All That Glitters - Chapter Four

 I've tackled a couple of short stories recently, and now I'm trying my hand at something a bit longer.  Every day this week I will drop one chapter of a five-chapter story I have written.  It is a globetrotting crime caper in which a young dreamer finds it difficult to distinguish fantasy from reality.  Here is the fourth part of "All That Glitters."

CHAPTER FOUR

Jan wasn’t sure what startled him awake: the brief, sudden sense of weightlessness, or the cold tile flooring making contact with his face. 

He heard Harald laughing in the kitchen, followed by a shushing from Samantha and a pair of pink bunny slippers approaching his face horizontally.  Jan slowly rearranged his posture to an upright position, as Sam brought him a cup of coffee.  

“There’s eggs and bacon on the table if you care to join us, lovey,” she said, cheeks pinkening and trying but failing to suppress a smirk.  

Jan looked at her quizzically.  “Thanks, I think.  What’s with the face?”

“Hmmmmm … you may want to um … take the dog for a walk,” she said, pointing with her eyes in the direction of his boxers.  Raising her left eyebrow and giving half a smile, she headed back to the kitchen.  “Woof woof,” she snickered playfully as she left the room.

Jan chuckled and shook his head.  Thank God for Harald and Sam.  Whenever he and his mom, or he and Max, weren’t getting along – which was often – he always had a safe place to stay.  He had met Harald while studying gemology; they were in the same class.  Had it really been five years ago?  

While Jan had been expelled, Harald had graduated and set up shop as an appraiser; his services had since been used multiple times on behalf of the Dallas Museum of Art.  Harald had met Samantha in her native England, where she was a presenter at Christie’s and he was doing some reconnaissance work for the museum.  She still worked for Christie’s, now in charge of acquisitions and loans for the Dallas branch of the company.  

They lived in a wisteria-covered old bungalow from the 1950s, with a carport on the side and a huge front yard with a small but classy Roman-style fountain in the middle.  A far cry from Jan’s house, a drab, unkempt Depression-era shack on a corner lot, that hadn’t been renovated in over forty years and looked it.  Jan sighed wistfully; he deserved so much better.  Why couldn’t he live in style like Harald and Sam?  Or better yet, have a fancy villa on the Italian Riviera, with maids and butlers catering to his every narcissistic whim?  With a personal helipad and a landing dock for the yachts of all the billionaires he would pal around with?  Maybe a menagerie of exotic animals roaming the verdant gardens; a couple of elephants and a giraffe would be nice.  And what about – 

“Hello?  Earth to Jan!”  The smack of Harald’s newspaper on his hand awakened Jan from his daydreaming.  “Honestly, man.  Where do you disappear to?”

“Sorry,” Jan murmured, a little miffed that his trance had been so violently shattered.  He looked up in time to catch a look passing between Harald and Sam.  “What?”

Harald cleared his throat.  “Well, um.  Sam here tells me that you did quite a number on the warehouse yesterday.”

“Did a number?  On a warehouse?” Jan repeated, a little confused.

“The, uh … incident with the backhoe?” Harald offered.  “Max, your boss, stepfather, whatever you want to call him.  He came into Sam’s office afterwards.”

“He seemed pretty livid, but he was apologizing profusely for your, what did he call it?  Shitty manchild fuckup, I think were the words he used,” Samantha continued, grinning.  “He certainly does have a way with the English language.”

“Okay, first of all, it was a mistake.  All right?” Jan said defensively.  “Shit happens sometimes.  I’m sorry.  Secondly, I don’t understand what you mean?  The building I hit – it’s a warehouse?”

“Yes, Jan.”  Sam sighed.  “You punctured the outer wall of one of our warehouses.  It’s kind of an overflow where we keep some of our lots.  Think of it as the midway step between appraisal and being auctioned off.”

Unable to help himself, Harald blurted out, “In fact, you know Elizabeth Taylor, the actress?  Christie’s is going to be putting her engagement ring, the Krupp Diamond, up for auction here in a couple of months!  I’ve seen it.  It’s gorgeous!”

“Is that right?” Jan murmured, eyes narrowing.

To be continued ...