Luca
They put the box on my kitchen island.
White plastic, a strip of LEDs, a folded quick-start sheet. Two techs in vendor polos, one doing the talking, one doing the work. Roberto stands at the end of the island with his reading glasses low on his nose, flipping through the consent I already signed, staring down at the paper.
“Base needs mains power,” the talker says. “Cell backup if your internet goes down. We set a nightly window. If the strap leaves range during that window, it throws an event. If it stays, it anchors location as ‘home.’”
“Range?” Roberto asks without looking up.
“Thirty to fifty feet, depending on walls.”
“Make it fifty,” Roberto says, dry. “You can note my client’s bedroom is not a studio apartment.”
The tech smiles like he’s not paid enough for this shit. “We don’t ‘make’ it, sir. Materials do.”
They want the base in my bedroom. I don’t. I point to the hall credenza that sits almost at the dead center of the house, outlets on either side. “There.”
The quiet one lifts the unit, runs the cord. A soft chime when it hits power. The LEDs flicker once, then steady. He takes my ankle in his hands the same way the last guy did—careful, like he doesn’t want to get bit—and holds a little black gadget close to the strap.
“Pairing,” he mutters. The base answers with two short beeps. “Paired.”
“It will lower the chance of… what did he call it yesterday?” Roberto says, still reading. “A clean hop outside the polygon.”
“Yeah,” the talker says. “GPS can bounce. The base gives priority to a known place during the window. Less drift.”
Roberto finally looks up. “Less drift should have been the design from day one.”
He’s performing for them a little. He doesn’t have to. The annoyance is real. He hates sloppy systems.
I take an espresso to the window and watch the men cross my lawn to the service panel, then back, then down the hall.
I didn’t sleep much. When I did, it wasn’t the kind that sticks. I close my eyes and see a dark room and a woman who let me tie her wrists with silk while the city slept. I hear breath against my ear, the broken little sound that hitches in her chest. I taste her skin every time I swallow.
I wonder if she drank the coffee.
It makes me smile, the thought that she’d throw it straight down the drain just to spite me. Or maybe she drank it hot, standing barefoot in that small kitchen, cheeks pink, remembering all that we did in the dark.
Or maybe she dumped it and cursed my name.
Either way, I want to know if she’s all right. We were not gentle. I know she woke up sore.
But more than that, I want to know how she’sdoing. Does she regret what we did? Does she feel shame?
If I didn’t have to, I never would’ve left a woman in her state. The intensity of the night likely very new to her. I should’ve been there, holding her, reassuring her that she’s perfect and amazing.
But instead, I’m here, being put under a tighter lock and key.
I want to pick up the phone. I don’t. Not yet, anyway.
“Windows?” the talker asks. He’s holding a tablet, stylus poised.
“What do you need?” Roberto says.
“Start and end. When the base tells the system to treat ‘home’ as authoritative.”
I do the math against habit and the installation report from this morning in that glass room. “Twenty-three hundred to oh-six hundred.”
The tech taps. “Done.”
