Page 12 of Legacy of Smoke
I set it down in front of him, with a warning. “It might be warm. I think the refrigerator is fucked in this thing.”
“I’ll buy you one tomorrow, take a look at this and tell me what you think.” He unrolled the plans for a modern modular home with loft ceilings and a blocky, compact footprint.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“The builder asks four large for that.”
“As in four-hundred thousand, without a lot?”
“Yeah. I think it’s a scam. You’d have to use fucking imported cypress or some shit to justify that.”
I’d say. The whole place was less than fifteen-hundred square feet. I double-checked the plans and revised my estimate. It wasbarely over twelve hundred. “Two-twenty-five tops. That’s with real marble tile.”
Sprout smashed the papers, crumpling them. “I knew it.”
“Are you undercutting somebody?”
His eyes met mine. “Damn straight I am. Poppy doesn’t deserve to get shafted like this.” He smoothed out the wrinkles. “How do you think we could modify this enough so we don’t get sued for ripping off the design?”
I glanced at the designer and understood immediately why the price was what it was. “Are you planning on cedar?”
“Where it counts. She doesn’t need the whole thing built from it.”
I scratched my head. “Is this happening or just speculation?” I’d seen her house. It was cute, old, worn from years of being Pinner’s dumping ground, but still a decent house.
“It’s her dream home. She keeps buying plans and comparing her estimates with what we can do. I have to tell her every time it’s beyond her budget. Then she down-sizes and her dream gets smaller. It fucking sucks.” He took a long swig of the beer in front of him.
“Not to be an asshole or anything, but aren’t you fucking loaded?”
Sprout stuck a middle finger in the air. “That’s my wife’s money.”
I shut my trap and tried to figure out how in the hell my best friend, fuck up that he was, managed to snag an heiress. “Well, if she kicks you out, you can come live here…” There’s no way he’d get a single night’s sleep on the thing they called a bed here. I waited for my joke to sink in.
He kicked my boot. “Fucker. I’m the comedian around here, not you.” Then his smile turned devious. I braced for impact. “Unless you like being the little spoon.” He winked theatrically.
I laughed. It felt good to be swapping insults with him. “Hold out your hand.”
Sprout did as I asked. I made a show of measuring the length between his fingertips and thumb then curved the distance into circle. “It might fit around my dick when you reach around.”
He threw his bottle cap at me. “Motherfucker. I walked right into that. Damn it.”
“What ‘she like?”
“My wife?”
“No, what does Poppy like?” I tapped the wrinkled plans.
“Mid-century modern meets tropical bungalow. Lots of wood, lots of green, lots of space. She insists on two bedrooms. One for her, and one for the charity case.”
His phrasing caught my attention. “Wolf doesn’t like her sister either. Why is that?”
“She’s a user just like her mom.”
“Drugs?”
Sprout pished with a scowl. “Not just drugs. She’s the type of girl who finds the biggest loser to suck dry, and then dumps him for another loser. Bad news.”
“I overheard her mom is Jewel?”
