“You know,” he says, peeling the orange again. “I just realized this is the second time she’s passed out in your arms.”
Nazeera frowns. “When was the first time?”
Winston drops another piece of rind in the paper bag, where it lands with a softthump. “When he was escaping from the island, remember? On the mini helicopter. He said he was talking to her, asking her some questions, and she just randomly collapsed.” Winston glances at me. “Right?”
Slowly, I nod.
The sun is shifting lower in the sky, rays of fading light painting stripes across the house. A band of gold falls across her face, my arms.
“Weird,” says Nazeera, “I almost forgot about that.”
“Narcoleptic?” says Winston.
I make a face.
Nazeera says what I’m thinking: “I don’t think she’d have made it this far as an assassin if she had narcolepsy.”
Winston drops the last piece of rind in the trash, then splits open the orange, which breaks apart with a suction sound. A spritz of juice dissipates in a slant of sunlight, the scent of orange filtering through the air.
“Well, narcolepsy or not,” he says. “That’s what we call a pattern of behavior.”
Nazeera wordlessly holds out her hand, and Winston places half the orange in her palm.
“Two instances don’t make a pattern,” she says, prying a segment of orange away from its flesh, then popping it in her mouth. “But they do make things interesting.” She makes a face. “Oh, this is tart.”
“Good, though.” Winston is chewing.
“Yeah.” Her face relaxes. She swallows her bite, then considers Rosabelle a moment. “Hey, do you think I should get a cat?”
“What?” Winston and I both say at the same time.
Rosabelle stirs against my chest and I immediately regret having spoken out loud.
“You don’t even have a trash can,” Winston says to Nazeera. “You don’t even live here full-time. How are you going to take care of a cat?”
“Maybe you could cat-sit for me while I’m gone.”
“No way,” he says sharply. “I amnottaking on anymore of your abandoned pets—”
“I don’t abandon them!”
“You’ve got priors, Nazeera. Who do you think inherited your betta fish? Who finished building that model airplane when you got tired of it? Who kept your garden going until you got sick of it? Who has sole custody of Kenji?”
“Oh, shit,” I whisper.
Nazeera looks suddenly haunted. “Ouch.”
Winston averts his eyes. He has the decency to look ashamed when he says, quietly, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it like that.”
Nazeera sets her unfinished orange on the counter. We’re all quiet a moment, tension ratcheting in the silence.
Finally, she says, “I’m afraid of buying a garbage can.”
Winston studies her. “Why?”
She shakes her head, turns her eyes to the darkened hall. “I always thought I’d do stuff like that with Kenji. Buying plates or a lamp or a couch—without him?” She stills. “It feels like closing the door on what might’ve been. Like I’m accepting that it’s never going to happen.”
That hits me harder than I expect.
