"So am I," I say.
"Funny how that works," he says, "Alex — since the power's back on — I made some food. Plenty for four."
"Mr. Roberts?—"
"I'll get the bowls," he says, already moving toward his apartment. "Victor, you'll stay. Evie, come help an old man with the bread."
Evie looks at Alex. Alex looks at me. I look at neither of them and follow Mr. Roberts because the invitation has already been given, the food already exists, and some forces in the world are simply more efficient than resistance.
Alex follows. She sits across from me at Mr. Roberts's small kitchen table with her soup and her wariness and her jaw set in the way it sets when she has decided to endure something, and Evie sits between us and talks to Mr. Roberts about the friend'sbuilding and the transformer sound and the specific quality of Lily's sleeping face, and I eat and listen and watch Alex.
"Victor," Evie says, turning to me with the directness she applies to most things. "Did you know our building has a loose step on the third floor landing?"
"Fourth one from the top," I say. "I've been meaning to tell Mr. Roberts."
She blinks. "You counted them."
"I count a lot of things,” I say with a shrug. “It’s a habit."
She looks at me for a moment, still surprised.
"Me too," she says. Then she goes back to eating her food, satisfied that she isn’t the only one to do such things.
Mr. Roberts catches my eye across the table and raises his eyebrows approximately two millimeters, which is the most expressive thing I have seen him do. I look at my bowl and say nothing.
Evie brings it up on Sunday. I hear it through the remaining device — I removed two of the three, my compromise to Alex’s request, the kitchen and the living room, but the one behind the bookshelf I left.
I hear her voice from the kitchen while Alex is making coffee, the particular energy of a child who has been building toward a request and has decided now is the perfect moment to pounce.
"I want to go to Navy Pier," she says. "Before it gets too cold. This week."
"This week is work," Alex says.
"You have Tuesday off."
A pause. "How do you know I have Tuesday off?"
"You put it on the fridge calendar," Evie says. "In green. Green means you have the day off."
Another pause, longer.
"Fine," Alex says. "Tuesday. Navy Pier."
"Can we go on the Ferris wheel?"
"We can go on the Ferris wheel."
I close the laptop, noting the plans on my own calendar beside my desk.
On Tuesday, I find them at Navy Pier at two in the afternoon. Not by accident, of course, and judging by the look Alex gives me, she knows it.
"Victor." Evie says my name like it's a fact she's pleased about. "Did you follow us here?"
"I was already here," I say, which is technically true in the sense that I arrived before them.
She considers me for a moment. Then she holds out the chocolate thing in her hand. "Do you want some?"
"No, thank you."
