Zooey turned to go, but stopped suddenly, spinning around daintily on her toes.

“By the way,” she started with a puzzled expression, “Have you seen any of my coffee mugs? I swear, every time I put one down it disappears into some sort of black hole.”

Fritz froze, terrified that he had been exposed. He willed his expressions to remain blank and unknowing of the accusations he was gathering from Zooey’s question.

“Nooooo,” he said, stressing the vowel suspiciously, “but I’ll look into it.” Zooey gave him a curious look, shrugged, and then continued her business. Fritz heaved a theatrical sigh of relief as he flopped down on the unmade bed to reexamine his approach.

He thought silently for a moment before realizing the only way the ease his mind would be to completely remove the collection from Zooey’s apartment. The only problem was, he had no working mode of transportation that didn’t require tokens or transfers.

There was only one other way to deflect suspicion.

Buy more coffee mugs.