Page 85 of Last Flame
He hasn’t made a joke about anything else. My article is still open on the monitor, big and bright, seventeen hundred words of houseplant propaganda aimed directly at him, and he’s walked past it twice. The first time his eyes went to it, and then they came to me, and stayed on me, and the bit I built all morning just — didn’t happen.
I’m a little pissed off at that.
I’ve known him for less than a day but I don’t know what to do with a Gunnar who won’t take a shot that’s been left open for him.
I’ve got bigger problems right now.
Brock is looking at Muffin.
Specifically, Brock is looking at Muffin’s front paw, which I cleaned, which I definitely cleaned, which I am now ninety percent sure I cleaned, and Muffin is looking back at him with the round, blank innocence of a cat who has never done anything in his life.
Nobody says anything.
The door swings. The lock throws. Erik works the deadbolt twice, and both times it goes home with a sound I feel in the floor, and my shoulders come down an inch without my permission.
Done. Finished. Everyone can go home now, except one of them lives across the hall and the rest are apparently permanent.
Then Gunnar goes back into the bags.
He comes out with a box I didn’t see before, and a pencil, and he gets down on his knees in front of my brand-new door and starts measuring the bottom of it.
“What are you doing?”
“Improving it.”
“That door is nine minutes old.”
He doesn’t answer. He’s drawing a rectangle on the bottom of my nine-minute-old door, tongue between his teeth, checking the lines twice, and the box has a picture on it, and the picture is a cat door.
A cat door.
Wait.
“You bought that this morning?”
“I bought a lot of things this morning.”
“I got Muffin after you left.” The math is doing something in my head that math should not do. “You didn’t know he existed. Nobody knew he existed. How did you—”
“It was on sale,” Gunnar says. To the door.
It was not on sale. I don’t know how I know that, but I have never been more sure of anything in my life.
Behind him, Erik has become deeply interested in the deadbolt he already installed.
I stand there and watch Gunnar cut a hole in the door they just paid for, fit the little frame into it and tighten every screw twice, and the whole time he doesn’t say one word about it. Nothing.
Muffin walks over and inspects the work. Puts his head through the flap. Pulls it back out.
“You’re welcome,” Gunnar tells him, gruff, and it doesn’t sound like a joke.
And that’s the thing that does it.
Not Kyle in my doorway. Not the vacuum. Not four men silent rather than interrogating me when they got back. A pet door. A pet door bought before there was a pet, installed by the one who keeps calling me beautiful like it means nothing. For a cat I’ve had since this morning…
He bought the door before the cat existed. Before there was any reason. Before there was anything to be kind to.
I look for the catch. There’s always a catch. Good things have invoices, that’s just math, I’ve done the math my whole life —
