“And this has been happenin’ across the hall from me for ten months.”
“In my defense, I didn’t know you could hear it.”
“I could hear it,” he said, his words more groan than statement.
“Well, now you’ll get to hear it in surround sound.”
His jaw shifted. It might have been a clench, or it might have been the beginning of something his mouth decided not to finish.
“I’m goin’ to the clinic,” he said, standing and folding his newspaper with the careful, crease-preserving attention of a man who had strong opinions about newspaper handling. “I’ll be back around six. Kitten formula’s in the fridge if you’re here at noon. Instructions are on the whiteboard.”
“I’ll be at work by then, but I can do the morning feeding before I leave.”
He paused at the doorway, turning back. “You know how to bottle-feed kittens?”
“I’ve watched approximately two hundred TikToks about it.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“Probably not, but I’m a fast learner, and I have very steady hands.” I held up my hands to demonstrate. They were, unfortunately, still shaking slightly from the caffeine-on-empty-stomach situation, and the scratch from the calico was more visible than I’d realized.
Peter looked at my shaking, scratched-up hands with the expression of a man recalculating his expectations.
“There’s a tutorial binder on the shelf in the foster room,” he said. “Bottle feeding is on page twelve. Read it before you touch the kittens.”
“You have a tutorial binder?”
“Page twelve.”
The door clicked behind him, a sound that was somehow both quiet and emphatic, the door-closingequivalent of a period at the end of a sentence.
I stood in his kitchen with my inside-out shirt and my non-blue mug and the sound of Potato snoring on the couch and thought,He has a tutorial binder . . . for the kittens . . . with page numbers.
Then I thought,His handwriting is really beautiful.
I chose not to examine that second thought.
I put it in a box.
I closed the box.
I shoved the box into a corner of my brain reserved for things I would not be addressing today or possibly ever.
Then I fed the kittens.
Yes, I read page twelve first.
It was very thorough.
By the time I got to Barbacks for my pre-shift shift, I had enough new material for a one-man show.
“He hasawhiteboard,” I announced, dropping my bag behind the bar and tying on my apron. “On his fridge. It’s fucking color-coded with a legend and everything.”
Finn was restocking the beer coolers. He glancedup with the patient expression of a man who had been expecting something like this and had made peace with it.
“Okay,” he said. “He sounds organized. This is bad how?”
“Green is for feeding, blue for medications, red is for vet appointments, and purple is for behavioral notes. Each animal has its own row, Finn.Individual rows. With columns. It’s a matrix. The man has created a matrix for his pets.”
