Page 132 of Puck You Both

THE GALA PHOTO post hits four digits on a Tuesday night.

We're at my kitchen island, all three of us, takeout boxes almost empty, and Wall has the account open, frowning. "Low-follower aggregator. No sourcing. Two blogs picked it up this afternoon, though." He sets the phone down in the middle. "It grows a little every hour. Somebody bigger will find it by the weekend."

"So we're on a clock," Theo says. He's uncharacteristically still tonight, cross-legged on top of the island, and his eyes keep coming to me. They've both been careful with me for two days, leaving me the decision without ever saying it's mine.

"Okay. Options," I say. "One, we ignore it and let them dig. Two, we deny it and urge the entire internet to dig. Three, a statement. Press release, maybe? Or an interview, sit-down, the works."

Theo makes a face like I've offered him decaf. "A sit-down. The three of us on a couch opposite some guy going 'so, walk me through it.'"

Wall considers it. "I think we should be… Boring on purpose.”

Boring on purpose.

The phrase sits between the takeout and the phone. It isn’t a plan yet. I can feel the shape of what I want the way I feel a play building before the pass arrives. No press cycle, no thanking anyone for their support. Nothing anyone can point a microphone at.

What I don't have is the move itself, and for once in my life I'm holding a clipboard with nothing written on it.

Theo goes still for half a second, mid-bite, fork in the air, then straightens up. His eyes drift to the middle distance, and a grin starts building. The slow one.

Oh no.

"Theo?"

He puts the fork down, hops off the island, and leaves the kitchen without a word. Down the hallway, a light clicks on.

I look at Wall. Wall looks at me and shrugs one shoulder, and neither of us moves, because Theo exiting a room quietly is an ominous event, and we're both listening for the crash.

"Get in here," he calls instead.

The light is on in my bathroom. Theo stands at the sink with his arms crossed, nodding at it.

"There," he says.

I look at my perfectly normal sink, and my perfectly normal mirror, then back at the crazy person next to me. “Where?”

Theo rolls his eyes like I’m the crazy one, then jerks his chin and points both his palms, along with half of his body to the left corner, as if saying, Duh.

My eyes follow and land on the cup by the faucet. In it, three toothbrushes, leaning wherever they landed, a fact I’ve gotten so used to I’ve long stopped noticing.

"That's the announcement," Theo says. "One photo, no caption, no follow-up. No tagged little heart, and no explanation as long as any of us live. All three accounts, same time. We post the cup."

It shouldn’t make sense, and yet…

Nothing to explain, nothing to deny. No statement for anyone to parse for tone. Just a photo that says nothing and means everything, and then we go on like something that simply exists, the way furniture exists. Nobody holds a press conference about the couch. The couch is just there, every day, and no one ever asks it to justify itself.

"Well?" Theo's watching me, and under the showman there's the flicker he thinks he hides. The one braced for ‘You're a lot’. "It's stupid, right? It's too—"

"It's perfect," I say, and mean it so plainly that his mouth opens and produces nothing, possibly a first.

"It's…efficient," Wall says.

Theo recovers instantly and at volume. "Then nobody touch anything. I'm art-directing. Neither of you has any say. You'd shoot a spreadsheet and he'd shoot the spreadsheet's backup."

There are no grounds for argument. We surrender the bathroom, and wait just outside, while the art department works for ten minutes. The lighting in my bathroom is the world's worst, one bulb of four burned out, everything slightly yellow, and Theo declares it perfect (“Staged looks staged, and this needs to look like what it is, which is Tuesday.”) He spends five minutes arranging the toothbrushes at expressive angles, swears in French, then shoves them back the way they always sit.

On the hook of the door behind us, visible in the mirror, hangs the cheesehead.

"It stays," Theo says, before anyone asks. "It's family."