Page 38 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

Nobody has done that for me since my mother died. People talk. People fix. People need you to perform your crisis in a shape they can respond to, and the performance costs more than the crisis.

Not Cherry. This might be the only time she doesn’t perform for her audience.

Somewhere in minute seven, my eyes spill over, quietly, without drama, and she hands me the handkerchief from her handbag without looking and keeps her eyes courteously on the wick shelf. “Your gauges are out of order,” she says at last, gently, which is a lie.

They are in perfect order, they are in the best order of their lives, and the laugh that comes out of me is wet and ridiculous.

“Liar.”

“Sometimes lies are the best truths. Might not be your gauges, but something’s out of order, ain’t it?”

I tip my head onto her shoulder for a moment. “You ever…” I sigh. “Have you ever had a pregnancy scare, Cherry?”

“I could kiss you.”

I blink up at her. “Huh?”

“My dear, the good Lord did not bless me with the equipment for such a thing.”

More blinking, until I laugh awkwardly and slap my hand over my mouth. “Oh my god! I’m so sorry! I?—”

“Think nothing of it. You’re not in your right mind.”

“Yeah, okay. I can’t believe I asked you that.”

She beams down at me. “Honestly, back in the day when I was still sorting things out, in my twenties, I dabbled in women, not just dressing like one. Had a pregnancy scare that turned out to be the result of sleeping with an insomniac whose cycle was all wonky because of her condition.”

“I cannot picture you with a woman that way.”

She shrugs. “Me either, that’s why it didn’t stick. Point is, these things happen. What you do with it is up to you. Ready to face the world?”

I take a breath to stall, then get up. She brushes off her dress and walks me out through the dark shop, past the tank where Hairy hangs at the glass, watching, unbriefed and patient.

“Tomorrow,” I tell him. “Full report tomorrow. I promise.”

Cherry locks the door behind us and walks me to the corner, and at the corner she takes my face in both hands, looks at me under the streetlight, and says, “Whatever you decide, I’m here for you. I’ll hold your hand through all of it, whatever it is. That’s the whole speech.”

“And I love you for it, Cherry.”

Then she winks and sails off toward her train, and I walk home through the cold. At my kitchen table, I make the chamomile and sit with the phone in front of me, Ivan’s name three taps away, and I turn the phone face down next to the mug.

Not tonight.

Tomorrow, there will be words, for the fish first, then, when I find the right ones, for the man who answers texts in complete sentences. Tonight, I sit with my tea in my small kitchen, breathing.

14

IVAN

Dismantlinga man without his noticing is slower than breaking him, and better, and I’ve been doing it to Hugo for three weeks with the patience the work deserves. A broken man knows who broke him. A diminished one blames the weather, blames his enemies, blames anything but himself.

The weather seeks no revenge. His enemies consider it business as usual. He persists, spreading blame until he has nowhere else to put it.

There’s nothing usual about Hugo’s past three weeks.

Nothing dramatic. Drama is evidence. A contract here, renewed under a different signature by a different captain. A committee seat that quietly lapses when the gala’s host list is redrawn, by a chairwoman who owes me a favor she was delighted to repay. Two of Armin’s eleven names, the flattered men who answered Pyotr’s questions, reassigned to postings where the only secrets available concern parking.

Hugo’s calendar still fills, because I leave him the ribbon cuttings and the photographs, the carbohydrates of relevance.What I remove is protein. Access, signature authority, the rooms where numbers are decided, and a man on that diet feels full for months while the strength goes out of him by degrees.