The croissant went down. His hands stayed on the table, easy, relaxed.
“A man gave me a cherry and suddenly everything felt…wrong.”
Billy regarded me for a moment, then— “Where is it now?”
“My pocket.”
Something in his jaw twitched. “Show me.”
I reached inside the pocket and felt for the smooth, polished metal. Caught it by the stem and pulled out.
“What does it mean, Billy?” I asked, placing it in between us.
He looked at it for a long moment, and then at me — for an even longer one. The morning light came through the window and I realized that Billy Arceneaux would have been straightforwardly likeable in a different life. This one — the one he was living right now, required him to be something more complicated.
“It means,” he said carefully, “that Judah has very expensive taste and extremely poor timing.” He picked up his coffee. “And that you should probably stop carrying it in your pocket.”
“Should I throw it away?”
He didn't answer that.
“Billy.”
“I think,” he said, “that you should finish your cake. And then I'll take you home.” His gaze met mine. “Some questions don't have answers that make things better. You understand me?”
I understood him.
I ate the cake. It was good — dense and sweet with a cream cheese frosting that was doing its best against the heat — and Billy talked about something else entirely, a story about his Aunt Ida and a parish council meeting that had apparently devolved into something requiring an apology from three separate parties. I laughed where I was supposed to laugh and askedthe right questions and watched the telephone pole over his shoulder and thought about Celeste Taylor.
The bathroom was at the back, past the counter and through a narrow hallway that smelled like cleaning supplies and old wood. I took longer than I needed to. Stood at the sink and ran cold water over my wrists — a thing I did when I needed to think clearly, had done it since I was a teenager — and looked at myself in the mirror above the basin, trying to see what they all saw in me. That old man at the fundraiser. Billy.
Judah.
I thought about the day he’d come over to fix the shower. And then the way he’d acted when I was leaving the fundraiser.
I should’ve asked for a raise for how much I spent out of my day on thoughts about him.
I dried my hands and went back through the hallway and out the front door.
Billy was leaning against the Jaguar. Smoking — one ankle crossed over the other, his face turned toward the street — people watching, one would guess.
I looked back at the telephone pole, to take one last look at Celeste, and realized the flyer was gone. Ripped clear off. How did I know it was ripped off? Because the edges were still there.
“Let’s move it, slowpoke,” Billy called, pushing off the car.
Judah came by at noon with the same toolbox and different hands — or rather the same hands, which was the problem, which I was trying not to think about as I let him in. I told myselfthis was a professional arrangement between an employer and an employee and nothing about it was complicated. Unless you counted his tongue complicated.
I was still deciding on that.
It didn’t take him long to fix the showerhead this time.
I sat on the couch with a book that I wastryingto read — and failing — and listened to the silent clink of instruments in the bathroom.
When he came out, his shirt was dry — his hands held nothing but the toolbox and he looked like he was ready to leave right away. I looked at the ink on his forearms and then at the book in my lap.
“Should hold now,” he said. “Pressure's better than it was.”
“Thank you.”
