Udolpho Plotinus is in back tuning up a fixie when you explain your situation. Greasy and surrounded by gleaming steel tools, he's all professionalism now, no palm reading or questions about your chakras. You hand him tools until he's done as he explains what he's doing. After he washes his hands in the little bathroom papered over in Greek astronomical treatises, he vaguely estimates your hours and signs a written promise that you're employed here.
But you can't just wander out now that you're here. You need to get your work email set up, then you and he Slack with a bunch of suppliers all over New England as he introduces you and promises that your performance "won't be like the last dude, that won't happen again, you gotta trust me." Then there's a long, boring three-way conversation (you say almost nothing) with a regular about his daughter's first year at UCLA. You escape early in the afternoon.
The days are getting lighter, but the sky is slate gray, the air bitter, when you reach the address Mr. Goultier gave you. As if by magic, one step takes you from a truck-choked commercial avenue into the snowy woods where a decaying gambrel squats among skeletal black trees. In summer, the foliage will hide it completely from the commercial street in one direction and the farmlands in the other. Only the brand-new pickup idling in the driveway hints that the cottage is something other than a ruin.
The truck door bangs open and a short, fat man jumps out: Mr. Goultier.
"Hey! Hey, you! Yeah, you, ugly! Are you Elton's friend?"
"I'm his fiancé. We're looking for a honeymoon hovel, and this looks perfect."
I sigh. "Yes. I am Elton's ugly friend."
I'm not stooping to this man's level. (That's not a short joke.) I just hand him my proof of employment.
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