Page 74 of Dozer

Marco made me drink some wine and promise not to tell anyone’s secrets, and then he had me try to write on a paper that Dozer is a werewolf, and I couldn’t. I mean, I physically couldn’t write the words I was thinking. It freaked me out, but the entire evening did, and it was hard to be evenmorefreaked out.

True to his word, Dozer took me home, went into his basement, and came out with forty-eight grand in hundreds, and two grand in twenties. He opened a safe I hadn’t realized existed behind a picture in the kitchen, telling me the combination as he punched it in. It held a gun and extra magazines. He removed them, put them on the kitchen table, and stacked the cash he’d retrieved from the basement in their place.

He closed the safe, told me the combination again, and motioned for me to open it. Once I had it open again, he told me, “Each pair of numbers adds up to nine.” I ran through the combination in my head – 184572 — and realized he was right. “It’s the most extreme-difference numbers, and then the two mid numbers, both with the lower number first, and then finally the second most extreme numbers but with the higher number first. Don’t ever explain how I came about choosing this sequence, please.”

I understood this was like a key to figuring his other passwords out, and it was a huge amount of trust, but I couldonly nod because I had no idea what to say. He continued without expecting me to, thankfully.

“You’ll be safe here. The neighborhood is patrolled. If you want to learn how to shoot, I’ll set it up with Horse or Nix, whoever you’re more comfortable with, for them to teach you in the range. I’d wanted to do that, but if you’re going to be out and about without me a lot, it’s better you learn sooner rather than later. Once they tell me you know how to handle a weapon safely, I’ll show you where all the guns are hidden.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “It’s wrong for you to have to leave.”

“It’s your house, too. I won’t stay gone forever, but we’ll talk in a few days and see where you are. Text me and let me know where and when, and I’ll be there.”

He went to the bedroom and I heard him in his closet, and then he returned with a duffel, kissed my forehead, told me he loved me, and he was gone.

It was late, but I didn’t want to sleep in the bed we’d shared. I opened a bottle of wine, took it along with my wineglass downstairs, and settled into a recliner in the game room, which I’d have called a den, except he’d already named it, and when I first moved in I wasn’t in a position to tell him he’d named a room wrong.

I sat with my wine and watched the first couple of episodes of Friends, and marveled at how young they were, just living their lives without knowing what came next. I walked Champ every couple of hours, and I was sad he had to sleep in his crate, but he didn’t know not to eat the furniture yet.

Champ woke me a whole bunch of times during the night, and I took him outside to potty, gave him a treat when he did, and then brought him back inside and put him in his crate.

I awoke the next morning, still in the recliner, and took him outside yet again. While we played, I considered what to do with my day, because it wasmyday, for me to decide what I wanted todo, and I suddenly didn’t know what to do with myself. I mean, other than playing with Champ, but I needed to get away some, too.

I wasn’t terribly hungry, so I got dressed and drove to the mall in the Ramcharger, which I’d been driving back and forth to work when my schedule conflicted with Dozer’s. I looked at curtains, but nothing struck me as something I had to buy, so I went to a furniture store, and then another, and another. One of the salespeople at this store was talkative, and when she heard I was looking for curtains but hadn’t liked anything at the mall, she told me a dozen other places I could shop for them.

And then we stepped into one of the model rooms and I fell in love with it. The upholstered pieces, the occasional tables, the lamps, even the rug on the floor. Everything worked together like a work of art. I’d brought ten thousand dollars with me, but there was no price to buy the whole room with one dollar amount, like there’d been at one of the other stores. When I asked her how much for everything in the room, it’d taken her nearly fifteen minutes to look everything up and add it all together.

And I didn’t have enough cash.

“Any chance we can write it all up, I can give you ten grand, and then go home and get more cash, and pay the rest in about an hour and a half?”

“Or you can apply for credit, and you can hold onto your cash.”

I shook my head. “I don’t go into debt. I save my money for what I want to buy.”

“You can walk out the door with the accessories and pillows, but everything else will come from the warehouse — you aren’t buying these pieces, but ordering new stuff other people haven’t sat on. Why don’t we write up the occasional tables and accessories, you can go home with the accessories, and thenreturn with more cash and place an order for the upholstered items.”

“How do I get rid of the furniture I have now?”

“If you don’t have a friend who needs free furniture, there are several charitable organizations who’ll come to your home and carry it away.” She walked to the computer, got a sticky note, wrote something on it, and handed it to me. “This one spends a great deal of their donations on actually helping people, but if you have a charity you prefer, you should call and offer it to them.”

“I live in a gated neighborhood,” I told the woman. “Your delivery driver will need to call a phone number once they’re in front of the gate in order to be allowed entry.”

The Ramcharger had something that talked to the gate, so it opened and closed when I drove up to it. Everyone without a gadget had to call a number that went to the control room to get inorout.

I went home, spent an hour with Champ, got more cash, went back to the furniture store, ordered the rest of the furniture, got it all scheduled to be delivered the following Tuesday, and then texted Brain that I had a delivery coming, and told him the window they’d given me. I also asked him if they had a place to send the furniture we won’t need anymore, and he said the MC helps women at the homeless shelter when they move out, and that he’d arrange for someone to come get it Tuesday morning before the new stuff was delivered.

And then I went to a nail place and paid for a mani-pedi.

And then I called Lexi, Bubble’s ol’lady, to see if she could work me in to do my hair in the next couple of days.

“What are you thinking?” she asked. “Just a cut, or do you want to go crazy and add some color?”

“I want extensions. The opposite of a cut.” I texted her a picture, and she said, “That’s a six-hour job, and even with yourdiscount, it’s going to be around three thousand dollars for hair that’ll last, and you don’t want to go cheap on the hair. I can go in early and handle a cut or a dye job tomorrow, if you want something soon, but finding a six-hour time slot is going to mean at least three or four weeks out. Maybe more. I can look and find a time slot if you’re still interested in doing it then.”

When I didn’t say anything, she said, “My first appointment is at ten tomorrow morning. If you want to get there at nine, I can come in early and give you a cut that’ll give you this look around your face, and I can show you how to use clip-in extensions. If you want to go that route, I can go with you to the supply house during my lunch break. You can’t get in without a card, but you’ll want help picking the right ones for your length, hair texture, and hair color, so it’s best I go with you, anyway.”

“That would be great, Lexi. Thank you.”

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