He does the dishes without being asked. I hear the water. I hear him stack the plates in the drying rack in the order I stack them, which he learned without me telling him.
I go to bed at eleven. The guest room door is shut, with a sliver of light peeking from beneath it.
He is twenty-two. Chapin asked me to look out for him and I am. I'm here, watching.
My mind wanders through the day. The mugs on the counter this morning, handles turned the same way. His hand on the handle and my fingers across his knuckles. His release point, quick and high and clean. The puck on my tape before I was there. His sister in Bern. The lighting.
He has been in my guest room for three weeks. He hasn't called his realtor. I haven't asked and don’t look too hard at that.
I will shoot the water from the balcony in the morning. It will be better in the morning. It usually is.
?
Chapter 5: Wes
The puck comes off Paulson's stick at the half-wall and I'm already moving. I don't think about the lane. The lane is there because I put my weight forward two seconds before Paulson made the play, and the defenseman committed inside, and the ice between the circle and the net opened up the way ice does when you stop asking it to.
I take it on the backhand. Glove side. The goalie is late because he was reading the pass, not the man without it, and by the time he picks me up I'm already releasing. The puck goes in low, clean, and the net shakes once.
"Mercy," Paulson says, skating past. "That was sick."
"You made the play."
"The pass was the easy part."
"Then we're both easy." I tap his shin guard and circle back to center. My legs feel good. My legs have felt good for weeks, which is new, or not new but different. I've been skating like this since September. Taking the lane. Finishing the play. Playing the way I played when I was twenty-six and didn't know what I had to lose.
Coach pulls me after the second period. "Good game, Mercy."
"Thanks."
"That backhand. You've been taking that shot more."
"Feels right."
He nods. He doesn't push it. I go back to the bench and drink water and watch the third period with my legs loose and my shoulders down and a feeling I cannot explain to anyone, which is that the game has gotten easier because the game has stopped being the thing I'm holding onto.
The apartment is quiet when I get home. I put the keys on the counter and stand in the kitchen for a minute. The ceiling fan is going. The dishwasher finished while I was out and the light on the front panel has gone from blue to off.
I open the cabinet and take down one mug. The other mug is behind it on the shelf, handle turned the same direction.
The coffee is good. Luca found these beans at the place on Brickell two years ago. I order them by the bag. The label has a rooster on it that Luca once rated a seven-point-four for graphic design. Because everything gets rated by Luca.
I drink the coffee standing at the counter. The camera is on the coffee table in the living room where I left it this morning. The apartment sounds like it sounds when only one person lives in it, which is the way it sounded for years before he moved in and the way it sounds again now. It’s about a different sort of quiet. This silence is where the chatter about the coffee, the corner restaurant, and the hotel’s thread count used to fill every space, making it feel smaller, warmer, and brimming with the best thing I had.
The only sounds now are the fan and the dishwasher turning off, with a single mug left on the counter.
I eat leftover chicken over rice, standing at the counter because Kevin is right; I do eat standing at my countersometimes. The chicken is good. Still has the char from the grill. The rice held up overnight.
Seven-point-three.
The number arrives in my head before I can stop it. His voice, his system, his decimal-point precision. I lowered my fork, my eyes fixed on the plate, with the number waiting to be said out loud to someone who would write it down. Someone in Atlanta.
I rinse the plate and put it in the dishwasher and close the door, and stand in the kitchen.
His call comes at eleven-thirty. The phone buzzes on the counter with his name on the screen and I pick it up the way I always pick it up, on the second ring, because I will always pick up his calls and this is the thing I know about myself that will not change.
"Hey, baby."
