Page 163 of Roadrunner

The food was simple.

It helped more than a speech would have.

At the door she put her hand on my stomach without asking, brief, like checking a loaf.

“In the end it’s all payoff,” she said.

Then she snorted, because she heard herself.

“Don’t put that on a pillow,” she said. “Just remember it when you’re mad at the thermostat.”

I drove home with the windows down.

The desert air didn’t fix the heat.

It reminded me the heat had a job.

I could live with a job.

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

Alex

Now

It started at dinner.

Not the movie version.

The version where my back became a separate animal and my breath had to ask permission.

I set my fork down.

Riley looked at the fork.

Then at my face.

Arthur looked at both and went very still, a boy who had learned that stillness is a kind of listening.

“Okay,” I said. “We’re going to do the thing we practiced.”

Riley stood so fast his chair barked on the tile.

Arthur stood so fast he knocked over the salt.

“Bag,” Riley said.

“Hall closet,” I said.

“It’s in the Jeep,” Arthur said, already moving.

“It’s in the hall closet,” I said.

They both left the room in different directions.

I sat there with a contraction that had opinions and counted the way they teach you to count when you want your brain to have a job besides panic.

Riley came back with my phone charger and one boot.