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"No. I gave him one." Hale takes a sip of water. "He's following it."
That's all. He doesn't look at Brandt. He doesn't look at me. He goes back to his steak, and the moment sits there, and nobody knows what to do with it, including Brandt.
"Well," Brandt says finally. "Good for him."
The conversation starts up again, a little too loud.
Sorel leans over. "What was that?"
"I don't know."
"Was that him being nice?"
"I don't know," I say again, and eat the steak.
On the walk back to the hotel, Webb drops back from the veterans and falls in beside me. It's cold, the thin kind of cold you get at altitude, and his breath is coming out in clouds.
"He wrote you a list," he says.
"Two pages. Both sides."
Webb laughs, low. "He wrote me one too. My rookie year, when they put us together. It had fourteen rules."
"I only got ten."
"Then he likes you better." He shoves his hands in his coat pockets. "Number one on mine was don't touch my sticks."
"He told me that one out loud, first day. It didn't make the list."
"I know," Webb says, and gives me a look I can't read, and speeds up to catch Kowal at the crosswalk.
Lights out is at eleven-thirty, because it's an off night.
I know because Hale says, "Lights," one minute before, and then reaches over and turns off the lamp between the beds right on time, while I'm still in the middle of brushing my teeth.
I finish in the dark. I bang my shin on the corner of the bed getting in.
"Ow."
"Gear bag goes by the door," he says.
"That was the bed."
"Mm."
I lie there under the hotel sheets, which are very white and very stiff, and I look at the ceiling. It's too dark to see if it's sad. The air conditioning is humming, and outside, a long way down, there's a siren going somewhere.
His breathing is slow and even. He's not asleep, though. I can tell. People who are asleep don't breathe that carefully.
"Hey," I say into the dark.
"Rule six."
"I'm not on my phone. I'm just talking."
He doesn't answer. I take that as permission.
"Thanks," I say. "For dinner. For the thing with Brandt."
