Page 27 of The Damage Man

He wants to express something to her but his jaw stays locked. He’s as helpless as Blake was standing in that bungalow, trying to find the words to thank Evan.

Gwendolyn’s eyes are seeing him straight through.

Still he cannot speak.

She gets blurry.

And then blurrier yet.

“Sometimes it’s not what we get,” she says, “it’s what we give.” She lifts a hand, touches his cheek. “Thank God, huh?” she says.

And turns and floats away.

When Joey meets Evan at their favorite hand roll place in Westwood Village, she is wearing an emerald-green silk tank top. The cut is not surprising, as Joey likes to show off her arms, but the color is uncharacteristically vivid. It makes her eyes glow, as well as the actual emerald she wears as a nose stud.

Her black-brown hair tumbles over the shaved strip of hair on her right side, an undercut that tilts rocker without being excessive. Showcased against her flawless skin is a round-cut diamond solitaire necklace. Suspended by a platinum filigree chain and held in a near-invisible prong setting, it looks as if it is floating against her jugular notch.

The thought plinks him like a flick to the head: She is wearing the necklace, which he gave her for her seventeenth birthday, for him.

Her head is cocked, that dimple in her right cheek presaging a grin. Her eyes are the way they get when she’s trying to decipher his expression.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

A smile bursts. “That’s, like, our most predictable dialogue ever.”

They hug.

She smells like herself, that tinge of vanilla from her lotion. He has gotten better at this, the act of embracing. Still, he wouldn’t say he’s a regular.

She releases her arms but he is still holding on to her so there is a split second of awkwardness before they pull apart. This has never happened.

She gives him a sideways look and hops up onto a stool.

They order.

“So?” she says. “How’d it go in Texas?”

“He died.”

“Shit, X. Before you got there?”

“I was there.”

She looks at him, looks down at her paper place mat. Their first rolls arrive, toro, and she wolfs it down. She is becoming a young lady but she still eats like a POW who’s just cleared the gates. She stirs even more wasabi into her soy sauce until it looks like green-tea ice cream, then fiddles with her chopsticks.

“You get any, dunno, resolution? Or closure? To use grown-up words.”

He thinks about it for a very long time.

“Yes.”

A yellowtail roll shows up next. Hers is gone before he takes his second bite. It is like feeding a sea lion.

There’s a slight lull.

Then she leans over and tips her head onto his shoulder. He doesn’t like this sort of show of affection.