23. Adrian #3
He looked at me with his steady blue eyes, the ones that were the same at every hour and in every light. “You’re easy to pay attention to.”
I laughed, the surprised kind. I was sure my cheeks flushed, which never happened.
“Come on,” he said. “We should head back.”
“Four a.m. comes early,” I said.
“It always does. That’s what makes it 4 a.m.”
We drove back with the windows cracked and Tampa’s lights blinking through the trees. I held the frame in my lap, both hands around it, and watched the bay appear and disappear between the trees.
“Brendan.”
“Yeah?”
“Eight days is a long time to plan something without telling anyone.”
“It is,” he agreed.
“Most people would tell at least one person.”
“I told Puck,” he said.
“Puck is a ferret.”
“Puck has excellent judgment.”
I let my head fall back against the headrest. “What did Puck say?”
“He dook’d twice. I interpreted that as enthusiastic approval.”
“Of the plan or of me?”
“Both. He’s perceptive.”
“And Gerald?”
“Gerald said nothing,” Brendan said. “Which I also interpreted as approval. It certainly wasn’t dissent.”
“You make important life decisions based on the silence of a succulent.”
“Gerald has never steered me wrong.”
“That you know of.”
“That I know of,” he agreed pleasantly.
I looked out the window, at the dark water through the trees. “I would’ve told Benji.”
“I know.”
“He already has a cocktail napkin about you. He has bullets with sub-bullets, Brendan.”
“I’ve heard,” he said.
“You should be concerned.”
“I’m choosing to be flattered.”
“That’s a very evolved response,” I admitted.
“I’ve been working on it.” A pause. “Rest your eyes. Four a.m. comes early.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Your shoulder has been doing the thing for the last ten minutes.”
I turned to look at him. He was watching the road with complete serenity, as though he had not just deployed my own shoulder against me.
“What’s it saying?” I asked.
“I’m still translating,” he said. “It’s a complex message.”
“Take your time.”
“I will,” he said.
I faced the window and said nothing. He almost smiled. I heard it.
When he pulled up to my building, he put the car in park. I noted this, because Brendan was a man of deliberate choices. We sat for a moment in the companionable quiet that had become one of our better discoveries of recent weeks.
“Eight days,” I said, shaking my head.
He smiled into the windshield as I looked at him in the low light from the parking lot lamps, staring at the blue shirt that had been wrecking my concentration all evening.
“Come up,” I said. “I’ll make coffee.”
He turned.
“I know. It’s a terrible idea,” I said. “It’s late, and I have 4 a.m., and I’m suggesting it anyway.”
He turned off the car, and we walked up to my floor.
I unlocked the door, and Mofongo began to whine in his crate with the urgency of a creature who had been patient for several hours and was prepared to file a formal complaint.
I crossed the room and unlatched the door, freeing my excited pup and his wagging backside and his enormous ears. He ran straight to Brendan.
Brendan stood very still.
“He remembers you,” I said.
“He’s running a comparative analysis,” Brendan said. “Checking for new variables.”
“He does this with me when I come home from the panadería.”
“What does he conclude?”
“That bread is acceptable but isn’t as interesting as whatever else I’ve touched.”
Mofongo sneezed once with apparent finality and trotted to my side, clearly satisfied that his findings were consistent with prior data.
I set the framed print against the kitchen backsplash where it could be seen from anywhere in the room, then I stood there for a second just looking at it. Brendan looked at it, too. Then he looked at me. Then he settled onto the counter stool while I made coffee.
We stood at the counter with our steaming cups while Mofongo rotated between us, a dog who had decided we were both his people and required equal coverage. When the cups were in the sink, Brendan straightened and looked at Mofongo, then at me.
“You should walk him,” he said.
Mofongo had begun the circuit of the apartment that meant he was being patient but had strong preferences regarding the peepee timeline. He paused by the front door and fixed a stare at me.
“Poor thing’s probably been crossing his little legs,” I said.
Brendan smiled and reached for his jacket on the counter stool. “Go walk your dog,” he said. “It was a really good night, Adrian.”
I looked at him standing there with his jacket in his hand and the whole evening behind us.
I replayed everything about Tarpon Springs and Stavros and the dock and the mosaic and the song in the frame on my backsplash.
Mofongo sat by the door and waited with the patience of a very good dog who trusted me to sort my priorities correctly.
“Stay,” I said.
Mofongo’s ears rose slightly. Brendan went still.
“I’ll take him out,” I said, clarifying that my command was for the human and not the dog. “He needs ten minutes.” I looked at Brendan across my kitchen. “Stay, please.”
He looked at me for a long moment, then he set his jacket back on the stool.