Callahan
I press my foreheadto the cool wood of the desk—which I used an entire container of disinfectant wipes on after I walked in on Harold and Inés getting freaky—and let out a groan. “The Development of Taxidermy and the History of Ornithology” by Paul Lawrence Farber, as it turns out, is entirely useless to me despite the article’s promising title. All right, that might be unfair to the late Professor Farber; I do at least now know this goose is not from the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. Which I kind of already assumed, considering its relatively good condition, and the way it—
CRASH!
I spring up from my chair and rush out of the office to the front of Virtu to see what the hell happened. It sounded a lot like…
Oh, shit. It was.
Broken glass is strewn over the floor in both large chunks and barely visible shards that glitter in the cracks of the hardwoodand the low-pile fibers of the Persian rug beside it. I’m attempting to figure out by the color and pattern what exactly has shattered when I realize that Annie is standing there, looking like she’s using every ounce of her strength to hold back tears as deep red trickles over the edge of her palm like the world’s slowest, most macabre waterfall.
“Geez, Annie,” I say and move toward her. Some of the glass crunches under my boot as I motion for her to let me see. I’ll need to grab the Shop-Vac to clean up the floor, but that’s the very least of my concerns at the moment.
Her lower lip trembles as she uncurls her fingers and holds out her injured hand. “I—I was trying to get a better angle on the cocktail pitcher with the g-gold and I don’t know what happened. The handle just…broke in my hand and the rest of it fell to the floor.”
“I told you not to move anything without talking to me first.” I try to keep my voice soft and the anger out of it. Because while I’m slightly annoyed about the destruction of a stock piece and the resulting mess, the thing that has me downright furious is the blood pooling in Annie’s cupped palm. I hate that she’s hurt, and that it feels like my fault somehow.
“I know. I’m sorry.” The tears finally spill over her cheeks as she apologizes.
“You don’t need to be sorry,” I say. “Just…come on. We need to clean that up and see if you need stitches.”
“But the mess—”
“Isn’t going anywhere.” When she looks at me with her chin tilted down and those deep rosy-brown eyes cast up to meet mine, it activates some strange protective instinct inside me. “Come on,” I say again and gently cup her elbow, steering her toward the stairs.
“Where are we going? The bathroom is—”
“Up to my apartment. I have a better-stocked first aid kit there.”
Annie takes the stairs slowly, and I let my hand hover at her lower back in case she starts to feel unsteady. I don’t think she’s lost a ton of blood, but she does look alarmingly white. When we reach the top, I move ahead of her to unlock the door faster than I have in my entire life.
“Do you think you can warsh it in the kitchen zink—I mean, wash it in the kitchen sink—while I grab the kit?” Despite quickly correcting myself, I can’t help but be embarrassed by the accent slip; there’s an Ivy League diploma and a master’s degree hanging on my wall, and yet certain words still sometimes come out of my mouth sounding like my crabber grandfather when I’m not careful.
But Annie doesn’t say anything about it, only nods, sniffling.
I open the hall closet and grab Graham’s old red metal toolbox, which never actually held any tools. Instead, it’s filled to the brim with all sorts of bandages, ointments, and braces. He was notorious for his clumsiness—a result of clearly undiagnosed ADHD that frequently affected both his spatial awareness and attention span. I put together this first aid kit for him as a birthday present when I was seventeen, and Graham got a good laugh out of it.
When I started cleaning up the apartment to live in myself post-breakup, I came across the box, kept refreshed and well-stocked even after all those years, even after he moved in with his partner, Francis, and wasn’t living here anymore. As if my small gesture of showing I cared meant something infinitely larger than the gift itself. I cried for two hours straight that night.
No time for those memories now. Annie needs me. I grab the box and stride back to the kitchen.
Annie’s seated at the table, diluted red blooming like watercolor paint through the damp paper towel she has wrapped around the injury. I wash and dry my hands, then sink to my knees in front of her. She holds her bloody palm out to me without my having to ask. Like she trusts me to make it better.
That shouldn’t make me feel as good as it does.
“I’m sorry,” she says again, wincing as I inspect the gash. “I’ll pay for it.”
“Shush.”
“Why are you shushing me?”
“Because you’re being stupid.”
Her eyebrows raise in an expression that clearly meansexcuse you?
Thankfully, the cut isn’t as long or as deep as I feared, but there are some small pieces of glass stuck in it. Something I think we can take care of here instead of going to urgent care. “You don’t have to pay for it,” I say, reaching for tweezers and an alcohol wipe. “It isn’t a big deal.”
Now the eyebrows say,I don’t believe that for a second.
