Chapter eighteen
Sully
Icame into the kitchen mostly upright, wearing yesterday's t-shirt, on the assumption that I was about to make coffee. What I saw when I got there was Pratt at his counter slicing chicken into rectangles a person could measure with a ruler. He'd already portioned white rice into a glass container at his elbow. A second mug was on the counter, handle pointed toward me before I'd cleared the doorway.
I put it together. "Game day."
"Yes."
He didn't look up. I leaned a hip against the corner of the counter and watched him. "What time?"
"Eight-eighteen."
He poured coffee into the second mug and pushed it toward me. I drank.
"You didn't sleep on the floor."
He finished a cut and set the knife down so the blade lay flush against the long edge of the board. Then he wiped his hands on the towel.
"No."
I waited for a follow-up.
"It's not a strong system if it can't handle shocks."
The knife was already back in his hand.
I chuckled under my breath. "Good to know I qualify as a shock."
"You qualify."
I drank the coffee and watched Pratt crack an egg one-handed into a hot pan. The white spread and seized.
He plated the eggs for me. Then he spooned roasted carrots out of his air fryer and placed them along with the chicken and rice into three sections with no overlap.
"Eat with me."
"Thank you."
I was at the midpoint of my workweek. It was Saturday morning. I had a floating day that Tomasz placed wherever he needed it. This week it was today. I never argued because he always won.
After Pratt left, I went home to my place.
The box had been on the lower shelf of the closet since the morning after I came back from Nora's. I'd parked it there because I was tired of seeing it on the kitchen counter every time I walked past.
I'd thought the closet would help clear things up . It didn't. It was eight feet from where I made coffee, and through the door I could feel exactly where the box was.
The top shelf was where I kept the things I couldn't throw away but almost never used: a snowboard helmet, electrical cords that seemed to multiply on their own, and the printer box that had migrated there from the living room. The shelf was high enough that I had to stretch to reach it or stand on a chair.
I dragged a kitchen chair down the hall and stood it in front of the closet. The legs left behind a new scrape on the floor.
The box was light in terms of weight. Emotionally, it was almost two tons. I lifted it off the lower shelf with both hands. As I slid the box onto the top shelf, I caught a thumb on the corner of the cardboard, and it tilted a quarter inch.
Bryan's room was on the second floor, east-facing, and in the fall, the light came through the one window gray and cold. His mother was downstairs making something with onions. It was different from my house because his mother cooked and my mother opened cans.
Bryan was sitting on the carpet, leaning back against the milk crate he used for a nightstand. He was sixteen. His hair was overdue for a cut. It fell into his dark eyes, and he didn't push it back. He had both hands laid flat on his chest and his feet crossed at the ankles.
I was on the floor beside him, close enough that our shoulders touched when either of us breathed in. I had come over to play Nintendo. He had held a record sleeve up when I walked in and saidwe're doing this first.
