Chapter 7
Benji
By the end of week one, the Post-it situation had escalated beyond anything either of us could have predicted.
I came to think of it as The Great Post-it War.
It started, as these things often do, with milk.
On my fourth morning in Peter’s apartment, I’d opened the fridge to find a note stuck to the top shelf in Peter’s meticulous handwriting:
The milk goes on the left side. The right side is for animal medications. If you mix these up, something will die, and it might be you.
— P
It was a reasonable note, a practical note, a note written by a man who had a legitimate concern about the proximity of dairy products to veterinary pharmaceuticals.
He’d chosen to express that concern through adhesive stationery rather than using his mouth like a person who lived in the twenty-first century.
I could have simply moved the milk.
That would have been the mature response.
It also would’ve been the response of a gracious houseguest who appreciated the free room and proximity to work and the fact that his host had yet to strangle him despite considerable provocation.
But I couldn’t help myself because, well, I was me.
I snatched a sticky from the pad by the fridge and scribbled a reply of my own.
The milk was already on the right. I moved it. Also, your animal meds should really be in a locked cabinet. Just saying. You’re giving me health code vibes.
— B
I stuck my note directly below his and went to work, feeling the warm glow of a man who had made a valid point and punctuated it with a hand-drawn sparkle emoji.
When I came home that night at 3 a.m., Peter’s response was waiting.
The medications are stored according to veterinary best practices for a home foster environment. The cabinet locks were on order before you arrived. Your concern is noted, and your emoji is unnecessary.
— P
Below that, on another yellow slip in slightly smaller handwriting, as if he’d added it as an afterthought or a postscript, which seemed redundant when written on a Post-it, he’d scrawled:
The milk is fine where you put it.
I stood in the kitchen reading this note with the focus of a literary scholar examining a primary source.
Peter Loupier had admitted I was right about the milk.
He’d done so in the smallest possible handwriting, in an addendum to a note whose primary purpose was to tell me I was wrong about everything else—but he had done it.
Concessions had been made.
Ground had been yielded.
I wrote back.
Thank you for acknowledging my milk expertise. I accept your surrender.
— B
I left two sparkle emojis because escalation is a language and I am fluent.
By the end of the first week, the fridge looked like an archaeological dig. Our notes were layered three and four deep in places, a geological record of domestic negotiations covering everything from shower schedules:
Please limit showers to 15 minutes. The hot water tank is not infinite.
— P
Please limit newspaper reading to one century per sitting. The bathroom is not a library.
— B
To kitchen protocols:
The French press is cleaned with hot water ONLY. No soap. Soap ruins the oils.
— P
The French press has been cleaned with hot water only. You’re welcome. Also, I Googled it and soap is fine.
— B
Soap is not fine.
— P
The internet disagrees.
— B
The internet is wrong.
— P
To the ongoing and increasingly elaborate kitten containment discourse. The kitten notes deserve their own chapter. Maybe their own book.
It had become clear within the first few days that the bathroom window was not the kittens’ only escape route.
The calico, the one I’d named Beyoncé despite Peter’s explicit instructions not to name the fosters, was an engineering prodigy.
She had figured out how to nudge the bathroom door latch from the inside by standing on Solange’s back, reaching up with one paw, and applying lateral pressure until the mechanism gave way.
I watched her do it through the crack under the door one morning and was so impressed that I filmed it for TikTok before remembering that I was supposed to be preventing the escape, not documenting it.
Peter’s notes on the subject grew increasingly detailed.
Kittens were in the living room when I got home. The bathroom door was open. The latch was engaged when I left. Either the kittens have developed opposable thumbs or you forgot to latch it. I’m not sure which option concerns me more.
— P
I LATCHED IT. I swear on Princess Consuela’s life I latched it. Beyoncé is a genius, Peter. She’s figured out the mechanism. I watched her do it. She stood on Solange and used her paw as a lever. Your kittens are staging a prison break and you need to respect their intelligence.
— B
Please don’t name the kittens.
— P
Too late. Beyoncé, Solange, Kelly, LeToya, and LaTavia. They already respond to their names. LeToya is the shy one. LaTavia bites.
— B
Naming creates attachment. They’re going to new homes.
— P
Attachment is not a disease, Peter. Attachment is a GIFT.
— B
I added a sparkle emoji to the last one. He didn’t respond to that note, but he also didn’t take it down.
The notes had become the primary mode of communication between us, which was both absurd and, if I was being honest with myself, sort of perfect for our particular dynamic.
Peter didn’t do well with spontaneous conversation.
I’d learned that quickly. If I caught him in the kitchen and launched into a story about my shift, he’d listen politely, but I could see him calculating the earliest possible exit.
His answers were monosyllabic, his body language oriented toward whichever doorway would get him back to his room fastest, and the whole interaction had the warm intimacy of a job interview.
But on paper, something loosened.
His notes were still controlled, still precise, still signed with that clipped “— P” that I had started to find weirdly endearing; but they were also, if you read them carefully, funny.
The man was funny.
It was a dry, deadpan, blink-and-you-miss-it kind of funny, buried under layers of formality and a straight face, but it was there.
And I was developing an embarrassing talent for finding it.
Mia was the first to notice.
“You’re doing it again,” she said.
It was a Friday night, and Barbacks was packed.
I was behind the bar making a round of spicy margaritas for a bachelorette party that had arrived wearing matching sashes and the kind of energy that suggested they intended to make this evening a story they’d tell for decades—the parts they could recall on Saturday, at least. Mia was perched on her usual stool, nursing wine, her phone out, doing something I assumed was social media related because this was Mia.
“I’m doing what?”
“Talking about the Post-its.”
“I’m not talking about the Post-its.” I scowled and actually poured margarita mix on my hand. I never spilled. Mia’s eyes widened in disbelief. Then her shit-eating grin returned.
“You’ve been talking about the Post-its for nine minutes. I timed it.”
“I was telling you about the kitten escape. That’s a kitten story, not a Post-it story.”
“You spent the first three minutes on the kitten escape and the last six on what he wrote about it. You described his handwriting as ‘unreasonably precise.’ You used the word ‘unreasonably,’ dear one. That isn’t even in the range of your vocabulary.”
“It is unreasonably precise, and that is a most acceptable word which I most clearly possess in my, um, vocal arsenal or whatever.” Jacks now waited with a large serving tray, ready to run the drinks to the overly festive females.
I slid them toward him without taking my glare off Mia.
“He writes on Post-it notes like he’s addressing a letter to the Queen.
Who has penmanship like that on a two-inch square of yellow paper stuck to a refrigerator? It’s absurd.”
“You find his handwriting absurd?”
“I find his handwriting aggressively absurd. It’s also aggressively good. Nobody should be that good at writing on small paper. It’s suspicious. I’m probably living with a serial killer. I may need your thoughts and prayers.”
Mia spat white wine across the counter as she set her phone down and looked at me with the expression she reserved for moments when she was about to say something I didn’t want to hear. After a quick, stabilizing breath, she asked, “Benji, do you hear yourself?”
“I hear a man making valid observations about penmanship.”
“No. What you hear is a man who just spent nine minutes describing Post-it notes written by his roommate and used the words ‘unreasonably,’ ‘endearing,’ and ‘aggressive’ in the span of sixty seconds. You are down bad, man. Down bad. Man down. Something’s down. Shit, what was in that wine?”
“I am not down bad.” I crossed my arms . . . aggressively. “I’m annoyed, Mia. Annoyed and fascinated are very different emotional states, Mia, and the fact that you can’t tell the difference says more about you than it does about me, Mia!”
“Did you just say fascinated while repeating my name three times before catching your breath?”
I replayed my sentence.
I had, in fact, said fascinated.
I had not meant to say fascinated.
Fascinated was a word that implied interest, and interest implied a direction I was not heading in because Peter Loupier was my temporary roommate who communicated through stationery and had quiet hours and a blue mug I wasn’t allowed to touch and a routine so rigid that I could set a clock by his newspaper reading.
“I said fascinated in an anthropological sense. He’s a specimen, nothing more, a case study in introversion. I’m observing him the way a scientist observes a meticulously organized, innately private animal in its natural habitat.”
“You’re observing him?”
“From a distance. Professionally.”
“Professionally,” Mia repeated in a tone that suggested she was filing this conversation away for future use as evidence.