That was the result of reading a damn bible of all things, Max.
At the end of our “meeting” last night, he’d left me with a folder the size of my old high school calculus book. Inside were pages of questions and answers—basically a biography—of the first twenty-nine years of Max’s life. It went over everything.
Everything.
I’d never known such intimate details about another person. Not even my grandma, the person I’d been closest to in my whole life.
I understood the point of it, but it still felt like some giant invasion of privacy. Like I was sitting behind a one-way mirror and observing someone else’s life.
I now knew what country he was from originally—Germany—what he did for a living—he was a day trader . . . whatever that was—and just about everything else. He’d grown up in Bavaria with his parents, Hans and Anya Sturm, and had one younger brother. He went to private school, was top of his class, and was captain of both the hockey and swimming team (which no doubt had exacerbated his arrogance, if not being the root of it), studied business on a student visa at not one, not two, but three Ivy League schools here in the States, before graduating with his doctorate at the age of twenty-four. So the arrogant a-hole was an overachiever too.
Awesome. Just fucking awesome.
Page after page it went on, until I flipped to the last section . . . which made me promptly slam the folder closed. There was such a thing as TMI, and he’d crossed it when listing his first sexual encounter as being with his former nanny at the ripe old age of fifteen. I couldn’t decide it I was more grossed out or appalled by that factoid.
I’d stayed up most of last night thumbing through the Encyclopedia Maximilian—save for that final part I’d sectioned off with imaginary red tape—so I didn’t know why I’d brought it into work with me tonight. I told myself it was so I could memorize as much of this stuff as I could. When we had to sit before the review board before he was issued his green card, our stories needed to be as watertight as a frog’s butt. That wasn’t really it though.
It had more to do with how fascinating I found his life. How astounding I found it that he wasn’t thirty and had lived as full a life as he had. How he’d already visited all seven continents, shaken hands with three Nobel Peace Prize winners, published a book on commodity trading, and attended Shakespeare in the Park every summer since he’d come to the States.
Sure, I was six years younger, but even if I turned on the turbo boosters and had an endless stream of money at my disposal, I’d be lucky to accomplish a tenth of what he had by his age.
Reading about his life—his accomplishments—made my life seem small and insignificant. I wasn’t ashamed of my life or anything, just kind of depressed that it amounted to so little after working so hard. Realizing how people could exert the same amount of effort and commitment and come out with two totally different results was sobering.
A pounding on the door of The Busy Bean made me jump so badly, I spilled the cup of coffee I’d been sipping while pouring over Max the Great’s life story.
I automatically reached for the bat the owner kept propped in the corner for these kinds of situations, also known as some bum, meth head, or thug looking to score a quick and easy hundred bucks from the till. This part of Portland wasn’t known for its low crime rates. That and the stand’s twenty-four-hour-a-day schedule equated to a higher than average robbery rate.
“Hey, fräulein. Open up the damn door already,” a familiar voice shouted with another pound.
I left the bat where it was and swallowed my heart back into my chest. I’d been working the night shift a few months ago when some kid in an ancient Oldsmobile rolled up to the window and demanded all of the money in the till. He said he had a gun, but I never saw it. He probably didn’t, but I wasn’t going to call his bluff over forty-one dollars.
“You know, second to cancer, heart disease is the leading cause of death in women,” I said after unlocking the cheap door and opening it. “Thank you for ensuring I’ll wind up in that statistic one day.”
Kate puckered her shocking pink lips at me before hopping inside. “Thank you for not answering your phone when I called you fifty thousand times today.”
I locked the door and grabbed a towel to mop up the spilled coffee dripping onto the floor. “Sorry. Kind of hard to answer a phone that’s been shut off due to non-payment.”
Kate was already rummaging through the fridge, digging around for the half and half to make her peach Italian soda. “Those corporate slugs. Always thinking of themselves first. Kind of like all of the men I’ve dated. Sure, we’ll give you that, if you give us this first.” Kate slammed the fridge door and made a face. “You know I’m always here whenever you’re ready to ask for help. I might not make the kind of bank the future Mr. Nina Burton does, but I make enough to keep a girl’s phone on.”
I wiped up the coffee on the counter first before kneeling beside the mess on the floor. “Thank you, but no. Besides, other than the bill collectors, you’re the only one who calls me and I see you almost every day anyway.”
“Not to mention you’ll be getting the hookup soon.” Kate glanced at me as she dished a scoop of ice into the largest cup we sold. “Cha-ching.”
I focused on getting every last drop cleaned up. “Yep.”
“How’s it working again? Five hundred grand now, five hundred after?”