“Yes it did,” Victor said, doing something to Andy under the table.
Andy stretched elaborately, settling one arm over Victor’s shoulders, and murmured something to him that Rory and Dana couldn’t hear. Then he said,
“It’ll be back eventually. I’m doing our routine for ‘Spy Games’ in drag so the next couple of months will be about less hair, not more.” Victor snickered. “Temporarily, catnip. I promise.”
“Victor, quit molesting Andy, the kids can see you.” Both of the small dogs were on the bench with Rory and Dana. Spike was on a cushion not far away. Dana put her hands over the dachshund’s eyes. “Don’t look, Oscar.
Guys, we may have to ask you to assign us characters for the Shakespeare thing. We cannot get our story straight.” All of them seemed to hear that at the same time. All of them started laughing. After a minute, she said, “Okay
yes. Phenomenally poor choice of words. Could you?”
“If you really want us to, yes of course,” Andy said. “I promise it won’t be straight.” He seemed to lose focus for a moment. Then he blinked and said, “So guess what new craziness we’re launching.”
“Jesus, you don’t have enough to do?” Rory drank some coffee, watching them. Whatever they’d been talking about in the car before they arrived was obviously still on their minds. “And speaking of enough to do, would you like to be excused for a few minutes? Because you could go out back in the bamboo grove and do whatever you’re already halfway doing, and we could get the kitchen cleaned up.”
“And then we could have a conversation in which everyone is paying attention.” Dana wanted to be annoyed but she couldn’t. Victor was giggling, Andy was grinning, and the whole vibe was so ridiculously normal that she finally got over that summer’s scare. It was one too many, she realized.
They’d almost lost Victor for real, could have lost both of them, and not until Victor’s panicked text came in had she really understood how vital that relationship was to her own sense of well-being. “Rory, my darling little cherubim, let’s address some housekeeping. Gentlemen, get out or get yourselves in order.”
Victor and Andy took a second to silently consult, silently agree ‘later,’
and separate, following the women to the kitchen. “Give us something to do,”
Andy said. “That isn’t that.”
Dana laughed under her breath and patted her wife’s ass. “Honey, take a load off. You did all the hard work. I’ll wash, Andy can dry, and Victor can tell us more about how they’re utterly failing at being on vacation.” Rory went to sit in the reading chair, instantly joined by Spike the cat.
Both men were smiling. Victor said, “We are totally failing. Neither of us has ever done it. Maybe by the time we go to Europe we’ll figure it out.”
He thought through the list of projects, most of which their friends already knew about, and remembered what they hadn’t mentioned yet. “On top of everything else, we’re trying to buy the property on the other side of us.”
“No shit!” Rory was fully surprised. “I thought you would have been sick and tired of real-estate shenanigans after you finally got that triplex squared away. I mean, we did that renovation last year for the gang in the big house and I never want to see another contractor again.” Their cottage was on the same lot as a full-sized house, currently shared by two families.
“Well, actually.” Andy wiped a wineglass, hung it in the under-cabinet rack, and went on. “The whole triplex operation was so painless, it’s almost like it never happened. Paige was on it from day one, Sharon was a very capable second brain, we weren’t even there for six weeks, and by the time we were really paying attention the worst of it was over. But Victor had this idea while we were on location.”
“It had to do with a pool,” Victor said, and both women made sounds of instant understanding. “Because we were both loving the hotel pools this summer. And that house is an eyesore.”
Dana said, “Yes it is. And you clearly can’t put a pool in your own backyard. Yours is party central.”
“Right.” Andy hung up the last wineglass. He and Dana had always been good at cleanup duty. “You know Elliott, Vince’s friend, the real-estate guy?
He handled both our other things. Anyway we asked him to bloodhound the situation and see if the owner had any interest in selling.” He eyed the plate of cookies, took one for himself, and offered the plate to Victor. Victor delivered a cookie to Rory, handed one to Dana, and set the plate down with a sad look. Andy stifled a laugh and did not say ‘you know we could burn that off later.’
“And?” Dana ate the cookie, momentarily regretted it, decided it was worth it.
“And it’s this older couple, not super old but retired, they’ve lived there for thirty years. They have a kid who lives in Monterey and wants them to move up there, but they would have to build something. And the kid doesn’t have room for them to live with him and store their stuff. So they’re looking at renting in a very not-inexpensive market for however long it takes them to build in a very not-inexpensive market.” Andy took a breath.
Victor finished the story. “So Elliott made the approach and they told him all this. He said, how much would you need, because my client is motivated. And they said, is it the guys next door?”
“Uh-oh.” Rory glanced at Dana.
“No, it was good. Elliott said he didn’t answer straight off, because we asked him not to say it was us. But instead of hanging up on him they said, because if it’s those guys we wouldn’t mind seeing the place go to them. So let us get back to
