Six years later, I still sometimes used my cooking to speak for me.
I dumped the potatoes in and gave them a stir.
Varga had texted from his apartment an hour ago. It was a one-bedroom prop in a high-rise near the rink. To the world, it was Lucas Varga’s official residence, and he curated it like a stage set: receiving mail, leaving a toothbrush by the lavatory, and cycling condiments in the fridge. It was the street address for every story he told in the room. We’d done our job well.
He stopped by every couple of weeks to collect the mail and water a plant that was, as far as either of us could tell, immortal. After a road trip, the visit was mandatory: collecting ten days of envelopes and letting the building staff see his face.
Tonight he was going to ask me for something. He’d been building toward it for at least ten days, probably longer. Somewhere over Lake Erie that morning, four rows behind him, I’d decided. Whatever he asked for, the answer was yes.
I’d drafted the entire conversation, both sides of it, and looked at the finished thing in my head. He would ask. I would say yes. I would even get there a little ahead of him, soften the road in, and make it easy. It was something I could give him.
I stirred the pot and felt the road trip lingering in my body. The ankle had gone from purple to a yellow-green that looked worse and hurt less. Right on time, the garage door started to grind.
He came in talking.
”—so the kid at the pro shop, the new one, Brendan, Brandon, he’s holding my skate up to the light like he’s appraising a diamond, and he goes,when did you last replace this holder,and I said I don’t know, June? And he looked at me like I told him I don’t believe in flossing.”
He always came in talking, but this time he was off by a degree only I would ever measure. The story was fine. It was his delivery—a half-beat faster than usual.
“So now I’m getting a new holder Thursday, which, whatever, but he wants to talk blade profiles—“
He set his bag down by the laundry room door and saw the pot. It stopped the narration.
“You’re making the chowder.”
“Yes, Mom’s recipe.”
“Okay,” he said, and he stopped talking.
I watched him take his jacket off and hang it up . We sat at the kitchen table with two bowls. Varga didn’t pick up his spoon. He pressed both hands flat on the table and said, “I love the life you’ve built for us.”
And for a reason only the gods understand, I cut off the rest he was planning to say. “I know,” I said. “I know what this is, and I want you to know I’m already ahead of it.”
His mouth hung open, still trying to form his next words. I kept going, certain that I was handing him a gift I’d been carrying since Buffalo. “The Kovac piece. You’re out of it. No call, no quote, nothing with your name near it. I took care of it.”
The kitchen was quiet. He didn’t move or speak for a full thirty seconds.
“Say that again,” he said.
“You’re out of the piece. I asked him to leave you out, and he agreed.”
“When?”
“Buffalo. The first night.”
“Did he come to you, or did you go to him?”
“I went to him.”
“You texted him.” He was putting the pieces together. “The first night in Buffalo. The night I asked you for the hour.” He leaned back as he continued to calculate. “You answered me at2:30 in the morning. Okay. I was awake; I saw the time.” He looked back at me. “You handled me first. You got my name pulled out of a reporter’s notebook, and then you texted me back.”
“Luki—“
“Don’t.” The word came out at full volume, like a slap to the chest. “Don’tLukime right now. I want to understand the order of operations. You decided a reporter couldn’t talk to me, and you didn’t ask me if I wanted to talk to him. You didn’t ask me what I’d say, and you decided what I’d say was dangerous, removing me from the conversation, and then you came home and made chowder and wanted me to thank you.”
“It’s my mother’s chowder,” I said, which was the stupidest sentence of my life.
“Five years,” he said. He stood. “Five years, Rook. I just got home from the apartment I visit to collect my mail. It’s an entire apartment, furnished, so there’s an address with my name on it that isn’t this one. The cleaner signed an NDA even though she’s never seen a photograph of us together because we don’t have photographs. You decided we can’t have photographs—“
