“What’s the deal with you and this dog?” Ebie asks. The sound of her voice seems to be enough. Honeycrisp looks back at me and whines the way she does when she knows I’ve given the other dogstreats.
“Come on, girl.” She follows me this time and barely waits while I push my seat forward so she can jump in the back of the cab. “Yeah. There you go, you little mutt. She doesn’t like me and I don’t like her,” I tell Ebie once I’m behind thewheel.
“Kinda harsh, don’t you think? She’s a perfectly sweet dog. She kept me company allmorning.”
“She doesn’t like men. My mom took her in from an elderly couple at our church. It took her a while to realize she didn’t have to snap at me every time I camehome.”
“And you kept her anyway even though she was trying to biteyou?”
“She’s a dog. Animals need morepatience.”
“Thanpeople?”
“Yep. Youready?”
“I guessso.”
I wait for her to put her seatbelt on, then I bust a U-turn and head back toward thecafe.
Six
Liz
Ihavea lot on my mind as we drive across the McInroy property. A lot. I touched base with Scott. A girl named Cassidy is going to be at my apartment all day with the people from BIOCLEANNYC. I checked in with work. Murrell is pissed as shit with me for leaving town and I remind him that I have my work with me and I’m still checking in and that I haven’t taken a proper vacation in two years. I don’t say anything about the actual assault, but I tell him about the blood, explain nice and clear just how much of it there was. When I start to describe the smell, he rushes off the phone, reminding me to bereachable.
I checked in with Brook. She has work to distract her, but she’s still worried. She wants to go over to my place and check and make sure Cassidy isn’t stealing from me. And after Mrs. Serea and her crew finished up, I took my time checking in with my body in the shower. My ribs are already starting to feel better. Still, there’s bruising all over my side. There’s the slightest twinge in my wrist if I bend it too far. I know it’ll be back to normal in a fewdays.
Work, my apartment, my sister, my aching body, mylife, all of these things I could be focusing on, should be focusing on and all I can think about is how much space Silas McInroy takes up in the cabin of histruck.
He looks better in daylight, so like and, at the same time, nothing like Scott. There are some similarities in their voices and of course hints in their faces, but Silas is most definitely his own man. It has to be all the time he spends outside. I like to think, as a lawyer, I read people pretty well. I can’t read Silas at all. He’s so hot and cold. One second he’s snapping at me for letting the cleaning people in the house, and the next he’s looking at me, his brown eyes wide and filled with concern, asking me if I was able to get somesleep.
I don’t even know where to start with the shit with the dogs. We’ve never been pet people. Ever. My mom always said animals belong outside and since we didn’t have an outside in Queens, we weren’t getting no pets. This man has five dogs trailing around after him—well four, considering Honeycrisp really doesn’t seem to want anything to do with him. I could describe Silas as a reasonable, yet short-tempered animal lover and leave it at that, but that doesn’t fix the small problem I have everytime I see him. I can’t stop looking at him and when I’m not looking at him, I want to look athim.
And it wasn’t until he mentioned it, but now I remember cuddling up to him in the middle of the night. I remember the way it felt. I think I rolled away at some point. I was just too tired to focus on which side of the bed I was passed out on. He seems more annoyed by me not calling him when the cleaners arrived than he was about me being all up on him in my sleep. I have to chalk it up to him being a guy. A guy who did admit that he thought I was beautiful.Yeah, I tell myself as I decide that’s the reason why he sacrificed a night of sleep for mycomfort.
I look over at his forearms as he takes a turn off his private dirt road onto a wider lane. I don’t think I’ve seen forearms like his in real life before. I can’t remember the last time I got a real look at a man’s forearms or the last time I was paying attention to that sort of thing. Corporate attorneys and their clients don’t work the way Silas does. I bet he does stuff like flip truck tires and toss two ton bales of hay for fun. I realize I want to touch his forearms and I turn my eyes back to the now tree-linedroad.
“Anything I have to try at this cafe?” Iask.
He glances at me, then shakes his head. “Whatever suits your fancy. You don’t have to small talk me when we’realone.”
“Is that right?” I say.You rudemotherfucker.
He glances at me again with a blank expression. “I’m just saying, anytime you leave the house with me, thanks to your friend Scott, we’re gonna have to put on one hell of a show. Might as well save your energy for pretending that you find me so irresistible that you had to come here all the wayfrom?”
“Oh, where am I fictionally from? Is that what you’re askingme?”
“Yeah. You didn’t dream up a backstory foryourself?”
“No. I wassleeping.”
“Well think fast. We’rehere.”
I look up and sure enough, Silas stops his truck beside this bright red barn. Hay bales wrapped in plaid fabric and loaded down with little stacks of pumpkins wrap around the exterior. Very cute. Silas puts the truck in park, but leaves it running. The AC has finally picked up. He turns toward me. “What did the baby digital clock say to the mama digitalclock?”
“What?”
“It’s a joke. Just go with me here. What did the baby digital clock say to the mama digitalclock?”
