ash-borden:
Ash followed her inside, looking pretty pleased with himself as she checked herself out of the conversation. He often seemed to mistake disgust and contempt for respect, or maybe they actually meant the same things to him.
He stopped short when she posed the question to him, his expression twisting a little. “Nobody bids me to do anything. Certainly not that blowhard.” He stepped inside the range with her, wondering how much trouble he would be in if he ‘accidentally’ shot her in the leg for suggesting such a thing.
“I’m an accountant. I was running the back-end of some local businesses but my current focus is trying to sort out Wyatt’s spending.” He eyed the sound-muffling headsets that they were meant to wear, wondering how often they sanitized them and who’s nasty heads they had been on before deciding that he’d rather die than wear them.
“What kind of person needs a column in their budget for pillows? A decent pillow should last you eighteen to thirty-six months, which, assuming you live until you’re ninety- which seems more than generous considering his lifestyle, and not counting the pillows that were provided for you throughout childhood and puberty by your parents, a man should only realistically need to buy some twenty-four pillows throughout his life. Twenty-four pillows over the span of seventy years isn’t a budget column of its own. That’s a household expense. At the very least it should be narrowed to household linens. No one should ever need so many pillows that it warrants its own fucking column.” He dropped the gun onto the small shelf in the lane, turning to face Effie as he waited for her like he hadn’t just unloaded this great burden on his mind. “On the bright side, my alimony checks are gonna be a retirement.”
Effie let out a long breath as Ash ranted, getting the feeling that this was going to be a long day. Personally she thought that being an accountant for someone like that would either be entertaining or maddening, depending on how you looked at it. Apparently Ash seemed to feel the latter, and found it equally distasteful that she eluded to him doing Wyatt’s biding, even though he admitted to being his accountant which was basically like being an employee.
“Maybe he’s building out a padded cell.” she offered jokingly, handing him a pair of the headsets even though she had a feeling he might refuse them.
