“What’s the best part?”
“The part where it hurts, because the hurting means they mattered, and the mattering means you did your job.”
“My job?”
“The job is making sure that every animal who comes through your door leaves better than they arrived. If it didn’t hurt, it would mean you didn’t care, and if you didn’t care, they’d know.”
I looked at him.
He was looking at the empty bathroom door with an expression that wasn’t grief, not exactly, but something adjacent to it. I suspected it wassomething more practiced and more peaceful, an unnamed emotion of a man who had said goodbye to hundreds of animals over the course of his career, and who had found a way to hold the loss without being held by it.
“How many times have you done this?” I asked.
“I’ve lost count.”
“Does it get easier?”
“No. You get better at it. There’s a difference.”
Potato chose this moment to wander into the kitchen, assess the two humans sitting on his floor, and collapse between us with a wheeze that suggested the journey from the couch had nearly killed him. He lay there like a furry speed bump, his wrinkled face pressed against the tile, his breathing loud enough to register on seismic equipment.
“At least we still have this one,” I said.
“Potato is eternal,” Peter said. “Potato will outlive us all.”
Potato snored.
The apartment settled into its new shape. It was smaller and quieter and absent of five voices that would be missed for a long time. General Tso reclaimed the bathroom within the hour, inspecting every surface with the thoroughness of a landlord assessing damage after tenants have vacated.
Peter told me there would be new fosters withinthe week because the clinic always had animals who needed somewhere safe.
“Already?” I said.
“Always,” he said. “There’salwaysanother one who needs a place to land.”
He said it about the animals.
But he looked at me when he said it.
The look lasted half a second longer than it needed to, but I caught it, and he knew I caught it, and neither of us said anything about it.
Chapter 20
Peter
Icame home from the clinic at 5:14 p.m. on a Monday expecting silence, hot tea, and the blessed silence that came with staring at my laptop screen while wishing I could work on my manuscript.
Instead, I faced what international political analysts might term “regime change.”
The smell hit me first. Before I’d even closed the front door, my nose was flooded with the aromas of baking dough, melting cheese, and the sharp, buttery detonation of popcorn. The scents were layered over each other in a sensory combination so aggressive that it registered less as “food” and more as “ambush.”
And then there were the sounds. Cabinet doors slammed, something metal clattered against something ceramic, and the particular rhythmic chaos of Benji Kwon dashing through a kitchen at fulloperational capacity, which was indistinguishable from the sound of a construction worker dismantling a room and rebuilding it in a different configuration while narrating the process to a cat who did not care.
I set my keys in the bowl by the door because the bowl existed for this purpose.
I hung my jacket on the hook.
I removed my shoes, placed them beside the door, then aligned them, because the world was clearly descending into disorder and I intended to maintain standards at the perimeter.
