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“So should we trudge back to the bar whence we came?” He looks defeated, and this triggers my competitive instincts.
“Definitely not. I sort of promised you a chill birthday and bowling apparently ain’t it.” I pause before opening the door to the frigid outdoor air. “We could go to my apartment, where it’s quiet, and you could pet my cat.” I arch a brow, immediately worried that invitation was inappropriate, unwelcome, too forward…
Rayland scratches his chin and leans against the velvety wallpaper. “Do you mean a literal cat? Or was that a euphemism?”
I snort out a laugh and forget to feel embarrassed by the sound I made. “I have an actualFelis catus, yes. But let’s see where the evening takes us.”
Ray shakes his head, laughing silently. I push the door open and tip my chin toward my building. “Shall we?”
4
RAYLAND
I tracemy finger along the tidy GWAN penned below the knocker on Lyra’s door as she unlocks her apartment. Her space is smaller than I expected, but filled with light and floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the river. “You must have 400 plants in here.” I finger some of the leaves of a hanging vine near her entryway as Lyra smiles.
“I think it’s more like 120. My mother actually counted the last time she was here.” She presses a button and a device starts misting the plants, like the veggie sprayers at the grocery store. I raise my brows, impressed.
Apart from the plants, everything in here is white. She’s got white blankets draped over the back of the white leather couch, white walls, even white art on the walls. It looks classy and elegant. Expensive. Everything about Lyra screams high quality.
I feel something touch my leg and I look down to see that Lyra was serious about the cat.
“Oh,” she exclaims. “She must like you. She usually hides if someone comes over.”
“Who’s this?” I squat down to pet the fur ball, who looks like a cartoon with her huge eyes and perfectly fluffed coat.
I glance up at Lyra, who bites her lip as if trying to hold back a grin. “Well,” she stammers. “That’s Emilie du Catelet…you know…after—“
“Ha! After Émilie du Châtelet! I love it.”
Lyra stares at me, frozen in the midst of removing her shoes. I shrug. “What can I say? I have a PhD in machine learning. I know all about the world’s famous mathematicians.”
“She died in childbirth,” Lyra mutters. “Did you know that?”
I sigh. “I remember something about that, yeah. Shit. What a loss.”
“It happens more and more these days,” Lyra says, “women dying from pregnancy.”
I swallow and place a hand on her arm, not sure what to say about that. I continue to pet the cat as I look at Lyra’s bare toes wiggling on the floor. “Oh, shoot, let me take my shoes off.”
She relaxes a bit as I untie my Oxfords. Emelie gives them a sniff as I set them in a tidy line next to Lyra’s heels. When I stand, I see Lyra removing her earrings. I watch, transfixed by the intimacy of it, as she pulls the sparkling balls out and massages her lobes, setting the jewelry in a dish on her counter.
I wonder when she moves the earrings to their proper home, what her routine is to keep that dish empty and waiting for just this moment, when she stumbles in her front door with a reluctant partygoer. Then I feel foolish for focusing on these sorts of details—the sorts of observations that leave people thinking I’m weird or robotic or both.
“So bowling was too loud,” Lyra says, now removing her bracelet. “This might sound super boring, but would you like to do a puzzle with me?”
My face brightens. “Yes! Holy crap, that sounds perfect.” I grab one of the chairs at the table off the entryway, where I imagine she eats her breakfast watching the morning rowers on the Allegheny River. Sitting here with her, looking at the city lights, doing a puzzle…it sounds meditative and quiet. Slow and methodical. “I love that idea.”
Lyra grins and opens a cabinet door, revealing a tidy stack of brightly colored puzzles. I smile, noting that the most colorful things in her home are hidden just out of sight. She sets the puzzle on the table and slides into a chair next to me. I like that she didn’t sit across from me.
“I hope this is okay,” she says. “If I sat over there…” she gestures vaguely across the table, “one of us would be doing the puzzle upside-down.”
“Wouldn’t want that.” I feel so much more at ease here, away from all the sounds and emotions and social sand traps. Here, it’s just me and the woman who named her cat after a famous French physics enthusiast. I suspect she might not think I’m a cyborg and I smile at the puzzle, which is a picture of a group of cats doing a puzzle.
“You do the perimeter first, right?” Lyra starts sorting the pieces, setting the edge pieces to one side and flipping everything right-side up. “I had a roommate once who insisted on working in vertical strips, which she’d then assemble at the end and I just…” She shudders.
I frown, considering. “I can see the merits of that approach, I guess. But I’m a perimeter first guy, too.”
“Good. I’d kick you out, I think, if you did the strips.”
