“I am not moving on. I am beginning.”
“Then begin.”
“She is not keeping the secret to protect the other person. She thinks she is. But the silence is not protecting anyone. It is keeping the situation small enough that she can carry it.”
The room goes quiet. Not uncomfortable. The kind of quiet that happens in this apartment when someone says a thing that ends the discussion before the discussion has finished.
Davis is looking at me from the floor. “She also thought she was being brave. Holding it. She thought brave and scared looked the same from the inside.”
“They do,” I say. “From the inside.”
“And from the outside?”
“From the outside they look very different.”
Marchetti puts the beer down. “Hájek. Can I ask you something?”
“Yes.”
“This feels personal.”
Thompson is watching from the kitchen chair. Davis is sitting up straighter. The room is still.
“I read a great many books, Marchetti. Sometimes a book is simply a very good book.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“My most exciting evening this month was last Tuesday. I had salmon. It was a very good salmon.”
“You are deflecting with a salmon.”
“I am providing context. The context is that I am a person who reads about other people’s lives because my own life is not currently producing material. This is sustainable. I have made peace with the salmon.”
Thompson is laughing in the kitchen chair. The low laugh that means he sees the deflection and is letting it pass.
“He’s let us in further on this book than usual,” Davis says.
“I am always this engaged.”
“You’re always engaged. You’re not usually this fast.”
Marchetti picks the beer back up. “Hájek. You’re protected. Whatever the book did, the book did. We move on.”
“Thank you.”
“But for the record, the deflection is bad. The salmon was a tell.”
“The salmon was real. I have the receipt.”
The room laughs. Thompson is still watching me, but the look has softened. The one that says he will let it alone for tonight. The conversation moves on. Marchetti argues the friend deserved her own book. Davis disagrees. Thompson mediates. I drink my water and the cold of the bottle sits in my fingers and the evening has the texture of all the evenings I have been building in this city.
Marchetti walks out with me and stops on the steps. “Hájek.”
“Yes?”
“Whatever it is. You know we’re here, right? You don’t have to tell us anything. We’re just here.”
“I know.”
