Page 28 of Sublimate
“I mean, thank you for everything, not just having nice manners. I really appreciate it all so much,” I said. “I could have gone to a shelter and been ok, but I’ve been in them before and they’re not the most comfortable.”
“I can imagine.”
I didn’t really think that he could. “How long have you lived in this house?”
He turned to look back at the building behind us as we walked down the brick steps. It was like a very large square, with bump-outs of the pretty windows on the sides and extra pieces on the roof that Cadence had called dormers when she’d talked about this place and had said, “I love dormers and a big porch. I wish our house had a round window in front, too.”
“I moved in two years after I graduated from college,” he answered my question.
“What did you do during the two years that you weren’t here?”
“I was working as an engineer in Los Angeles,” he said.
“Really? Then we weren’t too far away from each other!” But I bet that our lives were different enough that we might have been living on different planets.
“I guess not,” he agreed. He looked down at me and then I watched him slow his steps a beat. “Is this better?”
I nodded. “Thank you. Why did you quit that job?”
“You know…” He thought and then admitted, “I didn’t have a very good reason. I was accustomed to doing what I wanted but working at a company meant that I had a schedule and someone watching over me. I didn’t like it and I probably acted like an asshat. I’m sure that I did. They hadn’t wanted me there, anyway.”
“Then how did you get the job?”
“It was a favor to one of my cousins, who now doesn’t speak to me because I quit. I didn’t even do that right,” he said. “I went to lunch and never came back. I drove to the airport and flew to Michigan instead.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” he agreed. “It was a little like how you arrived here, except I wasn’t running from a threat. I was just running.”
“Did you leave all your stuff behind, too?”
“Eventually, I flew back out and collected most of it.”
“I’ve been thinking about all the things I’ve lost over the years,” I explained. “First, there was my paperwork.”
“I thought your mother lost that.”
“I mean, she did, but it belonged to me and so it was lost on my behalf. But it wasn’t just the paperwork. Every time we moved, there was less. We would show up at a new place and I would be missing something, like clothes or my backpack. I made stuff out of clay when I was a kid, really, really ugly stuff, and I bet my mom just threw it out but I don’t know. I used to have a pretty ring that was like white glass. Enamel,” I said, remembering what she had called it. “It had a design of green flowers but that’s gone. I don’t know why I’m remembering it now.”
“How many places did you live?”
“There were too many to count. Do you think you’ll be in your house forever?” I turned to look at it, but we were going around a corner and it had disappeared from view. It was nice to walk on the sidewalks beneath the tall, leafy trees.
“I don’t know why I’d move,” he said.
“If I were you, I would never would. It’s so pretty!”
“My cousin fixed up for me, so the credit goes to her.”
“I’m surprised you leave it so often to go on trips. I wouldn’t even want to go into the yard except maybe I would want a garden like Cadence is trying to grow. She says that it’s not going very well, though.” I described her issues of wilting leaves and a lack of vegetables on the vines. “She loves your house, too.”
“Have you had her over?”
I realized that the way she knew how it looked was by driving past it on the street and spying, and she wouldn’t have liked me to share that. “No, not yet,” I answered.
“Ask her, if you want,” he suggested. “I’m going to have someone over tomorrow.”
“A friend?”
