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“I was just on the phone. What do you want? What’s wrong now?”
    Despite the puff of stress evident in his hair, Brian looked good. Better than I’d seen him look in months. Clean, shaved, dressed up. The last few months had aged him, left him looking a little wild around the edges, but this was the Brian I used to know. The one who loved to look good for women.
    Finally. Maybe things were starting to change for him.
    I dropped into the corner of the 1970s couch, the side that wasn’t half collapsing. It was maybe the ugliest couch in the world, brown and orange and covered with a flocked woodland scene long since worn threadbare. It had belonged to Brian’s father and wound up in the manager’s office after his death. It still smelled vaguely of 30 year old pot.
    Brian paced behind his desk. Sat down. Shuffled papers pointlessly from one pile to another, all the while sneaking glances at his phone where it had clattered to a stop against a stapler. Then he stood up and paced to the credenza, fiddled with the knobs on the record player, then back to his desk. In less than 60 seconds, Brian’s agitation even left me feeling slightly paranoid and jittery.
    “Wow, you look like your sister when I had to ban her from drinking espresso ever again. Everything ok?” I asked, glancing at the door as I mentioned Brian’s sister. Not by name, of course. Saying her name out loud was out of the question.
    “Kat.” Brian spat her name at one of the piles of papers he’d just relocated. “My personal pain in the ass. Rachel’s called in again. Last week it was Sarah. I’ve been calling Kat for weeks to help fill in. Every time I leave a message begging her to take a shift, do you think she has the decency to call back? Shit no. Ever since she skipped out on Halloween she’s been even more irresponsible and unreliable than before. I’m so tired of chasing after her. You call her. She always comes running for you. Get her ass in here.”
    Brian had always been slightly annoyed with having a little sister, like she was a new toy he hadn’t expected to be so busy and noisy and now that he had her he didn’t know how to turn her off. But before their father passed away it had been in the general, affectionate sort of way. There was a good five years between them, which was practically a life time when you’re young.
    When they got older, everything she did drove him crazy. When she got her eyebrow and bellybutton pierced. When she changed her mind and took them out. When she dyed pink streaks in her hair when she turned twenty-one. He complained about her boyfriends, her clothes, her job, her degree, her age. He hated when I gave her free drinks or took her side or invited her anywhere on purpose.
    But as much as he complained he also called to check on her when she lived in the dorms, threatened her boyfriends if they hurt her, and showed up to all her art shows.
    At her first gallery show when none of her pieces sold, he’d purchased three of them anonymously. He loved her more than he didn’t.
    But when their father died, his affection evaporated. I didn’t know if it was grief or what, but suddenly her life wasn’t charming, it was charmed and it wasn’t fair. Suddenly her happiness became a personal insult. I’d been sure this irrational anger was a phase, something Brian would get over when he moved on with his own life. Only he didn’t move on. He kept simmering in some defeat he didn’t want to talk about.
    “She doesn’t work here,” I carefully reminded him. “She’s not an employee and do you blame her for not answering your calls? All you do is yell at her. Let it go. Call someone else in.”
    “Boy has she got you on a leash. You and my father, man, she’s got the life doesn’t she? Bat those big eyes and everyone scrambles to take care of her.” Brian’s nostrils flared as he rambled. The very idea that anyone had me on a leash was amusingly ironic. He plowed forward undeterred. “It’s