June Flash Lit #4 - Classy Is As Classy Does

I got the office because it was cheap.  The desk came with it, although given what the desk looked like, it was hard to say whether or not that was a feature.  The surface was reasonably flat, and there was a drawer for files and one for my flask.  I like being self-employed, because then I don’t get fired for day drinking.  Which is really the best time to drink, since in my line of work, I need to be more sober at night, when the spouses are out cheating.

Yep.  I’m a private investigator.  That’s a lot less trench coats and a lot more boring internet searches than any Bogart movie would lead you to believe, but there is still a fair amount of skulking around in cars taking long-lens photos of people who would rather you didn’t see what they were doing.  In most cases, I really don’t want to see it, either.  One way to describe my job is that I get paid to make really, really bad porn in which everything is consensual but the record.

Sometimes I get to search for long-lost children or parents, but mostly it’s cheating spouses, and I have yet to find one that wasn’t cheating.  Of course, by the time I get called in, it’s all about the divorce settlements.  My sample is skewed.  Still, I am not optimistic about relationships in general.

So maybe my up and down eyeballing of the woman in front of me had more skepticism than warmth in it, even though she was well worth eyeballing.  The package was expensive—the price of her handbag could save the world from starving for several years—but not flashy.  Sure, she went to Pilates and vacationed in the Hamptons, but that was just the care one takes of valuable objects.

I smoothed back my ponytail.  “What’s he done?” I said.

Her perfectly waxed eyebrows puckered.  “He?  There is no he.”

I did a quick rearrangement of my assumptions, followed by an even quicker flash of fantasy involving a cabana on the beach.  I smoothed my ponytail again and hoped that there wasn’t ketchup on my shirt.

“Let’s start over,” I said.  “Why are you here?”

“To give you these,” she said, sliding the manila envelope across the not-entirely clean desktop.

I slid the photos out of their paper sheath.  There I was, buck naked with a choice collection of cheating spouses.  The ones who had paid me to find out what their husbands were up to.  “It happens,” I said.  “Rebound.  What do you want me to do?”

“Oh,” she said.  “I’m not here to extort you.  I’m here to hire you.  I’d like to start with what you did in that top photo.”

“This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” I said.