“Are you the new hockey man.”
I considered this. It was accurate and inaccurate at the same time.
“Yes,” I said.
“My dad says all hockey men have bad teeth.”
I said, “Some do.”
“Do you?”
I crouched down. The kid was close now. Close enough that I could see the freckles on his nose, the gap between his front teeth, the particular expression of a five-year-old who had decided to conduct an investigation.
I pulled my lips back like an animal, slowly, deliberately, and bared my teeth at the small person standing on my landing.
The child studied them with the seriousness of a jeweler.
“They’re okay,” the child said. He sounded disappointed. “Not bad. Just okay.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Are you Maple’s boyfriend.”
“No.”
“Why.”
“I just met her.”
“You’re sleeping in her grandma’s house.”
“I am renting it from her.”
“What’s renting.”
“Paying her money so I can sleep here.”
The child considered this. Hockey stick in one hand. Frowning. He was working through something.
“That’s still kind of like being her boyfriend,” he said. “Because you’re in her house at night.”
I did not answer that. The logic was not entirely wrong.
The child squinted at me. Tipped his head sideways, studying my face the way I had been studying his.
“You don’t smile.”
“I do.”
“When.”
I did not answer that either.
The child waited. He stood on the landing in his snowsuit and waited like he had all the time in the world.
I did not move my face.
After a long beat the child said, with the satisfied finality of a person settling a court case, “Mr.Grumpus.”
