Page 39 of Tape to Tape
Atlanta unfolds below, highways and winter green and the skyline catching pale January light. My city. The one I chose after it was chosen for me. My apartment. My coffee shop on Peachtree. My adopted kitten. The facility where Brooks puts his hands on my shoulder three times a week, door open, charts noted, and last night his hands were everywhere and neither of us was thinking about range of motion.
Back at the facility parking lot, the team disperses in its usual pattern, bags shouldered, half-waves exchanged. Brooks walks to his car. I walk to mine. Forty feet of asphalt between us. I raise a hand, casual, forgettable. He raises his back. Holds it for a beat. Gets in, and the car door closes, and the forty feet stays forty feet.
The drive home is twelve minutes and Parker appears from the bedroom before I’ve set down my bag. The small orange tabby trots toward me with her tail up. Fonty hooked me up with his friend who cat sits, and she sent pictures of Parker the whole time I was away.
But a cat-sitter doesn’t stay with Parker full-time so she needs the extra love now. I pick her up. She pushes her head under mychin and the warm weight of her asks nothing except that I hold still.
I walk over to the couch and stretch out. She migrates from my arm to my chest, kneads once, then drops into the hollow between my collarbone and the good shoulder. I pull out my phone and open the thread with Zay. The last message is a song link from a few days ago, a track I saved and haven’t played yet. I press play.
The bass fills the apartment, low and steady, settling into the walls and the furniture and the empty half of the couch where his feet would be on my coffee table and the kitten would already be abandoning me for his lap, because I can already tell she has no loyalty and excellent taste. I sit with the song and the quiet of a room that fits two people but only holds one. The track plays to the end and I start it again.
Chapter 10 — ZAY
Berger is on my table at eight o’clock. He rolls up his pant leg without being told, which means he’s been here enough times to skip the part where I tell him.
“How’s it feel today, Berger?”
“Fine.”
One word answers aren’t usual from Berger but we just got back yesterday from the road trip and everyone is feeling it. I press around his ankle, moving his foot. “Your Achilles is better than last week.”
“Feels that way.”
“You’ve been following the stretching protocol I gave you.”
“Been trying.”
I work his calf wand feel the tissue responding. My hands do what they’re trained to do and I am full in the routine.
Marchetti walks in singing. A track I recognize because he sent it to me at eleven thirty last night with just the link and nothing else. He stops in the doorway when he sees Berger, but the singing dies on a delay, like he has to remember to turn it off.
“Brooks. Berger.”
“Marchetti.” My spine straightens. I keep my hands on Berger’s calf. “You’re not on my schedule until nine fifteen.”
“I know. I’m early.”
“You’re thirty minutes early.”
“I’m enthusiastic.” The grin. He drops into the chair by the door, legs stretched, taking up more of the room than the chair was designed for.
“What are we arguing about?” he asks Berger, because he knows his friend.
“Nothing today. Just my ankle.”
“I thought you’d be talking about that new Thai place on Ponce.” Marchetti looks at me with maximum offense, which is the only level of offense he has. “How have you been, Brooks?”
“Not yet. Lots of restaurants in town.”
“Name one.”
“I’m working, Marchetti.”
Berger gets a little more animated now we are on the topic of food. “Thompson scored the whole restaurant a seven without weighting the spring roll execution. One appetizer can establish a floor for the entire rating. He needs to think through his methodology.”
“One appetizer doesn’t establish the floor for a whole restaurant.” It comes out before I mean it to, and both of them look at me. Berger with the sudden focus of a man who has just discovered a locked room might be open.
“You have thoughts on the methodology,” Berger says.
