Chapter 14

Something turned over behind my ribs, once, and I did not let it reach my face.

I turned my head and looked at him until he lifted both hands and stepped back and put the bread down on the board, and he said, "Joking. I'm joking. Consider the bread surrendered. My hands are where you can see them."

Then his eyes went to the stove, where the pan was hot and the board was loaded and I had already laid out more than I eat on any weekday, and the grin came back over his face like weather.

"You take a bar and a coffee and eat it standing over the sink with a book in your hand. What's all this? You making me a portion?"

I put an elbow into his ribs on my way past, not gently, and he folded over and made a noise. "I trained," I said. "I need to eat more than a bar."

The eggs went in and took the heat and I moved them with the flat of the fork, and in the second pan the bread went down in butter and I pressed it flat, and I sliced the tomatoes thin because they would go soft if I left them another day.

Then the phone buzzed on the counter and I wiped my hands on the towel before I picked it up, and for half a second, no longer, I noticed that I had wanted it to be somebody and noticed how much I had wanted it, before I saw the group chat and something settled a level lower than it had been.

Des had tagged us both. When are you two coming back, he had written. I've got a thing in the city and I need somebody beside me who looks expensive.

Four months, Felix typed, with his mouth full. Term doesn't finish until June. Is the thing going to collapse without us?

Four months. Four. Then a row of skulls. Fly back for a weekend. One weekend. It's been nearly two months since the three of us stood in the same room and I'm starting to feel like a man with no friends and a very nice club.

I'm in. Up to Silas.

I stood there with my thumb on the screen and read the word again.

Going back isn't complicated and it's never cost me anything, but now it opened a door I would rather have kept shut: a flight, a terminal, a car, and then her on the other side of it, close enough to touch, and close enough to end up disappointed.

Talking is talking. It's easy, it costs me nothing but sleep, and showing up at her door would make me the one who moved first — and I have never been the one who moved first.

Will see, I typed, with my face flat, and I put the phone down.

I ate standing up after all, out of the pan, in bites that were too large, and Felix stayed where he was, one hip against the counter, watching my fork go up and down with the patient attention of a man who had decided he was going to get something before he left the room.

"Come back with me," he said. "Not forever. One weekend. Des has his thing, you show your face at it, and I get on a plane to New York." He reached over the board, and I moved the board. "You could see yours while you're there. I see mine, you see yours. Two birds."

"There's nothing of mine in New York."

"There's a woman in New York who has kept you on your phone until two in the morning for weeks," Felix said, with great politeness, as though correcting a small factual error. "If there's nothing there, then come for the food. I'll buy you dinner."

"Go away."

He did not go away. He picked up the plate I had not given him and held it out, and when I put nothing on it he set it down and started in again on the case for a weekend flight, and the phone buzzed on the counter while I was chewing.

I wiped my hand on the towel and looked, and it was her, and I put a forkful of eggs onto the empty plate in Felix's hands without a word so that he would take it into the other room, and he went, enormously pleased with himself, and I opened the message.

I want something, she had written. It's in Singapore. Can you get it for me?

What do you want.

I want you. Then a face with its mouth open, laughing.

I scratched the back of my head. My first thought was not a complicated one. I am in Singapore, everything moves through here, the couriers are nothing, the money is nothing — if she wants a thing and I can put my hands on it, I can have it boxed and on a plane before she has finished asking. That is what I am good for, and I have never minded being good for it.

Then I read the two words again and understood what she had actually done, and I glanced at the doorway where Felix was eating with the concentration of a man who had gotten exactly what he came for, and took a very large bite of my own food and let my pulse do what it was going to do without any help from me.

"Can't help with that," I wrote.

Fine. She answered fast, and I could hear the sulk in it. I'll think of something myself. I'm not giving up, so don't get comfortable.

I looked at the clock. Nine exactly, which was nine at night where she was. You should be asleep.

Whatever you say. Goodnight ~

Night.

The rest of that day I put myself under on purpose. Two case files that had to be rebuilt from the numbers up by Monday, my own notes on the Asian retail deal until the words stopped meaning anything, and a call with the family office in Milan that ran an hour past six because one of the directors does not understand the word summary.

I walked the last part home instead of taking the car; the apartment would be hot and I was not ready to be inside it. It was a quarter to six when I came in, and I was in the entry with one shoe off and one hand against the wall when the phone lit.

Morning, Silas ~

I dropped the shoe. You're up early.

One of my roommates called and woke me up. Doesn't matter — I'd rather be talking to you anyway.

The apartment was quiet, the light through the window gone the color it goes here at the end of the day, and I read it twice before answering.

You don't have a place near campus?