“The cat carrier should go in the bedroom because Princess Consuela has separation anxiety, and she needs to be near her people.”
“Cats don’t have separation anxiety.”
“Princess Consuela absolutely has separation anxiety. She has been formally diagnosed with separation anxiety by me, her primary caregiver, using a diagnostic methodology that I developed independently, that you would likely describe as ‘notscience,’ but that I would describe as ‘knowing my cat.’”
“It’s not science.”
“It’s knowing my cat.”
I crossed the room, stepping over a box containing what appeared to be cocktail shakers mixed with socks, and sat down on the floor beside him. My back pressed against his couch, which was a couch we were going to have to discuss because my apartment didn't have room for two couches, and his couch was objectively inferior to mine in every measurable dimension except the one that mattered, which was that Benji loved it and had been sleeping on it since college and it was where he sat when he filmed Princess Consuela. It was also where we’d lain tangled together during the brief, sweet period when his apartment had been the place we came to instead of the place we crossed a hallway to leave.
“I’m keeping the mixing bowl,” he said.
“It was always yours.”
“And the lamp.”
“The lamp was always yours, too. I gave it to you.”
“And the pillow.”
“The pillow was stolen from my couch during movie night.”
“The pillow was liberated from your oppressive, dictatorial couch during a period of emotionaltransition. Its current legal status is settled and may require intervention by the International Criminal Courts.”
“The pillow’s legal status remains disputed.”
“The pillow’s legal status issettled, Peter. It’s been in my apartment for three months. The statute of limitations applies.”
“That’s not how statutes of limitations work.”
“It’s how pillow statutes of limitations work.”
I took his hand.
His fingers laced through mine with the automatic precision of a gesture that had been performed so many times it no longer required conscious direction.
His hand was warm. His hand was always warm.
“Move in with me, please,” I said.
“I’m moving in. That’s what the boxes are for.”
“I mean officially, not as an extension of the hallway situation or as a continuation of the temporary arrangement caused by a plumbing malfunction. Move in, put your name on the lease, your curtains on the windows, your shampoo on the shelf, which is already on the shelf, which has been on the shelf for six months. I want it there officially, as a documented element of the apartment’s permanent configuration.”
“You want to document my shampoo?”
“I want to document everything. I want to update the whiteboard. I want your name on it. In green.”
“Why green?”
“Green is the color I use for scheduled events and planned things. It’s the color forintentionalthings.”
“You’re going to put my name on your whiteboard in the color that means ‘planned and intentional.’”
“You were not planned, but you are intentional. You are the most intentional thing in my life. Everything else happened to me, but you’re the thing I choose.”
His hand tightened on mine, and I swear his eyes glistened with moisture. Then they did that thing, that twitch that was mine. It was an expression that belonged to no other moment and no other person.
