“Rowe.”
“Just to know.”
I press my lips together. I'm not sure if I should give him the name. I'm also not sure why I'm hesitating.
“Dr. Vance,” I finally say. “Howard Vance. He owns the practice.”
Rowe nods once.
“He's wrong, by the way,” he says after a moment.
“About what?”
“All of it.”
I let out a sound that's not quite a laugh, surprised by the dryness of his tone.
“And what you did when you corrected him,” he continues. “That wasn't wrong either.”
I wipe under my eye with the heel of my hand, hoping it looks like I'm rubbing out a speck of dust.
“Sorry,” I say. “Again. This isn't your problem.”
“You're not a problem.”
I don't know what to reply to that, so I don't reply anything.
“Caesar,” I say instead. “I want to see Caesar. And Brutus. And I should check the swelling on Domino's fetlock you mentioned yesterday. And?—”
“Wren.”
“Yeah?”
“Take a breath.”
I take a breath.
It shudders out of me, but it's a breath.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay. Caesar first.”
He nods. Starts walking.
This time, when he falls in beside me, I notice he's closer than yesterday. Not touching. Not even close to it. But the careful foot of distance has narrowed to maybe ten inches, and the back of his hand swings near mine as he walks, and neither of us says anything about it.
9
ROWE
I've buttoned this vest wrong twice.
Both times I've had to undo the whole row and start over, and both times my fingers found the same misaligned hole like they're doing it on purpose. The performance vest is black leather with gold stitching, and I've worn it four hundred times, and tonight it fits like it belongs to someone else.
I asked her to come.
The words left my mouth this afternoon before I finished deciding to say them. She was crouched at Domino's fetlock, her thumb pressed to the joint, and I said,there's a show tonight, if you want to see what they do when they're not patients,and she looked up at me with those brown eyes, and said,okay, and I've been useless ever since.
Through the canvas, I can hear the crowd filing into the Big Top, that rising tide of voices and boots on bleacher boards, popcorn bags and children shrieking. Caesar hears it too. He's pacing the length of his staging pen behind me in long, easy loops, tail up, ready. He loves show nights.Brutus is sitting by the gate like a furry boulder, watching me with an expression I would swear is judgment. He’s so cranky.
