“Oh, good.” She hops off the stool. “I’m supposed to tell Grandpa when you’re here. He’ll take you up to the apartment.”
“Great.”
She starts for the kitchen. “Could you, uh, help show me around?” I ask.
Do I feel like I need my twelve-year-old fan to buffer between me and my gruff landlord? Yes. One thousand percent.
“Sure!” she says enthusiastically. She pushes the kitchen door open. “Grandpa! He’s here!”
“Fine. Just a minute,” comes his brusque reply.
She looks back at me. “There’s only one apartment up there. And it’s small. You wouldn’t have any trouble finding things. But it’s probably really different from where you live. I saw pictures of your apartment in Portland inHockey Hunksmagazine.”
Her cheeks flame red, and I rush to cover her embarrassment. “Oh, they did a great article. They made my place look really cool.” I rack my brain for something, someway, I can relate to a twelve-year-old girl. The only thing I know we have in common is hockey and Nora. “Which room did you like the best?” I’d love to ask her all about Nora, but that would probably come off creepy.
I can talk about my apartment easily enough. So, the kid looks atHockey Hunksmagazine online. A lot of dudes do, too, actually.
It’s calledHockey Hunks, and yeah, they take a bunch of photos of us, and sure, some of them are shirtless, but they also do in-depth stories. They highlight where we live and our favorite restaurants, movies and books we like, giving a behind-the-scenes look at our lives. At least that’s the idea. Their goal is to appeal to a demographic they think might be less into stats and offensive strategy and more into the players as men. But my experience is that women know just as much about the game as men, and men are just as into what our apartments look like, what cars we drive, and how we like to spend our free time as women are.
“Your living room,” Ruth answers without even pausing to think. “You don’t cook, and you don’t seem to spend much time in the other rooms. But you hang out a lot in your living room. Plus, you have that really great view. Of course, you’re not gonna have a really great view here. But you probably won’t be here a lot either. The town is going to want to get to know you, and there are a lot of activities for you to attend.” She’s a chatterbox now.
And she’s observant. She’s completely right about my apartment. I don’t spend a lot of time in any of the rooms other than the living room. That’s where I kick back and watch TV and movies, play games, and entertain. Sure, my bedroom gets some use… But I don’t expect a girl this age to really think about that.
Now her cousin Nora, on the other hand, may be a different story.
I’d like Nora to do more than think about my bedroom, though.
“Well, come on then,” Bruce says, coming through the swinging door. He sets a hand on the back of Ruth’s neck and steers her around the edge of the counter.
He doesn’t ask if she wants to come with us, and I wonder if he wants a third person to dispel some awkwardness between us, too.
In the corner of the restaurant, behind a tall potted tree that is, no shit, growing lemons, there’s a pink and orange curtain-covered doorway, and beyond the curtain is a staircase.
I follow them up the fourteen steps to the second floor.
Bruce opens the door on the landing, and it swings in with a groan.
He steps in first, and Ruth follows. I have to duck slightly to avoid hitting the doorframe with my forehead.
Bruce crosses to a lamp and clicks it on. “This is yours while you’re here,” Bruce says, walking into the middle of the apartment, which is also the middle of the living room. “One of the hockey players from last year’s team lived here. Most of the other guys stayed in town, so there aren’t too many places open. But if you can find something better that you like more, feel free to go.”
I arch my brows. Warm welcome, this is not.
“My sister seems to think this is the perfect place for me,” I tell him. I notice my bags sitting at the end of the hallway that I assume leads to the bedroom and bath. “Have you met Astrid?”
Bruce stands with his feet shoulder-width apart, his hands tucked into the back pockets of his jeans. The bright orange T-shirt he wears reads Perks and Rec, and has a coffee cup leaning against a beer mug on the front. He’s taller than the other three men that wanted to do me harm, and he seems a little younger. He’s maybe in his mid- to late sixties, rather than mid-seventies. He’s also got a rounder stomach, a broader chest, has a veryneatly trimmed beard, and looks at me with an air of disdain that I have rarely experienced.
The three men at the airport seemed mischievous. This man looks like I tracked pig shit into his mansion, and I’m not even qualified to clean it up.
“I have met your sister,” Bruce tells me. “She seems used to getting her way.”
I chuckle. “That’s an understatement.”
“So you’re going to stay here because she tells you to?”
I shrug. “I’m going to stay here because it has a bed and a shower, and that’s really all I need while I’m in town.”
He looks around, then back to me with an eyebrow. “For what it’s worth, I saw the photos of your Portland apartment, too. Are you sure about that?”
