ASB was Aubrey Sutton-Braithwaite, widely considered by Snapp employees as the world’s worst human. He was twenty-nine years old and had never worked a day in his life, thanks to his hedge-fund-manager father. But that didn’t mean Aubrey didn’t have his own colorful career. He’d been a suspect in a series of arsons in the Hamptons. He’d been arrested for DUIs on multiple occasions. At least two women had restraining orders against him. Of course he’d never spent a day in jail. Aubrey was like a free-floating cancer cell, wreaking havoc wherever he landed, but suffering no ill consequences himself. He was always home when I went to his apartment. That day was no exception.

“Deirdre.” He looked me over from head to toe when he answered the door. Aubrey’s eyes were small and close-set, which made him appear shifty. Whenever the reboot of America’s Most Wanted launched, there’d be an episode devoted entirely to his exploits. “Nice boots. You come here from your dominatrix job?”

“Fuck off, Aubrey.” Snapp had already cycled through a dozen female curators who’d quit instead of setting foot in Aubrey’s lair again. The world’s worst human wouldn’t allow Snapp to send him a male curator, and the company pretended it wasn’t enabling sexual harassment. It was all about the customer’s happiness, after all. Instead of responsibly cutting all ties with Aubrey, my boss sent me when he could. I tolerated it because I made triple my usual pay, plus I knew I could kick Aubrey’s ass if I had to. Just don’t turn your back on him was T-Rex’s advice, as if I were dealing with a wild animal.

I stormed into the apartment, dumping the four bags the marathoner had dropped off on the Italian marble floor of the kitchen. Aubrey’s place was a cautionary tale. You could take a gorgeous apartment with towering ceilings, fluted columns, and crown moldings, and slap up some very pricey artwork—a Rothko hung in the living room, giving the city view serious competition for eyeballs—but all it took was the stale smell of sweat, week-old pizza, and pot to give it that overpowering eau de frat house. It didn’t help that dirty towels, old gym clothes, and sporting gear sprouted like toadstools from every flat surface.

“Your cleaning lady quit again?” I asked.

He grunted in response. That was as good as our exchanges ever got. As much as I wanted to run out of there, I had to work. Aubrey stood four feet away from me, arms crossed, trying to make his stringy biceps pop. He was lean and lanky, with the kind of body you might get from being a mildly ambitious gym rat who sampled illegal performance enhancers.

“You got the condoms?” he asked.

“If you ordered them, they’re here.”