I wrote for two hours.
It was the most I’d written in months, and noneof it was about David.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
I was still sitting at my desk, still staring at what I’d written, when I heard the front door open with the exaggerated care that meant Benji was trying to be quiet. His version of quiet still involved bumping into the coat rack, whispering an apology to the coat rack, and then whispering a secondary apology to Hiro for startling him, but it was a significant improvement over the first few nights. I found myself listening to the familiar sequence with something I refused to call fondness.
Then I caught a sound I hadn’t heard before. It was Benji’s voice, low, from the kitchen, followed by a laugh. It wasn’t his loud, performative laugh. This was a different one, soft and surprised, as though something had delighted him and he hadn’t been expecting it.
“Peter,” he called, barely above a whisper. “Come here. You have to see this.”
I got up, walked to the kitchen, and stopped in the doorway.
Beyoncé, the calico, had escaped the bathroom again.
That was not, in itself, noteworthy. Beyoncé’s escape record was now approaching double digits, and her methods were becoming increasingly sophisticated.
What was noteworthy was where she had ended up.
She was on the refrigerator.
OnGeneral Tso’s refrigerator.
She was curled up against General Tso’s massive orange side, her tiny calico body tucked under his chin, purring loud enough to be heard from the doorway.
General Tso, the cat who did not tolerate other animals (and barely tolerated humans), the cat who hissed at Hiro and ignored Potato and regarded every foster who entered this apartment as a personal insult to his sovereignty, was allowing a kitten to sleep against him.
Tso’s eyes were closed, and his enormous paw was resting, very lightly, on Beyoncé’s back.
Benji stood in the middle of the kitchen, phone in hand, recording.
“Don’t move,” he whispered. “Don’t even breathe. If he wakes up and realizes he’s being affectionate, he’ll never forgive himself.”
I looked at General Tso and Beyoncé. Then I looked at Benji, who was filming this moment with the hushed reverence of a wildlife documentarian who had just captured something previously thought to be mythological.
My mouth did something I didn’t authorize.
It wasn’t a smile—I wouldnotcall it a smile—but it was more than a twitch.
It lasted longer than I intended, and Benji’s gaze flicked from the phone to my face. His eyes widened slightly.
“Did you just almost smile?” he whispered.
“No.”
“You did. You almost smiled. I saw it. I have witnesses.” He gestured around the kitchen, which contained no witnesses except a sleeping bulldog and a three-legged pit bull who was watching the refrigerator situation with nervous confusion.
“You have a dog who can’t testify and a bulldog who’s unconscious.”
“Hiro saw it. Hiro, did Peter smile?”
Hiro, hearing his name, wagged his tail and looked between us with the anxious hopefulness of a dog who wanted everyone to be happy but wasn’t sure what was being asked of him.
“See?” Benji said. “Confirmed.”
“Go to bed.”
“He smiled, Hiro. Write it down. Mark the calendar. Alert the media.”
