Chapter 27 Beckett #2
On the last Friday in June I came into the clinic at four with the paperwork.
"I want to adopt the cat."
Tessa did not look up from the computer. "Which cat?"
"You know which cat."
"I have forty animals in this building, Mr. Douglas, you'll have to be specific."
"Tessa."
"There is a process," she said, and now she looked up.
She had a face on that I've only seen her use on people who want a puppy for a kid's birthday.
"There is an application. There is a home check.
There are two references, one of which cannot be a family member.
There is an interview with the authorizing veterinarian. "
"I live in the home."
"The home check is a formality. It is not optional."
She made me fill in all four pages. She made me write in the box marked why are you interested in this animal. She read it and made a small noise. She would not tell me what the noise was for.
She called Auggie for a reference. On speaker.
"Doctor Reeves! Is this about the cat?"
"It's about the cat."
"I've been waiting nine months for this phone call," Auggie said. "Yes to everything."
"Would you describe him as stable in the home?"
"No," Auggie said. "But in a good way."
The interview was on the couch at six o'clock, with the applicant on one end and the cat on the other and the authorizing veterinarian in the middle with a clipboard.
"Describe your daily routine."
"You know my daily routine."
"For the file."
"Four o'clock bottles. Runs. Seniors at six. Stevie in butter, Noodle in cheese, Dolly in bread." I looked at her. "Willa at four and again at seven. I'm at the rink from September. Home by eleven ten on a home night."
"And in the event of a change of circumstances…"
"There's no change of circumstances."
"In the event," Tessa said.
I put my hand on the back of the couch behind her.
"He comes with me," I said. "Everything in this house comes with me. I'm not going anywhere, so it's a hypothetical."
She wrote something on the clipboard and did not let me see it.
"Final question. Is there anything the authorizing veterinarian should know about the name?"
"No."
"Mr. Douglas."
"It's a cat," I said. "It got named in October by a seven-year-old off a list. It's the only one moving into this house."
Tessa Reeves looked at me for about four seconds, then put the clipboard on the floor and got a fist in the front of my shirt.
"Approved," she said.
"That's not procedure."
"I'm the authorizing veterinarian."
"There's a form."
"Beckett," she said, and pulled. I went, because I always do.
She wrote it in the notes field afterward, in that slanted hand, The only Roy moving into this residence is this one.
She was cleared on the 10th of July, at a follow-up on Wadsworth. A woman with a clipboard said it the way a person says a car has passed an inspection.
She did not tell me in the car. She waited until eleven at night. Willa was down and I was at the sink. She came and stood in the kitchen doorway with her arms folded.
"I have a medical update. I was cleared this morning."
I turned the tap off.
"Say it in words," I said.
"I'm saying it in words, I'm telling you the…"
"Tessa."
The clock on the stove said eleven.
"I want you to come to bed," she said. "Mine.
Not the nine-by-eight one. And I want you to stop being careful.
Before you say it, I know it's six weeks and I know what my own body has done this year.
I've read more about it than you have. I'm not asking you to forget it.
I'm asking you not to treat me like a patient in my own house. "
"That's all of it?"
"That's all of it."
"Say the last part again."
"Beckett."
"Say it," I said. "I've had eleven months of you telling me what you don't need. I want the one where you tell me what you want, and I want it in a room with the light on."
Tessa took two breaths.
"I want you," she said.
I've carried a lot of things in the lining of a blocker this year and I would put that four feet of hallway in there if it folded.
We got as far as the doorframe first and stayed there about two minutes.
She got both hands up into my hair and made a sound against my mouth that I've been hearing in my head since April.
Then I got an arm under her. She said "Don't you dare" and I did it anyway.
She laughed the whole way down the hall with her face in my neck.
She told me twice I was going to put my back out and once that Bear was watching.
Her room has a door that shuts and a lock that works, which is the single greatest structural advantage on that entire property. I used both.
Then I put her down on the bed and did the careful thing. She let me for about forty seconds.
"Beckett."
"I'm looking at you."
"You're doing an assessment."
"I'm looking at you," I said. "There's a difference and you know it."
"There's a scar. It's…"
"Tessa," I said, and put my mouth on it, low, right along it. She stopped talking. Her hand came down onto the back of my head and stayed there.
It was slow and neither of us was in a hurry. Inside about a minute I found out that the thing I had been afraid of was wrong. I had a picture of her from a hospital table in May in my head and I thought I would be handling something.
What happened instead is that she got her hand flat in the middle of my chest, pushed me onto my back and took what she wanted.
This is a woman who has spent a year being told what she may lift.
She has been on modified rest since January.
She has had her own body read back to her out of folders by four separate professionals.
She did the deciding, all of it, out loud. The lamp was on. That has been the rule in this house since January and it is the only rule I've ever cared about.
She said my name twice near the end, spaced out and low, the way she does. Afterward she lay across my chest with her heart going. Her hand came up flat on the scar where it goes. Neither of us said anything for about eleven minutes.
Then she said, into my sternum, "You're never sleeping in that room again."
"There's a clause about separate rooms. Clause one."
"I'm aware of the number, Beckett, I wrote it."
"You want to go and do something about it?"
"No," she said, and put her leg over both of mine and did not move for the rest of the night. "Not tonight."
Delisle called on the 2nd of July at ten past nine in the morning. I went out onto the porch to take it.
"I've been on with your agent. I want to say it to you directly, though. Because of the hallway."
"Four years," Delisle said. "Full no-move. Not a no-trade, a no-move. The whole thing, from day one. Nobody sends you anywhere, nobody puts you on waivers, nobody moves you at a deadline. You'll retire a Peak if you want to."
I stood on that porch with my hand on the rail.
"Beckett."
"I'm here."
"Paper's coming today. Take as long as you like with it. This isn't a squeeze."
"Thank you," I said, which is not a thing I've said to a general manager in eleven years.
There is a version of this where I sign it in a parking lot on my phone before lunch.
That is the version I've run four times, in four organizations, alone.
I ran it in a hallway, on arithmetic I did in my own head.
One of those times it cost me ten years with the woman who was in the kitchen behind me at that moment.
She was putting oatmeal into a nine-week-old for reasons that remain unexplained.
The paper came at one. I printed it on Colfax, all thirty-one pages, and drove it home.
And then I did not sign it.
I put it on the kitchen table and squared it up. I got the corgi magnet off the refrigerator and put it on the corner of the stack so it would not go anywhere.
Then I went and did the runs.