Page 98 of Full Contact

Outside, the afternoon had gone gray, and the wind came whipping down the street. Callahan zipped his coat to his chin.

He turned toward the library’s window as we walked past. One of the kids was standing on the other side of the glass waving.

Callahan waved back.

***

Thursday, I let myself into Trier’s condo with my arms full. Snow had started at four, and my coat was wet at the shoulders.

Trier was on the couch in his reading glasses, with Peaches asleep across his thighs and the Erie Canal history open on her back like a tray. He’d taken it home, announcing that he would read the chapter on the mules, since the mules were the only part I’d made sound interesting.

“You’re early,” he said, and tipped his head back against the cushion.

I leaned over the back of the couch and kissed him upside down. His reading glasses bumped my chin.

“The run-through finished early,” I said. “Heath walked to the center of the ice twice, shook hands with the air, and asked if he could leave.”

“You let him?”

“He had it down already. He was very good at it.”

I set the grocery bag on the counter and went back to the couch to look. The receipt I’d used as a bookmark was nowhere near the front of the book.

“The mules are in chapter four,” I said.

“I know where they are.”

“You’re in chapter nine.”

Trier turned a page. “The mules come back.”

“They don’t.”

“Then I’m waiting for them.” He didn’t look up. “There’s a man in this chapter who built a lock in a swamp and every one of his workers got malaria. He kept building it anyway. I need to know whether they finished it.”

He reached for the side table and held out a magazine. “Here. Since you’ve been so generous with your book.”

It was the National Geographic from his nightstand, the one with the shipwreck article. A sticky note marked the page. In Trier’s square handwriting, it said: The anchor. Then tell me I’m wrong.

“Wrong about what?”

“You’ll know when you get there.”

I took it to the kitchen and unpacked the groceries: chicken thighs, potatoes, a bag of carrots, and two lemons. Then I took Russ’s vegetable peeler out of my coat pocket and set it on the cutting board.

Trier looked up from his book.

“You didn’t have to bring that.”

“It’s my only peeler.”

“You could have left it home and used mine.”

“Russ gave it to me,” I said. “He would want me to use it.”

Trier laughed, and Peaches lifted her head to see what the noise was about. Satisfied that it was only Trier, she put her head back down.

I peeled carrots. The peeler worked better than anything Felix had ever accused me of owning. Somewhere in chapter nine, the swamp was still claiming laborers, because Trier kept whispering, “Damn.”