Page 21 of Graceless

"I can't eat in front of a person, it's a whole Italian thing, don't read into it."

He looked at the plate. And there was a hesitation — one beat, maybe two, something crossing behind his face that I couldn't name — like a man consulting a rulebook nobody else could see. Then he picked up the fork.

He ate everything. Quietly, completely, no commentary, and when it was done he set the fork down parallel on the plate like the plate was being graded, and said, "Thank you," and it came out — odd. Formal. Like a phrase in a language he knew but hadn't used in a while.

"It's pasta, Barrett. It's ten minutes and a pan."

"Hm," he said. But he looked at the empty plate a moment longer, and I went back to my easel and pretended I hadn't watched every bite.

The afternoon needled along. He checked the window, and checked it again, and around two I couldn't stand it anymore.

"You know you do that every four minutes? The window. I timed you. You could set a clock by you."

"Four minutes is the interval."

"The interval for WHAT?"

"Coverage."

"Coverage." I put the swab down. "Of my empty street. In Bensonhurst. Where the biggest threat in forty years has been Mrs. Esposito's opinion of your parallel parking."

"Then the interval is inexpensive," he said, and swept the window again, right on schedule.

"Oh my God. WHAT?" I put the swab down entirely. "What do you think is coming through that window that you have to check it every four minutes? Seriously. What's the scenario? Some kind of mass art heist? On Bay 50th? The last crime on this block was Sally Aiello's son taking the church bingo cash box, and he brought it BACK⁠—"

And then it landed.

Mid-sentence, all at once, the way the obvious lands when you've been standing on it. The window sweeps. The not-startling. The oaths at the door. I've seen battle.

Oh.

Oh, you idiot, Cate.

Is this — was this a soldier thing? A came-home-but-not-all-the-way thing? Because I know that thing. Frankie Marchetti from the parish came back from his second deployment and sat with his back to the wall at his own daughter's christening, checked the exits at Sunday dinner, and nobody said a word about it, ever, because you don't. That's the rule. You don't.

I picked the swab back up.

"You know what — never mind," I said, to the varnish, gentler than anything I'd said all day. "Check the window however often you want. It's a good window. Somebody should be looking at it."

He didn't answer. But the next sweep came a few seconds late, and when I glanced over, he was looking at me instead of the street — just for a second, something I couldn't read moving behind all that stillness — and then the window had his eyes again and the interval reset and neither of us said anything else about it.

And then the stool.

Mid-afternoon I needed the raking-light rig repositioned — the camera mount lives on the high shelf over the sink, because the basement has eleven saints and no storage — and I was up on the stepstool, one foot, reaching, the way I have reached a thousand times, and the stool's bad leg did the thing the bad leg does.

The world tipped.

And then it didn't, because there was a hand at my waist.

I never heard him cross the room. Eight feet of concrete floor, a metal chair, a man the size of a vestibule — nothing. Just the tilt, and then his hand, spread flat against my side, taking the whole weight of me like the weight was a rumor. One breath. Two. His hand was warm through my shirt — warm like a stone in the sun, warm like something that had been holding heat for a long time — and every nerve I own reported for duty on that six inches of skin.

He set me upright. Handed me the camera mount off the shelf — didn't reach for it, HAD it, like it had jumped down on its own — and did not go back to the chair.

He looked at the stool.

"This equipment is compromised." He nudged the bad leg with one shoe and the stool did its shameful little curtsy. "The joint's been loose long enough to wear the screw hole oval. It fails under off-center load — which is every load, the way you climb. A person of your stature requires proper retrieval equipment."

"A person of my STATURE."