She laughed riotously. "If your past boyfriends are any indication, he sounds like he’s just your type. When can I expect to hear about part two?"
"There’s not going to be any part two," I grumbled. "Look, the guy was hot. Muy hot. Tres hot. But I am not going there. I can tell he’d be way more trouble than even I could handle."
"Well that’s saying something."
Kristen had helped me through the fallout of some pretty bad choices in men. Cheaters, liars, and the occasional creep-job: the Riley Exes Hall of Fame would be a lousy place.
"So what else is new? How’s work going?" Kristen continued after I had been silent for a while.
"Crazier than usual. I just found out this morning that I’m going to be some band’s tour accountant for a few weeks. I just got this certification so I’m a little surprised they stuck me on an actual tour so fast."
"Whoa! That’s great news, congrats! I didn’t know you got certified in that. I’m not even sure I know what ‘tour accountant’ means. So you just manage their expenses and the money they make from their shows?"
"Yeah, basically. The band manager already put together a preliminary budget. In theory I’m just supposed to keep a close eye on the cash flow, make sure the band isn’t overspending, and all that jazz."
"You must be excited! Travel plus partying equals fun. Well, with maybe a little bit of work in between. Sounds like your ideal job."
I nodded. "That’s why I got certified! But we’ll see. I’m hopeful, but I’m imagining there’s going to be a lot less partying and a lot more of me jumping in front of guitars and amps to save them from being smashed on-stage. I’m probably gonna have to end up being a total hardass to make sure we stick to the budget."
"If anyone can do it, it’s you." I could practically hear her wink over the phone. "I’ve worked out with you, I know you worked hard for that hard ass."
She always knew just what to say to put a smile on my face. "You know it, Kris. But seriously, I feel like I’m in a little over my head. You’re in wealth management, got any tips for me?"
"Just one, and only because it’s you: mixing business with pleasure is never a good idea," she said, chuckling.
I heard Vincent’s voice protesting in the background—they’d mixed business and pleasure pretty frequently when they first met—and I laughed. "Don’t worry about me, Kris. Some of us have self-control."
We both erupted in giggles.
By the time we said our goodbyes and I hung up the phone, I was feeling much more relieved. The smoothie had erased my hangover and talking to Kristen always brightened up my day.
Now that my headache was cured, I headed back into my room to pack. After rummaging under my bed, I retrieved a suitcase emblazoned with Louis Vuitton logos and set it down in the middle of my room. The bag had been my best thrift store find in years: fifty dollars for a suitcase that originally cost thousands.
I wasn’t thrilled about Hans-Peterson sending me into a last minute assignment with almost no preparation, but I could definitely teach this band a thing or two about managing a budget.
Chapter Five
THE SUIT
"You the new suit?"
The guy questioning me looked like he walked right off the cover of a classic rock album: a tangle of brown curly hair with long sideburns, tinted sunglasses, a faded Led Zeppelin t-shirt, ripped jeans. The only modern thing on him was his an expensive pair of STAX headphones slung around his neck. He looked to be in his late twenties, maybe early thirties. In his hands, he fiddled around with an odd electronic device that looked like a baby monitor mixed with a Geiger counter.
"Yep, that’s me, Riley Hewitt, the new suit." As much as I would’ve preferred to have been dressed in casual attire in this summer heat, I was outside this Brooklyn warehouse on behalf of Hans-Peterson, so I was dressed in my typical work uniform: a pink blouse, blue pencil skirt with matching blazer, and black flats, with my hair pulled up in a tight bun. I’d be the first to admit that the outfit was better suited for an accounting convention than a rock concert tour.
"Riley the suit, I’m Chewie the drummer." He held out his hand and grinned like we were long-lost friends. A lingering odor of marijuana filled the air, and I suspected it came from him.
"Nice to meet you," I said, shaking what felt like a leathery baseball mitt.
Two roadies scurried past me on the sidewalk and tossed a few crates into the cargo bin of what must’ve been the Taj Mahal of buses. Three levels high, wide enough to take up a full lane, and covered in shimmering gold paint, it looked like a bus that had been injected with steroids and given to a Bond villain to dip in gold. How does that thing even fit under bridges?
When the initial awe wore off, numbers began swirling around in my head as I started considering how much it had to cost. Driver, fuel, maintenance, cleaning, and who knew what else. The tour projections in my files indicated profits, but I wondered how that was possible with such an expensive bus. The sight of the glittering behemoth left me with a nagging feeling that this assignment wasn’t going to be easy.
The next thing I knew, Chewie started moving the weird device up and down as if he was scanning me.
"Uh, what are you doing?" I said, instinctively holding up my hands behind my head. "This is all starting to feel a little like the TSA."
"You can leave your hands down," Chewie said nonchalantly. "I’m just checking you out for ghosts. This is the same detector Lady Dada uses when she goes on tour."
I looked at him skeptically. "That has to be a joke, right?"
"For fifty grand, it’d better not be a joke," he said, checking the read-out. "Nope, you’re cool. No ghosts here."
"So why would Lady Dada use a . . . wait, did you just say fifty grand?!" I couldn’t believe that bogus device had cost so much.
"Well yeah," Chewie said as if I was the dense one. "You get what you pay for. No way I’d go with one of those cheap detectors that couldn’t detect a ghost from a thetan. Only suckers would get those."
An anxious feeling settled in my stomach. "And did you use your own money, or did you expense it to the tour account?" Although I felt like an old teacher scolding a naughty child, I was here to do my job—not play Ghostbusters.
"Oh great, here it comes." He rolled his head back and groaned. "This was a legit band purchase. A rampant ghost on the loose will do a lot more damage than fifty grand and we don’t have ghost insurance."