“Old Mr. Rush isn’t exactly the best at keeping records. From what I understand, he mostly hires out the work done on the place, so he doesn’t personally check in very often. But just after he agreed to sell, and we had everything in place, papers signed and such, he had a stroke. He’s in a nursing home now, but unable to speak. However, he’ll be in terrific hands for the rest of his life. I made sure of it…in case you were going to tack on more proof I’m a complete asshole.”
But she couldn’t decipher most of what was coming out of Rick’s beautiful mouth. Instead, Poppy had to lean against the wall to keep from literally falling over. She’d only been gone four months, but it was as though she’d stepped into an alternate dimension.
“And everyone just said yippee skippee to relocating?” she squeaked in disbelief.
Rick leaned into the doorframe, his shoulder pressing against the cracked wood. “Well, not instantly, no. We invited everyone to a meeting at our offices, chatted with them, offered them the relocation package. It took a couple of months, but they eventually got pretty excited, once we tweaked and refined what they wanted. We have a lot of perks with this package.”
More to herself than to Rick, she muttered, “Huh. So you’re not booting people out on their ears while they cling to their Hummel collections.” Because Mrs. Marshall had a Hummel collection spanning an entire wall, and if push came to shove, she’d sit on a wrecking ball in protest while the building came down around her.
Rick looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’d never do something like that. I care about these people, Poppy. I treat them in the same way I’d want to be treated in my senior years. Why do you think I get invited over for kielbasa and sauerkraut?”
She knew she was harping, but she had to try to understand why no one had told him Lennox Griffith wasn’t the occupant of 7E. Had no one in the entire apartment building stood up for her? Mentioned she was out of town?
Even though she owed back rent, had she been gone just another week, she would have come home to a leveled lot of dirt and no one would have said a word.
“So no one said anything about this…Lennox?”
“We didn’t ask about Lennox. It’s not the job of the residents to keep track of the people in the building or the paperwork that goes with them, but we also assured them we’d contact everyone. And that’s what I’m doing right now, making one last attempt to find Lennox.” He pulled a set of keys from his pocket.
“You have keys to her apartment?”
“I do. So if we could get on with this—”
“Wait!” Poppy yelped, throwing a hand up in front of his face to prevent him from entering. She wanted to at least explain what he was stepping into.
Like the life-sized picture of her in her Daisy Dukes sprawled on the hood of an old Ford Granada, courtesy of Hank and Red. Her only defense being, it was her one claim to fame and when she realized she’d never be on a marquee or billboard in Times Square, she’d hung it up on the wall directly across from her doorway.
And just as she was about to do that, incident number two of Here, Have Some Uncontrollable Magic, occurred.
There was a rumble of thunder, low and distant, the floor beneath her feet quivered a smidge, and then—wham.
Rick turned to stone.
“Ahahahahahahaha!” Nina cackled as she eyeballed Rick’s form, etched in stone, as perfect as it had been in life. Each line in his face, each fissure had Poppy’s heart crashing against her ribs for fear he’d crack in half.
Nina reached out to ping his cheek by flicking her finger, but Poppy caught her. “No! What if he cracks?”
As she’d prayed all her neighbors were napping or out, Poppy had texted Nina and crew to come help, with trembling fingers and a pulse beating so hard, she thought it might break her eardrums.
From Nina’s shoulder, Calamity yawned wide, assessing. “Whelp, this is some shit, huh?”
“Some shit?” Poppy almost screeched, rubbing the spot on her wrist where her familiar brand had creepily gone red and itchy. “Some shit? Are you kidding me? This is the shit, Calamity. The shittiest shit. How do we fix this? We have to fix this!”
Calamity scurried down along Nina’s body until she was at Rick’s feet, circling and sniffing. “Good question. But be very, very careful. If you break him, well, let’s just say, Rick won’t ever be the same. Wink-wink.”
Break him? Oh, sweet and sour, that was really a thing?
Wanda reached for her just as Poppy sucked in a whoosh of air, steadying her, as she had from the very start. “Everyone just relax,” she said so complacently, it only ratcheted up Poppy’s fear.
“Relax? Are you kidding me? He’s a statue! Like, an honest-to-God garden ornament! That’s not something you see every day, Wanda!” Poppy knew her hysteria was mounting by the second, but holy cats. Rick was a statue!