“I fucking hate her.” Sidney hinged open one of the upper cabinets. The alcohol bottles were all evenly spaced, labels out, in keeping with serial killer fashion. She grabbed a beautiful-looking amber bottle. “The week before the wedding, she offered me a hundred K to back out.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
Sidney waved her arms around the house. “Bitch, please.”
Callie laughed. She had to hand it to Sidney for gaming the system. Why take a quick payday when she could milk the Tenant cash cow for as long as she stayed married to Andrew? Especially with the looming prospect of prison in Andrew’s future. It wasn’t a bad gamble.
“He’s such a fucking sycophant around his mother,” Sidney confided. “Like, with me, he’s all, like, I hate that fucking cunt I wish she’d die already. But then she walks into the room and he turns into this idiot mama’s boy.”
Callie felt a pang of sadness. The one thing she had accepted as gospel when she was babysitting Andrew was that Linda had loved her son unconditionally. The mother’s entire existence had been built around keeping him safe and trying to find a way to make their lives better.
“It’ s smart,” Callie said. “I mean, you don’t wanna piss her off if she’s giving you all of this.”
“It’s his anyway.” Sidney used her teeth to open the plastic seal on the bottle. Don Julio A?ejo, a sipping tequila. “Once the old bitch dies, he’s going to make some changes. She’s doing all this stupid shit like the internet never happened. It was his idea to go virtual when the pandemic hit.”
Callie gathered that a lot of people had gotten the brilliant idea to go virtual when the pandemic hit. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” Sidney said. “You want margaritas or straight?”
Callie grinned. “Both?”
Sidney laughed as she leaned down to find the blender. Her ass went out again. The girl was a walking soft porn photo shoot. “I swear to God, I am so fucking happy I ran into you. I was supposed to go to work today, but fuck that.”
“Where do you work?”
“I answer phones at the dealership, but that’s just so my parents will stop nagging me about spending the rest of my life in college. That’s how I met Andy.” If she realized this was the first time she’d actually said his name, Sidney didn’t show it. “We work at the same dealership.”
“Andy?” Callie said. “Sounds like a mama’s boy.”
“Right?” Sidney pushed one of the cabinet fronts. The door popped open. She scooped up shot and margarita glasses with the expertise of a bartender. Callie watched her move. She really was extraordinary. She had to wonder what the woman saw in Andrew. It had to be more than money.
Sidney plopped the glasses down on the counter. “I know you’re here for an interview, but what are you doing for work?”
Callie shrugged. “Nothing, really. My husband left me with enough money, but I know what happens when I have too much free time.”
“Speaking of which.” Sidney filled two shot glasses to the rim.
Callie held hers up in a toast, then took a sip while Sidney knocked hers back, which was something you could do when your neck wasn’t frozen at the base of your skull. She watched Sidney fill another shot. She was going for a third when Callie put her glass down for a refill.
“Oh fuck .” Sidney seemed to remember something. She pushed open another cabinet and found a round wooden container. She placed it on the counter, knocking off the lid. Then she licked her finger and stuck it inside to pull up tiny crystals of black salt. She wagged her eyebrows as she sucked it off the tip of her finger.
Their eyes met, and Callie forced herself to pull away. “I can’t remember the last time I saw a salt cellar.”
“Is that what it’s called?” Sidney went back to work. She pressed her hand against another cabinet front, but this time a long handle popped out. She opened the fridge door. “It was a wedding gift from one of Linda’s rich bitch friends. I looked it up online. Hand-carved Kenyan wood, whatever that is. Fucking thing cost three hundred dollars.”
Callie weighed the cellar in her palm. The salt was obsidian black and smelled faintly of charcoal. “What is this?”
“I dunno, some expensive shit from Hawaii. Costs more by weight than coke.” She turned, holding six limes between her hands. “Shit, I’d kill for some coke.”
Callie wasn’t going to disappoint. She reached into her purse and flashed two eight-balls.