Barking Up the Wrong Dead-End Street

Northwest Tall Trees / 2022 / Photo by RCS

Feeling like a loose wire in a lamp, sparking and jittery, I glanced at the time on my mobile. Seconds turned into minutes. Only four hours until I had to be gone. Packed a carry bag, checking if I had any cash reserves hidden away in shoeboxes I hadn’t peeked into a dozen times already. Cutting it close, but there’s enough time to get on the midnight bus to someplace far away – maybe Portland, possibly San Diego. Flip a quarter. Heads is a hotter destination on the beach, and tails is cool and rainy except in summertime. Probably a decade ago, I’d spent two years in Portland. Met an exotic dancer who performed in a Lumberjill outfit, which was an ultra-specific kink for outdoorsy guys. I was semi-outdoorsy, but we hit it off in the humor department and in other ways. Maybe Portland is my destination. I poured myself a shot of Jameson and heard my phone buzzing. Glanced at the screen. Luna Bell, my partner in crime. We fenced top of the line items in an upscale section of Bellevue, across the lake from Seattle. Adjacent to Medina, everyone was a multi-millionaire and wanted to impress their billionaire neighbors. We met a few people and talked a good game. We’d been lucky. Rarely pissing off the wrong client. Trouble was, rarely isn’t never. She texted me she’d tried to put out the fire. In this case, we’d overpriced almost-vintage Tiffany lamp knock-offs, and our buyer had a trained eye. Not so lucky. On top of that, our hothead buyer knew a guy who knew a guy. Luna’s text continued, “Word on the street, our buyers associate wants to deliver us a personalized message. Not the kind of message with flowers and a bow.” I’d already seen that movie on Netflix, and I had no reason to experience it in person. We’d gone and pissed off a hothead, and hotheads with big bucks are used to always getting their way. The ending of her text was our code for we had to split town and lay low, in another state. It read: “Looks like we were barking up the wrong dead-end street.”