I sat up and snapped on the lamp on the overturned crate next to my mattress.
Joey wasdead.
I grabbed Peggy Lee off her stand and strummed her gently. I didn’t feel like singing by a long shot, but I quietly worked through a chord progression that had been turning over in my head for a while.
When I’d first taken up the guitar, my fingers had bled, but now I had calluses on my fingers like an old-timer. I riffled through the pileof stuff next to my mattress for a pad of paper, a pen, and took down a few lines of notation.
Somewhere else in the building a door banged open or shut. I could feel it more than hear it, though the walls were thick. Someone just going about their life, like nothing had happened. Wasn’t that the wildest part?
Dog tags rattled, then nails tapped along the hardwood floors. Bear, on patrol. He nosed my bedroom door open.
“Hey, old man,” I whispered. He lumbered over to me, put his head down, butt high, and extended his front paws. You were obligated to saybig stretchwhen dogs did their yoga. It was the law. “Big stretch, buddy. You want to hear the very beginning of a baby song? How does this sound?”
Bear seemed to listen for a second, head tilting. He huffed very gently at a noise he could pick up that I couldn’t. Maybe Lemon in the kitchen? Or probably whoever was up at this terrible hour in the other half of the building.
I looked at the clock again. Why wouldanyonebe over there right now?
Bear eventually gave up his patrol, stepped onto the mattress, and curled up next to me. I sang him a few nonsense lyrics—about himself, of course. I had written quite a few songs in ode to the dogs, dropping in references to things they liked—anythingbut the Wufers brand name. The chorus was always the same: Who’s a good dog?
As I worked out a few more chords, Bear lowered his head, tucked his muzzle against a paw. His eyes were black, his eyelids heavy, then closed. Lemon would soon be in the door. They were a package deal.
I thought I’d known what that was like.
My hand stilled on the guitar. Alex had wiped the security footage—but why?
I ripped the page with new song notes from the pad, got out of bed, and went to my closet. Way in the back my black Frye boots stood, ready. I paused, thinking about the song the band and I were supposedto be writing. Then I shoved the new notes deep into the right boot, with the rest of my misfires. Lyrics that wouldn’t come together, lines of notes I would never make sing. Pathetic. Maybe I should have left all my false starts in the apartment for Cam to toss. Maybe instead of taking the boots, I should have taken the hint.
In the kitchen, I pulled down all the open boxes of cereal and constructed a multilayered parfait of loops and shapes and sugar crunch. When I opened the fridge, though, I learned that we were out of milk.
And I knew, without question, that I was the one who should have picked up some.
I grabbed a fistful of the dry cereal concoction and tipped my head back. I hadn’t eaten much all day, what with all that running around to the ends of the earth. What I needed was a vegetable that wasn’t in tots form. I wasn’t really hungry, though.
Finding your boyfriend’s body definitely killed your appetite.
I heard a few crumbs hitting the floor and then a noise somewhere outside, loud and clanging. Both dogs came charging out into the common space, one from each bedroom, huffing and ready for action. “Don’t you dare,” I whispered. “Donotmake a single sound. Clean up on aisle six.” Their noses fell to the floor to snuffle for dropped food.
But I’d heard that noise, too. I put down the bowl.
The apartment windows overlooked Milwaukee Avenue and the front of McPhee’s, but there was nothing to see in that direction. It was so late, it was early. The streets and sidewalks were clear.
But there it was again.Clang.
We didn’t have a window looking out on the alley, so I had to open the apartment door and take the stairs down to street level. The dogs came with me, of course.
At the door to the alley, I remembered the still gray of Joey’s face, and my hand faltered on the release.
Below me, Bear whined.
“He wasdead, okay?” I said. “Give me a second.”
Anyway, I wasn’t dressed to yell at randos in the alley. In winter. At three in the morning.
I stood on tiptoes to check the peephole instead. There was definitely something going on out there. A truck running, maybe, red taillights glowing. The angle was bad, but I caught some human movement, too.
Another big thud, but instead of coming from out in the alley, it seemed to come from inside the building.
What kind of early-hours business could be going in next door? A bakery?
