“He charged interest.”
“One was curious why he didn’t simply ask the family.”
“One didn’t inquire?”
“I counterfeit for amusement, Jessica, not information.”
I sighed. “You should put that on a pillow.”
As Gertie tittered at this, I sipped my tea and wondered why I’d bothered climbing all those stairs. My Behavioral Econ class was learning about addiction and impulsivity without me.
But I was here, so I pulled out the keys from the library stacks.
“Do you know what these are?”
She leaned forward—intrigued, then disappointed. “Alas, no.”
We held each other’s eyes a moment. More than usual, the tower was filled with an air of performance, as if she’d been expecting my visit.
In the silence, a large white cat emerged from beneath Gertie’s armchair. It crept up, sniffing at my shoe.
A flex of my ankle sent it skittering back to Gertie. It jumped into her lap and began to rub its head against her chin.
“That’s new,” I said.
“We smuggled him in last week. Isn’t he darling? His name is Uncle Max—are you okay with that?”
“It’s a Morton name,” I said.
“We’ll see if it fits. Would you like to watch him eat?”
“Do you mean cat food?”
“If a cat eats something, it’s cat food,” Gertie said and then called out, “Ghia! Snacks!”
I stood, remembering why I didn’t visit Gertie very often.
“One of the saviors of her generation,” she said with a smile. “And yet so squeamish.”
“Playing with one’s food is unMorton.”
“Don’t tell Uncle Max.”
I gave the cat a long look, wondering if there was a personality behind its eyes, an inner self of some kind, or only the primal machinery of hunger and violence.
It stared back at me, licking its lips.
“You should ask your old flame, Xavier Lindqvist,” Gertie said into the silence.
I looked up at her. “About the keys? Or Peter’s money?”
“All of it.” She waved a hand. “Sebastian can take you. He’s going tonight.”
“Going where?”
“Somewhere he shouldn’t,” Gertie purred. “Sebastian is complications all the way down, and you’re such a simple girl. That’s why no one tells you anything.”
The girl in the pink dress came in, dangling a mouse by its tail.
