6. Heater. Heathen. Helium.
Heater. Heathen. Helium.
Harris finished stacking chairs sometime after one. Most of the neighbors had gone, the twins were asleep, and Della had finally allowed Walt to walk her back toward the house after announcing several times that birthdays legally exempted a person from cleaning.
The event barn looked half dismantled now, tables stripped, abandoned glasses collecting along the walls, half the string lights already dark.
Harris preferred it that way. A room made more sense once people left it. Chairs went against the wall, bottles into crates, trash into tied bags. Every object had somewhere it belonged, and none of them expected him to dance or explain why he wasn’t.
He shut off another row of lights. Navarro had gone into the lodge maybe ten minutes ago; Harris knew because Jay had crossed directly through his field of vision while Harris carried chairs. Nothing worth examining there.
He bent to collect an empty beer bottle.
Ma said you dance pretty good.
Coward.
Harris had seen perfectly well how Navarro danced. Using Della as the source had simply been easier than admitting he had watched enough to know for himself.
All evening, some part of him had kept track of where Navarro stood. Not watching him exactly. Knowing. There had to be a difference, even if Harris could not have explained it without making the whole thing sound worse.
Navarro was hard to miss in a room: six feet tall, broad through the shoulders, dark hair coming loose around his face as the night went on.
He moved differently when he wasn’t working.
Less directed. The part of him always evaluating, arranging, and deciding what mattered had gone quiet for a few hours.
Harris had noticed while Navarro danced with Della—he’d looked over once, then several more times because apparently one look had not provided enough information. At one point, Jay turned toward the doors quickly enough that Harris barely got his attention onto Walt before Jay looked over. Barely.
Harris had spent most of his life managing what other people were allowed to see. He could damn well manage where he put his eyes.
Evan crossed the barn carrying a black trash bag, tying the top as he walked. “You about done?”
“Yup.”
“Go to bed.”
“Was planning on it.”
Evan surveyed the stripped tables and chairs. “Mom’s going to make us put half this back tomorrow.”
“Monday.”
Evan stopped. Harris looked over and found his brother smiling.
“What?”
“You said Monday.”
“Nobody needs tables tomorrow.”
“I’m just impressed you’re actually taking a day off.”
Harris reached for another bottle. “Go throw that away.”
Evan laughed under his breath and carried the trash outside.
By the time Harris crossed the yard toward his cabin, the ranch had gone mostly dark. One upstairs window in the lodge still held a pale square of light: east wing, second from the end. Navarro’s room.
Harris looked away before checking whether a shadow moved behind the curtain. That seemed like a reasonable place to draw the line.
* * *
Jay called Romy the next morning from the empty conference room, late enough that calling it morning required generosity.
She answered from her kitchen floor, surrounded by fabric books, paint cards, and tile samples. A measuring tape hung around her neck. Both chairs visible in the frame behind her had disappeared beneath materials for an apartment installation.
“Do you ever sit on your chairs?” Jay asked.
“They have things on them.”
“Obviously.”
Romy propped the phone against a cabinet and studied him. “You look tired.”
“I went to a birthday party.”
“You’re thirty-six.”
“Montana birthdays are physically demanding.”
She made a small acknowledging sound and waited.
That was the problem with knowing someone for fifteen years. Eventually, silence became a precision instrument. Romy could leave one between them and trust Jay to injure himself with it.
“The film’s going well,” he said. “The footage is good. The family’s good.”
Romy picked up two nearly identical paint cards. Waited some more.
Jay exhaled. “Harris is difficult.”
One of Romy’s perfectly bushy eyebrows lifted.
Jay exhaled. “Fine. There’s a man.”
“I gathered.”
“From what?”
“You called me before noon on your day off.”
He stared at her. “You make me sound like a terrible friend.”
“Tell me about him.”
And, annoyingly, Jay wanted to. Harris was difficult and smart. He distrusted the camera for reasons Jay respected, smoked too much, slept too little, and generally seemed to regard relaxation as a character defect. He could look at tire tracks and know they did not belong to anyone on the ranch.
“He cannot identify people by tire tracks,” Romy said.
“I watched him do it.”
“You watched him identify an unfamiliar tire.”
“That is substantially less impressive when you phrase it that way.”
“I’m describing what happened.”
“You weren’t there.”
Her mouth twitched.
Jay told her about Claire instead. Their twelve years of marriage still visible in the way she and Harris treated an injured horse without needing to ask where the other would stand.
He described the silent choreography in the stall: Harris shifting Rain before Claire asked, Claire reaching for an instrument and finding it already in his hand. Affection, history, and habit remained.
“He still loves her?” Romy asked.
“I think so. Not in the way his father wants him to, but yes.”
The answer should have been simple. Jay had spent years interviewing people about relationships they barely understood themselves, and Harris and Claire were easier to read than most: love, grief, familiarity, and no visible desire to reconstruct what they had ended.
“They fit,” Jay added.
“And that bothers you.”
“No,” he said too quickly.
Romy raised her brow again.
“Ugh. Fine. Slightly.”
“How slightly?”
“Not enough to justify that judgy expression.”
“What expression?”
“You know exactly which one.”
Romy let that go, which was considerably more effective than arguing.
Jay rubbed his thumb along the rim of his mug. “I watched him dance last night.”
“With a woman?”
“Yes. Obviously. He’s definitely straight.”
Romy waited.
Jay hated her.
“I still didn’t like it,” he said. There. Out loud. Worse than expected.
“It was ridiculous. She was attractive, he was clearly interested, and I behaved internally as though somebody had violated the terms of an agreement that does not and will never exist.”
“Did you… do anything? Say something to him about it?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you were jealous and kept it to yourself.”
“Don’t make it sound so emotionally functional.”
“Sorry.”
Jay turned his mug between his hands. Outside the window, the ranch had gone unusually quiet.
“It’s completely hopeless,” he said. “He’s straight, emotionally unavailable, smokes, lives in rural Montana, and is part of the documentary I’m directing. Excellent judgment from beginning to end.”
“You do like a challenge.”
“I actually don’t. That’s what makes this especially offensive.”
Romy picked up a tile sample.
“I could tell him I’m gay,” Jay said.
Her hand stopped. “Why would you do that?”
“Casually. See what happens.”
“Babe, no.”
“That was immediate.”
“Because you’re talking about turning something personal into an experiment.
You barely know him. You’re living on his family’s property, and your entire production depends on access they control.
Maybe don’t test a deeply private rancher’s feelings about gay people because you have a crush and want data. ”
“That made me sound significantly more unhinged than I actually am.”
“You proposed field research.”
“It would not be field research.”
“You’re literally in a field.”
Jay smiled despite himself.
Romy’s phone chimed. She glanced down and began sorting through the tile samples with one hand.
“What happened?”
“My contractor has discovered measurements after ordering the wrong vanity.”
“Seems like a rookie mistake.”
“Very much so.” She found the sample she wanted. “Make your film, Jay. Let Harris assume whatever he wants.”
“My sexuality isn’t classified information. He probably assumes I’m straight. Most people do.”
“Maybe.”
“Which is objectively funny.”
“I know. So only tell him if you want him to know you, not because you want to watch his face.”
That was irritatingly good advice.
Romy picked up her work phone. “I have to stop a man from installing several thousand dollars of cabinetry in the wrong place. Call me when you ignore everything I said.”
“I won’t be calling.”
“Sure. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
The screen went dark.
Jay was not going to tell Harris. This was important.
* * *
The high-country locations were still pending. Harris had postponed the trip twice, but Priya had decided to work out the logistics anyway, just so they would be ready to go if and when Harris gave them the green light.
She made the crew weigh themselves, their personal gear, and every piece of equipment they might reasonably take. Eli supplied the camera and audio figures; Priya calculated food, water, and emergency supplies. Jay turned the numbers into a table of possible load distributions.
By evening, he had a legitimate professional reason to knock on Harris Shaw’s door.
This was not the same as manufacturing an intimate conversation. Obviously.
* * *
A knock sounded against Harris’s cabin door after dinner. The lodge lights showed faintly through the cottonwoods, but the path between the buildings had gone dark. His family rarely knocked without opening the door at the same time, and nobody else had much reason to come out there after hours.
The second knock came before Harris decided whether to answer the first.
Navarro stood on the porch with a folder tucked beneath one arm, his dark shirt open at the throat and the sleeves pushed to his elbows. His hair was loose around his face, still slightly damp near the ends. The porch light caught one side of him and left the other in shadow.
“You have a minute?” Jay asked.
Harris stepped aside.