“Hang up and drive.”
“Okay. I’m hanging up.”
He didn’t hang up.
“Benji.” I threaded a warning note in with his name.
“I’m hanging up. I just wanted to say that it was actually kind of nice that you answered on the first ring.” He hesitated, something Benji never did when speaking. His next words were smaller than any of the kittens. “Most people don’t do that.”
He hung up before I could respond.
I had several responses, all of which involved admitting things I wasn’t prepared to admit to him or myself or the universe . . . or anyone, damn it . . .starting with the fact that I hadn’t answered on the first ring because I was alert or responsible. I’d answered on the first ring because his name on my phone screen at 11 p.m. had produced a spike of fear so immediate and so visceral—and sounexpected—that my hand had moved before my brain caught up.
No longer able to properly focus for reasons my rational brain could not comprehend, I drove home. When I walked in the door, I put my keys back on the hook.
Then I made tea.
Then I sat at the island and didn’t go to bed, because going to bed would require leaving the kitchen, and leaving the kitchen would mean not being in the room where I’d hear the front door open.
He came home twenty minutes later.
The door opened with its usual careful sequence (slow key, controlled turn, gentle close). Then he was in the kitchen doorway in his work clothes, smelling like the bar, with a red mark on his forearm where someone had grabbed him. On his face was a smile that was trying to sell me on the idea that everything was fine.
“See?” he said. “All in one piece.”
I stared at the red mark with thediligence of a doctor examining a patient.
It was superficial, already fading, the kind of thing that would be gone by morning. I knew this because I assessed injuries for a living, and the clinical part of my brain registered the mark as minor and unremarkable.
The non-clinical part of my brain wanted to ask who had done it, and where that person was now, and whether Rod’s stress-chopping had been therapeutic enough or whether additional measures were warranted.
“Put ice on that,” I said.
“It’s nothing.”
“Ice. Now. Ten minutes. Don’t argue with a doctor.”
He looked at me.
I looked at him.
He went to the freezer, got the ice pack I kept for Hiro’s bad days, and pressed it against his forearm.
“Thank you for answering the phone,” he said.
“You called. I answered.”
“On the first ring.”
“I’m a light sleeper.”
“You weren’t sleeping. You’re fully dressed, and there’s tea on the counter.”
He had me there.
I picked up my tea and took a sip that was mostlya stalling tactic while I assembled a response that didn’t reveal more than I intended.
“The animals needed their evening check,” I said. “I was up.”
