Page 75 of The Forbidden Center

I should tell him to stop talking. Instead I stand in my own corridor holding a supply cart off the floor while a professional athlete lies underneath it, and when I lower it the wheel goes over the threshold without a sound.

He takes it back the other way. Clean again, and the satisfaction on his face is disproportionate to a wheel.

I understand it completely.

“Again,” I say.

“Knew you’d ask.”

He runs it across a third time, and then he stands there and looks at that cart the way other men look at a car they have just bought.

“Thank you, Riley.”

He stops with his hand still on the handle. It is the first time I have said his name without the Mr. in front of it, and both of us hear it, and I watch him consider about four separate things.

He says none of them.

“What’s next on the list?”

“You.”

“After that.”

I close my fingers around the key. “A house.”

He does not make a joke about it, and he does not ask me what it costs, which is why I keep talking.

“Two bedrooms,” I say, moving the cart into Room 2. “The roof is expensive. The kitchen is badly arranged.”

He follows me in, rubbing his palms together once after being down on the floor. “How bad?”

“The cupboard beside the stove opens into my forehead.”

“That feels personal.”

“It is poor planning.”

I set the key in the drawer. He sits up on the edge of the table when I point at it.

“Fixable?”

“Yes. Remove the cupboard. Extend the counter.”

“You’d lose the storage.”

“I would gain an intact skull.”

“Good trade.”

I take his wrist and guide the right arm into the first position. “Hold.”

He holds it without being told twice, which he has done since the second week.

“Second bedroom?” he asks.

“Tova has already furnished it on paper.”

“The green desk.”