Page 88 of One Adult, Please

"He's a goat. He eats things. That's his whole deal."

"His deal is vandalism."

I pick Kevin up. Kevin's legs go stiff. I carry him to the other side of the barricade and set him down. Kevin stands there, offended, processes the indignity, and walks in a circle. Then he begins eating a different section of the barricade.

Grace stares at Kevin. Kevin stares at nothing.

"Kevin wins," she says.

"Kevin always wins."

She looks at me. "You reorganized the dessert armory twice yesterday. You alphabetized the weapons rack. Who alphabetizes weapons, Beck?"

"They're categorized by type and size."

"You alphabetized them. I saw the labels. They go: Axe, Axe (large), Axe (small), Dagger, Mace. That's alphabetical order. You put your weapons in alphabetical order."

"Efficient retrieval."

"You're doing the busy thing." She says it gently. "You're moving so fast your feelings can't find you."

"That's annoyingly accurate," I say.

"I'm the same way. I fall down and get up. You build and move. We're both running."

She looks at me, I look at her, Kevin eats the barricade, and I feel the wall I built before the outbreak cracking.

"Come on," she says. "Show me the dessert armory."

"Why?"

"Because I want funnel cake and you need to stand still for five minutes and both of those things happen in the same room."

She walks toward the courtyard. I follow her because following Grace is what I do now, the way Joel follows her while pretending he's only checking the route, the way Grant follows the group while pretending he's only observing it.

I go in first, make sure the place is clear and safe.

She walks in leading with confidence, her coordination trailing several feet behind. Her foot catches on the threshold. She pitches forward into the counter, rebounds off it, staggers sideways into the doorframe, and somehow ends up blocking the exit with her body, wedged between the counter and the wall.

"I meant to do that," she says, from inside the doorframe.

"You're stuck."

"I'm not stuck. I'm positioned. I'm strategically blocking the exit so you can't leave."

"I wasn't leaving."

"Good. Because I'm blocking the exit. Strategically."

I sit on the counter. She unsticks herself from the doorway and sits on the other counter, across from me, picks up a stale funnel cake from the stack, takes a bite, and chews.

The fryer pilot light flickers between us.

"Cornerstone Insurance Solutions," I say.

She looks up. Funnel cake crumbs on her lips. Powdered sugar on her chin.

"That was the job. Data entry. I sat in a cubicle and entered data into fields. The fields didn't care and the data didn't matter. I stood up in a Thursday morning meeting, and I walked out."