Page 11 of Mane Rival in Store
“A leather jacket over a silk top. Black trousers. Combat boots. Gold earrings—hoops. Statement size. They caught the neon.”
Silence.
“Rune.”
“What?”
“You described her earrings.” Aspen’s voice had gone soft. Dangerous. The voice she used when she was about to say the thing he didn’t want to hear. “You noticed her earrings. You registered the way light hit her earrings. You are a man who has never commented on a woman’s accessories in his entire adult life, and you just told me her hoops caught the neon.”
“They were visually prominent. Any observer would—”
“You’re done.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“You’re done. You’re finished. This is over.” The scissors had stopped. Aspen’s full attention was on him now, and Aspen’s full attention was a force of nature—relentless and impossible to redirect. “How long did you talk to her?”
“Ninety seconds.”
“And you noticed her earrings in ninety seconds.”
“Aspen—”
“I’m booking a flight.”
“Do not book a flight.”
“I’m booking a flight and I’m bringing wine and I’m going to meet this woman and I’m going to—”
“Aspen. There is nothing to meet. She is a neighboring business owner. Our stores have incompatible aesthetics. The wall is inadequately soundproofed. That is the entirety of the situation.”
“You called me at eleven Stockholm time to tell me about inadequate soundproofing.”
The silence between them stretched. Through the office wall, Rune heard the bass from Villainette—louder now, as though Lark had not only declined to moderate the audio but had actively increased it. A low, dark track with a vocal line that vibrated through the plaster and into his sternum.
His hair stood on end.
“The soundproofing,” he said carefully, “is a legitimate concern.”
“I love you, brother.” Aspen’s voice was thick with glee. “I love you, and you are hopeless, and I am booking a flight. Goodnight.”
She hung up.
Rune set the phone on his desk. Stared at it. Stared at the wall that separated his back office from whatever room existed on the other side of Villainette’s layout. Through the plaster, muffled but unmistakable, he heard laughter. Bright, unguarded laughter—the sound of someone who treated joy as a default setting and had no idea it carried through walls.
He ran both hands through his hair. It refused to settle.
He straightened his jacket. Adjusted his cuffs. Checked his reflection in the dark surface of his laptop screen and confirmed that his expression was composed, neutral, betraying nothing—though his lion had not stopped pacing.
He walked back onto the floor. Dekel was helping a customer—an older gentleman examining a graded Silver Age edition through a loupe. The store was quiet. Ordered. Everything in its place.
Through the shared wall, the music thumped.
FOUR
RUNE
The smell of old paper and preservation chemicals had always steadied him.
