Page 157 of Suite 7

Saturday morning I wake at six and can’t get back to sleep.

Vera’s still out. I make coffee and sit at the kitchen island and look at the spot on the floor where the cardamom rolls were. I cleaned it up Tuesday morning while Vera was in the shower. Three trips to the trash. Didn’t tell her. Couldn’t explain why it felt like something that needed to be done alone.

The floor is clean now. You’d never know.

I pull out my sketchpad, the one I use when a design problem won’t let me sleep, when I need to think with my hands instead of my head. I don’t draw buildings. Just lines. Shapes.

Some things you can restore to what they were. Some things you can only build into something new.

I look around the kitchen and my eyes land on Gerald.

He sits exactly where he’s always sat, on the shelf above the bar cart, in his concrete pot, small and stubborn and completely indifferent to the wreckage of the last week. Six years on that shelf. Seven weeks since he had a name.

I set the sketchpad down and cross to him. Crouch slightly to look at him at eye level.

He looks — fine. Probably fine. I have no idea how to tell if a cactus is not fine.

“Vera waters you, doesn’t she,” I say. Not a question.

Gerald says nothing. He is a cactus.

I go to the cabinet under the sink. Find the small watering can Sloane brought over the same day she brought Gerald, with a Post-it note attached that read: for the inevitable day you forget he’s alive. Love, your sister.

I fill it. Return to the shelf.

Pour a small amount into the pot. Study him.

He looks the same. Possibly I’ve just drowned him. I don’t know how much water a cactus needs in November. I don’t know how much water a cactus needs at all. Vera knows, Vera named him, Vera would know whether this is right or whether I’ve killed the only plant I’ve managed to keep alive for six years in the same week I blew up everything else.

I set the watering can down.

“Don’t die,” I tell him. “That’s an order.”

Gerald offers nothing in response.

Sunday, Vera and I cook.

Not like last Sunday, the one that ended with scattered rolls and a closed elevator. This is less graceful. She burns the onions. I cut the vegetables into pieces that are, she informs me with great solemnity, architecturally inconsistent. We argue about whether garlic quantity is a matter of preference or objective fact.

It’s the closest thing to normal we’ve had in a week.

Sunday night, I barely sleep.

Vera’s beside me. Breathing steady. But I stare at the ceiling. Watch the shadows shift. Count down the hours.

I dream of Sloane, us as kids at the pier, throwing pennies in the water.

I wish we could stay like this forever, she says, in the dream. Just you and me. No secrets. No lies. Just us.

I wake before I can answer her.

Exhaustion finally takes me sometime before dawn.

Monday morning, I wake to find Vera already in the kitchen, making coffee.

“Today’s the day,” she says when I appear.

“Yeah.”