CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Alex
Now
The next morning the boxes were still boxes.
Riley came back with a drill and a level and did not announce either one. He knocked. I opened the door. He held up the drill like an explanation.
“Dresser,” he said.
“Hallway,” I said.
Arthur was already in the hall, measuring the doorway with his hands. “It’ll fit,” he said. “If we turn it.”
Riley looked at the doorway. He looked at Arthur’s hands.
“You’re right.”
They turned it. Without speaking. The dresser scraped once and then sat flush against the wall of the room Arthur had claimed, the one with the window that faced the mountains instead of the street.
Arthur put his palm on the top of it, checking that it did not rock.
“Level?” Riley asked.
Arthur nodded. He took that as seriously as a grade.
We ate lunch standing up. Bread. Cheese. The last of the grapes Martina had insisted would travel.
Riley sat on the back step with a glass of water. Arthur sat two steps down with his notebook open. I stood in the doorway and watched the saguaro do nothing, which was its job.
“What are you writing?” Riley asked.
Arthur did not look up. “The house,” he said. “Which rooms get light. Where the outlets are.”
Riley was quiet a second. “That’s a good thing to know.”
“I know,” Arthur said.
Riley almost smiled. He drank his water. He didn’t ask to see the page.
In the afternoon they put the bed frame together. Arthur held the long bolt. Riley did not take it out of his hand and do it faster. He waited. The bolt went in crooked the first time. Arthur backed it out and started over. Riley watched the mountains through the window until the second try caught.
“There,” Arthur said.
“There,” Riley agreed.
That was the conversation.
Riley left before dinner. I walked him as far as the driveway.
My SUV sat on one side. His truck on the other.
“Sunday. Mom’s cooking.” He paused. “You don’t have to.”
“We’ll come.”
He nodded. He looked at the house once, the way a man looks at a job that is not finished and does not need to be finished at that instant.
“He’s a good kid,” he said.
“Thank you.”
He got in the truck. I went inside.
Arthur was at the table with the notebook. Martina was making something that smelled like home and cumin.
“He’s coming Sunday?” Arthur asked, without looking up.
He’d obviously been listening.
“We’re going there,” I said.
He made a small mark on the page. Filed it. The way he filed outlets.
I sat down across from him and ate a grape that had not traveled as well as Martina promised.
Nothing else happened that day. That was the point of it.