Check Ins with Girlfriends and Staff

“Hey, what’s up?” I asked quickly as I answered my phone and stepped away from the maintenance staff. We’d been going over the table arrangements that needed to be deployed in the VIP ballrooms for the next bookings and as usual, I had one useful staffer and two useless ones, so they were going to take twice as long to do the job and then I’d have to come in and fix the corners that got cut.

“Is it safe to talk?” Cattie asked me.

I smiled a little and crossed the ballroom so the guys were sure not to overhear me. “It is now,” I said quietly.

“Good morning, Master,” Cattie chuckled warmly.

“Mmm, Catherine,” I sighed.

“Still getting used to it?” she asked.

“Getting used to how it makes me feel all warm and hungry for you,” I murmured.

“Well, you didn’t have to go and say that,” Cattie laughed. “Now I’m all warm and hungry for you.”

“OK, horndog,” Cassidy said in the background of the call. “If I have to listen to one side of this conversation I’m going to get all horny, and you won’t like me when I’m horny.”

I snorted, and Cattie blew a raspberry at my fiancee and then came back to the phone. “I’m calling because we are asking your permission to take dirty photos for you, Tiger,” Cattie said. “The botanical gardens were super cool, but Cass thinks we’ll get some really good normal photos for our socials at the Neon graveyard, but if we get the chance to do something cheeky…”

Smiling, I looked down at my dress shoes and shook my head. The Neon Graveyard was a sort of museum that collected all the big old signs that were decommissioned throughout the history of Las Vegas - it was a cool spot, and even cooler at night if they turned the signs on. A clear summery day wouldn’t be quite as dramatic, but they’d still get good shots.

“I give you my permission,” I said quietly. “But only if there is an almost-zero chance of you two being caught or spotted. I don’t want anyone else getting to see what’s all mine, and I definitely don’t want you two getting into trouble without me.”

“Thank you, Tiger,” Cattie said. “I promise to keep Cassidy in check.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who decided I wanted to take titty pics today,” Cassidy complained in the background.

“Yeah, but of the two of us, who is more likely to get caught?” Cattie asked her.

“You, because it’s harder for you to cover back up, Miss Tits McGee,” Cassidy said.

“Excuse me,” Cattie retorted. “I prefer Lady Tits McGee, Ruler of the Tit-Witch Forest, First of Her Name.”

“Well, excuse me, Lady McGee,” Cassidy laughed.

“Do you two need me for anything else?” I asked, rolling my eyes at their antics even over the phone. I hoped to God they were in the car and not in public.

“No, Master,” Cattie said. “Thank you. Love you.”

“Love you too,” I said.

We hung up and I headed back over towards the maintenance guys.

“Love you too,” one of them chuckled, clearly having seen my mouth forming the words since he couldn’t have heard me.

“I know, cringe,” I said. “But your Mom likes me to be sweet to her after I spend the night at her place.”

“Oooooh,” both of the other maintenance workers crowed, slapping their thighs and laughing at their buddy.

“Hey, I’m just saying, we can’t take personal calls while at work,” the maintenance worker said, trying to defend himself and try not to chuckle as well.

“That’s why they pay me the moderately-OK bucks,” I said. “Now come on, let’s get this room set up.

“If I were to kill Jonas, would you help me bury the body in the desert?”

I looked up from my laptop in alarm, my office phone pinched between my ear and my shoulder. “That should be it for now, Lucy,” I said. “I appreciate you being so detail-oriented, I’m sure it will make this whole process run smoothly.”

Tracy, my fellow Event Manager, made a face somewhere between ‘Oh, fuck, didn’t realise you were on the phone’ and ‘Oh, fuck, a ‘detail-oriented’ client. RIP.’ She didn’t hesitate to come into my office and sit down in one of the chairs in my little meeting/presentation area where I could host clients without being stuck behind my desk.

“I look forward to hearing your plans and seeing the quote, Robert,” Mrs Lucy Drake said. And then she hung up.

I blew out a long breath and set the phone down. “OK,” I said. “Thanks for that.”

“I didn’t know,” Tracy waved me off, already letting go of whatever flash of guilt she’d felt. “That one sounded like it’s going to be a pain.”

“I’m entirely sure she’s shopping around,” I shrugged. “I’ll modify the standard Wedding package and send it out to her, but I’m not chasing it. Especially since she’s the mother of the groom.”

“Oh,” Tracy grunted, then snorted and widened her eyes. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. There was a hierarchy of ‘bad clients’ when it came to weddings. Surprisingly, Bridezillas were rated as the third worst. Mother-of-the-Bride-zillas were second. Mother-of-the-Groom-zillas held the top sport with a bullet. The fact that Lucy Drake was shopping around for a venue, and was what we liked to call ‘detail-oriented’ as code for ‘a micromanaging pain in the ass,’ hinted heavily that she likely didn’t even have the permission of the couple to even be looking on their behalf. “Alright - what did Jonas do now?”

“What hasn’t he done?” Tracy grunted. “First off, FYI, he tried to just steamroll his way into all your bookings for last week and started touching things.”

I groaned. “Did anything go wrong?” I asked. The trip had been planned for months, but a couple of the weddings had been booked for over a year so once I’d known I wasn’t going to be available for the week I’d worked with the clients and my coworkers to make sure each event was getting covered by someone who wasn’t me.

“No calls to Doug,” Tracy said. “Just not… right, compared to how you run it. Rumour is that Dayana threatened to drown him in a chocolate fountain one night.”

“Well, to be fair, she does hate chocolate fountains,” I snorted. “But what’s going on now that makes him ‘bury him in the desert’ worthy?”

Tracy scoffed. “The budget shit,” she said, slouching down lower in the chair. Part of me was proud that I’d been able to create a working relationship with her that made her comfortable to talk openly and relaxed in my office - she was a fifty-year-old hippy at heart but loved art too much to not be steeped in the expense of it. She’d worked at a gallery in New York through her twenties and thirties, then DC in her forties before she got headhunted by the Vaso to come run their gallery. The fact that she got access to not just the funds to bring in interesting collections but also to sponsor artists on behalf of the Owner board as ‘investments,’ had been too good for her to pass up.

Of course, she had to work with us Neanderthals who didn’t understand half of her assurances that ‘It’s art and it’s beautiful, and yes it really is that expensive.’

“Don’t tell me he’s avoiding the cuts,” I said.

“No, but he got more of it shuffled over to me,” she sneered. “Fucking hell - Walt fucks up, we all pay for it. You’ve seen the damage?” I nodded, but she wasn’t even paying attention. “It’s ridiculous that the Gallery gets the shaft when I’m generating tax breaks and securing grants out the ass for this place. I’m fucking Gandalf and goddamn Pippin Took is… ugh!”

Tracy knew I was a nerd, and I appreciated the fact that she tried to find ways to relate to me. She wasn’t very good at it, but at least she tried.

“How bad is it?” I asked. “What’s the impact?”

She sighed and slouched even further, her back practically pressed to the seat. “I’m going to need to cut the Rosenberg collection, which was a big get even if they were charging me an arm and a leg. I’ll probably have to put off bringing over… two of the Sheikh collections from Abu Dhabi? By a couple of months. And there’s no way I can scrape together a ‘Students of Las Vegas’ exhibit when the only classes running are University summer programs.”

“What about glass?” I mused.

“What?”

“There’s that show on Netflix about glassblowers. Maybe see if there’s a glassblowing… group, I dunno, in the city that would be up for showing you their stuff and getting a free week or two to exhibit in a prestigious gallery.”

She gave me a hooded-lid look that said she wasn’t actually looking for me to problem-solve.

“So how exactly are you planning to **** him?” I asked, pivoting.

“Definitely not by chocolate fountain,” Tracy said, sitting back up. “Too sticky. I’m thinking I'll lure him up to the roof and push him off.”

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