Page 28 of The Fire Line

Jay called Romy the next morning from the empty conference room, late enough that calling it morning required generosity.

She answered from her kitchen floor, surrounded by fabric books, paint cards, and tile samples. A measuring tape hung around her neck. Both chairs visible in the frame behind her had disappeared beneath materials for an apartment installation.

“Do you ever sit on your chairs?” Jay asked.

“They have things on them.”

“Obviously.”

Romy propped the phone against a cabinet and studied him. “You look tired.”

“I went to a birthday party.”

“You’re thirty-six.”

“Montana birthdays are physically demanding.”

She made a small acknowledging sound and waited.

That was the problem with knowing someone for fifteen years. Eventually, silence became a precision instrument. Romy could leave one between them and trust Jay to injure himself with it.

“The film’s going well,” he said. “The footage is good. The family’s good.”

Romy picked up two nearly identical paint cards. Waited some more.

Jay exhaled. “Harris is difficult.”

One of Romy’s perfectly bushy eyebrows lifted.

Jay exhaled. “Fine. There’s a man.”

“I gathered.”

“From what?”

“You called me before noon on your day off.”

He stared at her. “You make me sound like a terrible friend.”

“Tell me about him.”

And, annoyingly, Jay wanted to. Harris was difficult and smart. He distrusted the camera for reasons Jay respected, smoked too much, slept too little, and generally seemed to regard relaxation as a character defect. He could look at tire tracks and know they did not belong to anyone on the ranch.

“He cannot identify people by tire tracks,” Romy said.

“I watched him do it.”

“You watched him identify an unfamiliar tire.”

“That is substantially less impressive when you phrase it that way.”

“I’m describing what happened.”

“You weren’t there.”

Her mouth twitched.

Jay told her about Claire instead. Their twelve years of marriage still visible in the way she and Harris treated an injured horse without needing to ask where the other would stand.