Interlude I
Graham rinses his glass and sets it in the rack. He wipes the counter even though it's already clean, then moves through the apartment turning off the lamps Teddy always leaves on. One by one, until the rooms sit at the low, steady dimness Graham prefers.
He likes the apartment brought down to one clear level before he goes to bed.
The dish by the couch holds three keys now. His car key. The spare to the mailbox. And the small brass one from the cage, still warm from his hand. He doesn't pick it up. He just looks at it for a moment, then leaves it there with the others.
He had known the standard cage wouldn't fit.
He ordered it anyway. Not out of carelessness.
He's rarely careless with measurements. He did it because he wanted Teddy to see it for himself.
The slack in the tube. The gap past the tip.
The way it hung loose around something too small to fill it.
Graham had kept his face neutral while Teddy looked down at it, while the object itself made the point more cleanly than words could.
The right size comes Saturday. Graham already knows what it will be.
None of this feels urgent to him. That's the difference. He can wait. He waited a full week before bringing it up, and then he waited again while Teddy circled the idea on his own.
He sits on the arm of the couch and checks his phone. There's a message from a woman Teddy doesn't know about yet. Graham reads it, replies with a date and a place, then sets the phone face down.
By then Teddy will be a few weeks into the quiet. More settled. It will reach him looking like luck. Graham doesn't think of it as a plan, exactly. Just the next piece, placed early.
He does his usual last checks, door locked, stove off, and heads down the hall. Outside Teddy's room he pauses.
He already knows the boy is asleep. The light went off over an hour ago, and the breathing on the other side of the wall has been slow and even for a while now. Most men don't fall asleep that fast the night something gets locked onto their body. Unless the thing came as a relief.
Inside, in the dark, there's a small sound. The rustle of a sheet, then the soft catch of a held breath. The sound of a man reaching down through the covers to touch the thing locked on his body, finding it still there, and going still himself when he feels the plastic under his fingers.
Graham listens once, then keeps walking.
He sleeps well. He always does.