Frank is about to call Michael - Mikey - to make sure he has the right address, when the door finally opens. The man standing inside looks a little bit like a mad scientist, if Dr. Frankenstein had traded his lab coat for black jeans and a purple My Little Pony shirt.
Frank's pretty sure that this is Mikey's brother - who else could it be? - but the guy is just staring at him, like Frank's a space alien or something similarly strange. "Gerard Way? I'm Frank Iero - the accountant your brother hired." Then again, to him, maybe accountants are space aliens.
That seems to snap Gerard out of it, and he nods. "Right, right, well, come on in. I don't really think I need one of you guys, but Mikey insisted and, you know. Whatever."
He gestures as he talked, his cigarette leaving a trail of smoke in the air. "Should I give you like, a tour or something?"
Frank shakes his head, which always makes his glasses slightly askew; he pushes them back into place with the back of his hand. "I don't think that will be necessary - if you can just show me where you keep your financial information, that'll be fine."
Frank doesn't bother pointing out that he doesn't need a tour because the apartment is basically one giant room with a mattress in one corner and art supplies everywhere else. There are two doors, which he's betting lead to a closet and the bathroom.
Sure enough, Gerard opens the door on the far wall to reveal a closet, which he rifles through, muttering to himself.
"A ha!" he cries out, emerging with a...gallon of paint?
"Please tell me that's empty," Frank says before he can stop himself. Gerard doesn't seem like the kind of guy that would complain to Frank's firm about him being mouthy, but it's still probably better if he doesn't test it.
Gerard shakes his head. "It's not empty; this is where all my stuff is. Like, business stuff and whatever."
Of course.
There really isn't any room in Gerard's place for Frank to work - but he's not convinced that the paint can holds all the information he's going to need, so he's hesitant about returning to the office. Instead, Gerard rigs up a table with plywood and milk crates next to his bed.
"Sorry," he says, "I had chairs once, I think? But then I was doing these sculptures and they must have been cannibalized." He shrugs. "It's not like I have a whole lot of visitors anyway."
So Frank sits on the edge of Gerard's bed, hunched over the makeshift table, and starts sorting through the paint can, operating on the assumption that it's like fossils or geology or something, with the new stuff on the top and the old stuff on the bottom.
That's a bit optimistic, as it turns out. Two hours later, he has a series of semi-organized piles and a pounding headache.
"I'm going to get some coffee," he says, standing up carefully. "Did you want anything?"
"Oooh, yes please. I just- hold on," Gerard says, digging through a pile of clothes on the floor.
Frank was planning to just ask for his order, but Gerard's already pulling on his jacket and a very green scarf. Frank thinks it might have feathers, but he's afraid of looking at it for long enough to find out. His optometrist is always on his case about abusing his eyes, anyway, no need to make it worse.
*
Frank's tie is more out of place in the hipster coffee shop down the street than Gerard's scarf thing, but he's okay with that - all he wants is coffee.
"Jon," Gerard sighs, "I need two lattes as big as my head."
"Two, Gerard? You're going to give your self a heart attack and no one will know except me, because you won't come in here for three days."
