“You don’t have a stove light,” he said.
“I have overhead lighting.”
“Overhead lighting is clinical.”
“Overhead lighting is functional.”
“You need a lamp, something warm. When Hiro visits, he will seek warmth.”
“Peter. I have lived in apartments without stove lights for my entire adult life.”
“I’ll bring you a lamp.”
“You don’t need to bring me a lamp.”
His mouth twisted. “I have a lamp. It’s in the closet not being used. It will give you warm light. I’ll bring it over.”
“It’s been less than half an hour since I moved out.”
“Do you want the lamp or not?”
I surrendered. “Bring the lamp.”
He went back. He got the lamp. He brought the lamp across the hall with the purposeful stride of a man on a mission that he was pretending was casual and that was not casual at all. I set it on my end table, and the warm light transformed the corner from clinical to habitable.
I understood what he was doing.
He was installing a piece of himself in my apartment, a wattage-based claim on territory he wasn’t ready to release.
“Thank you for the lamp,” I said.
“You’re welcome.”
“Are you going to bring me something every twenty minutes for the rest of the evening?”
“Possibly.”
“Peter. Go home. I’m twenty-two feet away.Tomorrow morning, I’m going to walk across the hall and make your coffee wrong and you’re going to tell me it’s overextracted and everything is going to be fine.”
“Everything is going to be fine.”
“Everything is going to be fine,” I repeated.
He went home, and I stood in my apartment with a mixing bowl and a lamp and the fading warmth of his presence and thought about how twenty-two feet had never felt so far away.
At 8:15, there was an odd lull at the bar. Finn was making the only drinks on order, Jacks was running food from the kitchen, and I had absolutely nothing to do. So, I snatched up my phone and texted Peter.
Me: The lamp is perfect. The apartment is weird without animals. Tell Hiro I said good night.
Barely a heartbeat passed before his reply appeared.
DrPostIt: Told him. He wagged once.
Of course he did. Exactly one wag. Hiro only ever gave one.
Despite a few of our regulars tipping Adrian ungodly sums on his first night shaking his groovethang at Barbacks, the bar crowd had thinned out early. Finn sent Jacks and me home around ten. I wondered if he might regret that when the Saturday second wave hit around midnight, but I didn’t hang around long enough for him to change his mind.
At 10:30, I knocked on Peter’s door holding Princess Consuela’s empty food bowl, because I’d left her food in his pantry, and because the food bowl was an excuse, and the excuse was transparent, and I didn’t care.
