. I assume he must know how to walk, but each time I’ve been here he seems to pop up in random places, sitting perfectly still, eyeing me like he’s plotting my death. I’m convinced he may know how to teleport. Because of all this, I’ve kept a respectful distance. Quentin, apparently, has no such self-preservation instincts.

“Hey, Farkas,” he says, scratching the top of the goblin’s head. Farkas curls his lip, revealing one long canine tooth. I’m sure this means he’s about to take Quentin’s hand off, but instead, he makes a noise that vaguely resembles a purr.

Teddy laughs. “Dude. He likes you.”

“I’ve got a way with animals.”

I refrain from rolling my eyes. Of course I’m working with the fucking cat whisperer. At least Teddy seems enthused about it.

“Dude. So did the drummer from EZ Rocks,” he says. “When they recorded here a few years back, their drummer was obsessed with Farkas, kept trying to make me an offer on him. Cats like him have some sort of genetic mutation that gives them that chupacabra look, and apparently they’re kind of rare, ya know? Anyway they pack up their tour bus, get ready to pull out, and me and my crew are like, ‘Hold up, where’s the cat?’ We run out to the parking lot and find the EZ Rocks bus already pulling onto the street, but then all the sudden it stops, the door opens, and Fred Hare is holding Farkas.”

“Oh shit,” Quentin laughs.

“Right? Thankfully after a minute they let him go, this guy comes running towards me, and all fucking Fred can do is wink at me. Farkas came back with an EZ Rocks keychain on his collar. It was wild, dude. Worst practical joke ever. I thought he was gone!”

“That’s crazy as hell,” Quentin chortles appreciatively. “Scout’s honor, I won’t try to kidnap your cat.”

“Good,” Teddy says, pointing at him around the grip of his rocks glass. “We can still get along.”

“I hope we’ll all still be getting along after the next few weeks,” I offer, attempting to draw them back to the real reason we’re here. “Given that Gigi’s attorneys have made it clear they don’t intend to settle, we’re entering the discovery phase of the trial.”

“What does that mean, discovery?” Teddy asks.

“It means we’re now in the process of substantiating the claims we outlined in our countersuit. This is all pretty standard stuff, but I want you to know what to expect. We’ll have our financial team in here over the next couple of weeks to review your business assets, but we expect her lawyers to bring in their own experts as well. We’ve also begun preparing our interrogatories – those are the written questions that have to be answered under oath – based on our previous conversations and the information you’ve provided thus far. After that, we’ll move into depositions.”

“Hold on, I don’t want a bunch of people running in and out of here. This is a place of business.” (Teddy says, as he enjoys a glass of whiskey for breakfast.)

“We’ll do our best to keep the disruptions to a minimum,” I assure him.

As I’m saying this, an older woman wearing a dark tank top and skinny jeans wanders into the kitchen. She’s short and stocky, with a sleeve of faded tattoos on one arm and a wild mess of curls sprigging out in every direction.

“What’s with the suits?” she asks, as if we aren’t standing here.

“Stuff with Gigi,” Teddy says. “Guys, this is Zelda. She’s my left-hand man. She’ll help you with the financial stuff. Documents. Whatever you need.”

She raises an expertly penciled eyebrow at him before opening the fridge.

“Will I?” she says, her voice husky and unamused. “At what point do I get to tell them how glad I am that I never have to see that little two-timing twat running around here with her smartphone tripod, posing in my recording booth, ever again?”

Teddy takes a swig of whiskey, sucking his teeth.

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