Page 124 of Antihero

“He really likes you,” the dog sitter said.

Evan stood. “Thanks for meeting me out, Natalie.”

“Joey insisted,” Natalie said. “She can be quite adamant.”

“That is one word for her.”

Natalie wore a trucker cap with a Flathead Lake insignia on it, wisps of brownish-blond hair framing her cheeks. “She said you’re her uncle-person?”

“Sort of.”

“Family’s what we make, right?”

“I suppose that is right.” Standing back, he snapped a picture of Dog with the RoamZone.

“Not like that,” Natalie laughed. “You need his face in it. Come here. Up boy, up. Now sit. Okay. Wait, what filter are you using?”

“It’s just a picture.”

“C’mere. Gimme your phone. Wait— What kind of phone is this?”

“A super-secret phone.”

She laughed. “Maybe you’re not such a boomer after all.” Poking at his screen, she brought up portrait mode. “Okay, now kneel by Dog.”

Evan obeyed and she snapped his picture. She glanced at the result. “That’s weird. Your face is all fuzzed out.”

“That’s okay,” he said, taking the phone back. “No one needs to see my face.”

She played with a yin-yang medallion around her neck. “Well, we got your picture. Now Joey’ll get off both our backs.”

“I doubt that very much.”

The smell of wet grass carried on the breeze. People were out speed-walking or picnicking or playing pickleball in the courts in the distance, the thonk thonk thonk of the rackets scoring the overcast afternoon. Squatting, Evan scritched behind Dog’s ears and Dog leaned into his touch, closing his eyes and crinkling his mouth drunkenly on one side.

Then he rose to go.

“Take care, Natalie.”

“You, too.”

She reclipped the leash and Dog strained after him as he walked away.

Sitting in his truck, Evan texted the picture to Joey. Immediately a flood of stupid emojis came back. Crying faces and heart-spackled smiles and brown thank-you hands.

She sent a selfie back—her in Devine’s scarlet room, mouth ajar with joy.

He recalled Joey’s breakdown of dopamine release in the brain’s pleasure centers. He stared at the picture of her.

Girl.

Girl he already recognized looking like what she looked like.

What a dumb exercise.

Then he noticed the faintest lift of his heart.

He shut off the phone and drove to the airport.