Page 52 of Matteo

“Consistent how?”

“The discrepancy is almost identical to the one from last week.” I’ve been checking the weekend logs.

“You checked them?”

“I am very thorough,” I tell him.

“I can see that.”

Silence crackles over the line. I shift my weight, focusing harder now. Thinking about him being on the other end of the line, him in the tech lab, on a Saturday. I wonder if he has any other plans.

“I don’t understand what this means,” he says, finally.

I’m still trying to figure it out. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's a bug buried somewhere deep in the reporting system. But patterns are what matter. One discrepancy is an accident. Two identical discrepancies start looking deliberate.

“I don't know yet,” I answer honestly. “But I know I need to see more than this.”

“Why?”

“Because right now I don't have enough information to tell whether the system is making a mistake, or whether something is making the system lie.”

“Uh …” he pauses and I hear a heavy sigh. “Can you come in?”

I was about to offer the same thing.

“I can come in and take a look,” I reply, quickly. But I’m surprised that my request is met with silence. It’s not the response I expected. A part of me thought Matteo would jump at the chance.

He didn’t.

Here I am, digging his tattoos, digging his dress sense, noticing the chains around his neck and the leather bracelets wrapped around his wrists, while the man himself has nothing to say even though I’m willing to give up my weekend and traipse over to the lab.

The longer the silence stretches, the more I start to doubt myself.

Maybe I have this all wrong.

Maybe he has a girlfriend.

“You don’t have to,” he says, slowly. “It’s a Saturday.”

I glance back into the room. Arthur is now helping Irene retrace her steps. “I was almost finished here anyway.”

I hear a low noise from the other end of the phone, like he’s contemplating my offer. I’m offering to help, and he sounds like he’s struggling just thinking about it.

“All right,” he says, begrudgingly. “Come over.”

***

Approaching the workplace feels different. Because it's a Saturday. Because I'm in my faded jeans and sneakers, even though I’ve stopped wearing business attire at work, I still wear something remotely resembling smart. Today, I’m dressed down completely.

I head down into the tech lab, and this looks different, too. The lighting is dim, and most of the overhead lights are off, because there’s no one around. It's empty and lifeless. There's no sign of Matteo, so I head into the server room, and find him standing at one of the consoles, staring at it.

He turns when I walk towards him. “You came.”

“I said I would.”

He gives me a once over, and I know he's judging my dressed down outfit. I wear casual clothes to the lab these days, I lean fully into comfort. Today that’s faded black ripped jeans, battered combat boots and an oversized charcoal sweatshirt that could qualify as a blanket.

He’s one to talk. His hair is messier than usual, like he's been running his hands through it all morning in a fit of panic.