Page 4

“That I’m alive?”

A loud yawn echoed across the phone. “Anyway, enough of your life. It makes me too depressed. Did you get all the signs yet?”

I glanced at the yards around me. “There are more?”

“According to my GPS, yes.”

“You’re wasting taxpayers’ money!”

He was silent and then said very slowly, “Jason, you need to get the final sign. The future of our very world depends on it!”

I climbed into my SUV and slammed the door. Sarcastic nightmare. “Goodbye, Max.”

“Yes!” he yelled. “Now you’ve got it. We’ll be saying sayonara to the planet Earth if you don’t go get that last sign.” He was exaggerating, being a pain in the ass, and costing taxpayers money. The guy literally just wanted to make a sign with his name on it. Apparently owning the biggest hotel empire in the world wasn’t enough — well that, and he said he was going to make my life hell until I settled down and found happiness, as if I wasn’t already happy! I clutched my phone tightly, nearly breaking it in half. I was DAMN happy. Damn it!

“Where is it?”

“How should I know? Do you really think I actually drive down there and put those little suckers in the ground? I could get a sliver, and those little shits hurt.”

“The horror.”

“No…” he sighed, completely ignoring me, “…I pay my new assistant to do that shit.”

Never thought I’d feel so sorry for an individual I’d never met.

“Okay fine, I’ll tell you.”

“Wait, I thought you didn’t know.”

“I lied.”

“Max!” A headache was coming on already; a Max-induced headache that I, and my circle of friends, had nicknamed a Maxache. Nothing worked on it, not even the strongest of drugs.

Alcohol took the edge off.

But being drunk at work was frowned upon.

“It’s a small red house just off Main and First. You can’t miss it. There’s a flag in the front yard, waving proud the red, white, and blue. I swear it just evokes feelings of patriotism.”

“The red house?” My stomach clenched. “With the flagpole and white porch?

“Hey!” Max said, a little too cheerfully. “You know it, then?”

“Max.” Yup, definitely a Maxache. “What the hell did you do?”

“Do?”

“She lives there.”

“She?”

“I refuse to say her name out loud.”

“Ah, it’s one of those Bloody Mary things, got it. All right then, have fun and take some pictures of the sign. I’m working on my Twitter campaign this afternoon.”

“Go to Hell, Max!”

I hung up.