"Buy her flowers," Rusty had said. He was eating potato chips or something, the sound of crunching accompanying his voice down the phone line.

Danny made a left turn one-handed, palming the steering wheel around. "Somehow, I don't think a bunch of half-wilted daisies will make up for forgetting our anniversary."

"Again," Rusty added, in case Danny had forgotten.

"You're not helping," said Danny. He double-parked in front of the florist's shop and hopped out of the car. "What's the color for I'm-sorry-and-please-don't-kill-me?"

"Pink? No, purple." Now Rusty was slurping something loudly through a straw. Sounded like a soda. Or, knowing Rusty, a milkshake. How Rusty ate what he did and managed to not end up looking like Reuben, Danny will never know. "Wait. It's yellow."

"Make up your mind." Danny looked up at the fifteen-year-old girl behind the counter. She had a mouth full of braces and was reading a fashion magazine. "Two dozen tulips, please," he said to her.

"It's yellow. Like chickens, you know?" said Rusty, like that was supposed to make sense.

It ends up not making much of a difference, though, because Tess throws the yellow tulips back in his face and slams the door on him.

And Danny ends up drunk and depressed, lying on his back on Rusty's living room floor. "Is this wallowing? It feels like wallowing," Danny says.

"All you need is some mud and a sow or two," says Rusty. He pours himself some scotch and steps over Danny's prone body to sit down on the couch. "You could tell her. Stop sneaking around."

"Hi, honey. I'm a con man," says Danny, testing it out.

"I was talking more about the sleeping-with-my-best-friend part. But that could work, too," says Rusty. He sounds amused, and his eyes are fond as he looks down at Danny. "There's this job Reuben was telling me about. Smuggling Incan tribal masks. Or something like that."

"What?" Danny sits up, rubbing his temple.

"I can't even make this stuff up," says Rusty. His laughter is always just underneath the surface. Behind his smile, dancing in his eyes. He rarely laughs out loud. "You in?"

"You have to ask?" says Danny, snagging the scotch from Rusty's hand and swallowing it down. He doesn't feel better yet, but he will.