Chapter Text
Carmy kind of regrets rounding the corner into the office at the exact moment that he does.
“Fundamentally, tablecloths are not for decor. They’re not for selling some fancy shmancy bullshit for the sake of appearances. They protect the delicate furniture underneath. That’s what they fucking do. Even The Beef had tablecloths!”
Richie is standing in the middle of the office, gesturing wildly with his hands. From the office desk chair, Syd is blinking up at Richie like her brain might start leaking from her ears.
“What’s going on?” Carmy, regretfully, asks.
Syd turns pleading brown eyes on him.
“Cuz, can you talk some sense into your partner?” Richie says in a deceitfully reasonable tone, which suggests he’s being anything but reasonable.
“What’s happening is I’m three seconds from yeeting myself off of this chair and into the stratosphere,” Sydney intones, giving the chair a little backwards roll with her heels as if to demonstrate.
“Dramatic,” Richie scoffs, hands balled on his hips.
“Richie,” Sydney says, rolling her lips into her mouth. “Exactly what point are you trying to make, here?”
“My point is that we need them. Dickwads.”
“Need what?” Carmy asks.
“Tablecloths!” Richie all but explodes, hands launching into the air.
Carmy has a pounding headache. He has since 2:05 p.m. when he glanced up at the clock and realized that his vision was going a little blurry and wrong. He’d barely slept last night. And now it feels like there’s a little man banging on a drum in his head, liquifying his brain so that maybe it’ll actually start leaking from his ears soon.
Syd frowns. She’s chewing on ice cubes. It’s a new habit she’s picked up. Carmy looks at Syd and wants to jump inside her brain sometimes, just wants to know what it’s like to have healthy vices.
Crunch crunch crunch crunch.
“Okay, sure, Richie. Except we’re not planning on catering to Dracula. We’re trying to, like, do something new here. It’s supposed to be bold, but insightful. We want something that seems fresh. New. Tablecloths aren’t fresh,” Syd says.
“But they’re useful. And they look good,” says Richie, really hammering down.
“And they stain,” Syd points out, seeming like she’s nearing her wit’s end with him.
“Jesus Christ. Cousin, do you see? Do you see! Syd, why are you pushing back on this so much? I’m the one who’s gonna be in front of house all the time. I’m the one who has to see those ugly cedarwood tables you guys chose without informing anyone that such a decision was going to be made,” Richie rants.
“It’s oak,” Carmy says, raising his head from where it’s been hanging between his shoulders. His temples throb with it. Maybe he’ll go home later, push all of the notes and recipes and sketches he and Syd have cooked up onto the floor so he can sleep on his couch until 5 a.m. tomorrow, when he wakes up to do this all over again. Every time he falls into his bed, it’s like he alerts his brain that it’s time for his insomnia to kick into gear.
It’s brutal.
As fuck.
Richie waves a hand in exasperation and it nearly brushes Carmy’s nose.
There’s not enough space for all of them to be crammed into this office.
“Hey. Should we have made the office bigger?” Carmy asks Syd. Her gaze flicks from Richie to him. She takes a glance around.
“Probably,” she says. She puts another ice cube in her mouth. Crunch crunch crunch.
“Are you fucking dweebs even listening to me?”
Syd and Carmy just look at each other for a moment, all in sync. Lately, when he’s looking at her, she’s looking right back. He always finds himself thinking that’s one of the nice things about their decision to partner. Is that weird?
“I’m not. Are you?” Carmy asks her, re: entertaining another one of Richie’s interminable tirades.
“I want to rewind to five minutes ago when this conversation hadn’t even happened yet,” Syd says.
Carmy turns to Richie.
“We’re not getting tablecloths,” he says. “We’re not changing the tables. And they’re oak. So, yeah, I don’t know, spread the word if you have to.”
Richie twists his mouth into what could almost be a sneer. He backs out of the door with an insolent tilt to his shoulders and Carmy steps into the office to avoid being rammed into. Richie flips them both the bird as he goes. It’s completely incongruous with the suit he’s wearing, like most things Richie does.
Before he fully goes, though, Richie has one more bout of wisdom to impart.
“You know, ever since you made her a partner, I feel like no one else’s voice is really being heard around here, do you catch my drift?” is all Richie says. And then he leaves.
Carmy stares at the empty doorframe, brow furrowed.
“Uh? Wow,” Sydney says. “Did I do something recently to deserve that, or…?”
Carmy glances down at her. “... I don’t think so. Right?”
“I mean, like, I totally told him that he didn’t have to be here today. Just figured that Tiffany would be busy planning the wedding, so he’d get to see his kid more lately?” Sydney says.
“Well, wouldn’t Eva be in school right now anyway?” Carmy asks, glancing down at her.
Syd stares at him. “Carm. It’s Saturday.”
Carmy squints. That can’t be right.
“Since when?” he asks.
“Since yesterday was Friday?” she offers, eyebrows raised.
“Shit,” is all Carmy can say. The days are drifting by like river water under his feet, currency he’ll never get back.
“Have you been sleeping?” Sydney asks suspiciously. She’s the one squinting at him now.
“Yeah,” he lies as he watches her push her braids over her shoulder.
“Okay,” Sydney says dubiously. “How much?”
“I don’t know. Enough?” Carmy says, coming closer. “What’s with the third degree?”
She watches his hands almost mindlessly as he flips through a few papers on the desk. Invoice. Invoice. Another fucking invoice. Jesus. Her eyes follow his fingers as he pulls forth one after another. He wonders if she knows she does that.
“We’re running out of money,” he says needlessly.
“Yeah,” Syd says, blowing a long breath out through puffed cheeks.
“And Richie wants fucking tablecloths,” Carmy says, shaking his head incredulously.
Syd looks up dourly, but her dark eyes are somehow bright. “Can you believe the fuckin’ nerve of that guy?”
“No,” Carmy says, watching her right back.
Tablecloths, he scoffs internally as he looks into Sydney’s eyes. Nah. There’s nothing a little polish can’t fix.