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“Nobody’s ever asked me to lend them one. Marchetti gave me my first one at training camp. But nobody’s asked to borrow one.”
“I’m asking.”
“Why?”
I have been in locker rooms with men who share everything. But borrowing a book a man has read four times, a book with a note in the margin, a book that lives on a shelf in an apartment Iwoke up in this morning. That’s a different kind of asking. I want to know what earns four readings from a person who pays that kind of attention.
“Because you’ve read it four times,” I say. “I want to know what earns four times.”
He sets his mug on the counter. “It’s on the shelf. Second row. Green spine. I put a note in the margin on page two fourteen. You can ignore it or you can read it, but if you read it you’re not allowed to be weird about it.”
“I’m never weird.”
“You’re frequently weird. You rehearse sentences.”
“I don’t rehearse sentences.”
“Damián. You rehearsed ‘I didn’t know you came here.’ I could tell you rehearsed it.”
The accuracy is startling. I take a drink of coffee to buy half a second.
“Okay,” I say. “I may have rehearsed that one.”
“You may have.”
“The coffee line too.”
“‘The coffee’s good?’” He says it back to me in my own intonation, the careful Czech, the performed ease, and hearing my own performance played back in his voice is like seeing a photo of a costume I forgot I was wearing. “It was very smooth.”
“Thank you.” I arch an eyebrow at him because I know it was the least smooth thing I have ever done.
“It was terrible. I loved it.”
My phone buzzes on the bedroom nightstand. The sound carries through the apartment.
I set the mug on the counter and walk to the bedroom. The phone shows a text from Tomáš, sent four minutes ago.
Dami. Tactical meeting moved to 11. Where are you?
On my way.
Tobík appears in the doorway. He sees the phone in my hand.
“Tomáš?” he says.
“Tactical meeting at eleven.”
He nods. Picks my shirt up off the floor where it landed last night. Hands it to me. His fingers brush my wrist on the handoff.
“The book,” I say. “Second row. Green spine.”
“Page two fourteen,” he says. “Don’t be weird about it.”
“I’m never weird.”
“You’re always weird. Go to your meeting.”
I pull the shirt on. I take the book off the shelf on the way past. I look at him in the doorway one more time. The gold light behind him. The tattoo on his ribs. His face is still doing the thing it does when he sees me. Open and happy.
