It was rather ticklish business. Borrowing money to purchase tiles from Bobby’s Floor World in Cincinnati. Then selling them to Legree and Fornstall in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Then paying the shipper, then receiving payment from the buyer, then settling with the lender, all more or less simultaneously. Ticklish business indeed. Fortunately, John Schatz was a good tickler.
Their spa appointment was at two. In preparation they wore immense white robes, provided by the hotel. He held her around the waist. “Juan, stop!” Emily Cardoza said.
“Okay.” He released her.
“I didn’t mean stop completely.”
It was hard to know exactly what Ms. Cardoza wanted. Well, not that hard.
“Come here, Lover,” she said.
“In a moment. I have a call to make.” Schatz padded across the room in black Givenchy slippers, a gift from the ever-generous Emily. He examined an old-fashioned phone. This sat next to the vintage toaster. There was also an electric coffee percolator and a steel fan. The fan had a frayed cord. Schatz was a little afraid of this retro menagerie. He imagined the suite going up in flames at any minute.
The phone had a rotary dial. “Does this thing work?” He picked up the receiver.
“Dial zero. For the operator.”
“Do they still have those?”
“I don’t know.” She threw herself into a chair and plucked up an issue of Vogue Italia. Sometimes Schatz bored her. “I haven’t made a phone call in years.”
“But how do you contact people?”
“I don’t. My assistants do that.” It was true. A crack team of employees made sure Emily could pursue her passions without interference from the everyday world.
Schatz called New York. He waited as the dial went around and around. Lots of “8s” and “9s”. It took forever.
“Hello?” he said. “May I speak with Monsieur Johnson?” Hello sounded like ‘Allo’. Speak sounded like ‘zpeak’.
Emily raised one of her remarkable eyebrows.
“I zee. Excellent.”
Schatz hung up. It took a moment to untangle the cord. Old didn’t mean better, as far as he could see.
“What is all this talking?” she asked.
“Business,” he said.
“I trust profitable?”
“Always.”
“More profitable than I?” She stretched, invitingly, her narrow pantherish body.
His cell phone pinged. Glancing, he saw payment for 500,000 Portuguese tiles had been deposited in his account. “Nothing,” Mr. Schatz said, kneeling beside her, tickling an ankle, “is more profitable than you.”
Her toes curled. There are all kinds of tickles. “Oh, Juan…”
Richard Donnelly lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Classic flyover land. Which makes us feel just a little… superior. He publishes a weekly column of essays on the writing life at richarddonnelly.substack.com