Page 15 of Blind Spot
“He did.” There was a long pause. “Mattias, I appreciate it. Truly. If it’s all right, I’d like to maybe do it in two pieces. One on the system if you’re up for it, and then a shorter one that’s more about the veteran piece of it. Your career and longevity, and relationship to the rest of the room. Forty minutes apiece, maybe? That’s less exhausting than two hours in one sitting.”
“Sure,” I said. “Send me dates through Mark.”
“I will.”
“Anything else?”
“No, that’s it. Thank you for taking my call. I know you’re busy.”
I hung up and put the phone down.
He was the same man from the bar who had been careful with me then and was careful now. He mentioned the veteran piece and the rest of the room, thinking he could use them to ask me how my life had gone since he sat across from me in a bar.
Or—and the thought arrived as I stood up from the desk—maybe he was just careful. Maybe that was who he was. Maybe the bar had been six years ago for him too, and not the thing it had been for me.
I might have been making it more than it was. He might have been just a man doing his job, reporting on hockey.
I didn’t know which Kovac was true. I wouldn’t know until the interview.
I closed the office door behind me and went to the TV room.
The couch had a dent in it where Varga always ended up, left side, one cushion in from the arm. The throw blanket his sisterhad sent was draped over the back. Two books he had started in August sat on the coffee table.
I sat down and turned the TV on. The Netflix home screen came up with three profiles. One said Rook, and I never used it. RV was for the two of us, when we watched together. Then there was the Varga profile. He insisted on having a clean representation of what he watched on his own.
I clicked the Varga profile.
Looking at the continue-watching bar was like strolling through a small museum about my man.
There was a Hungarian crime drama three episodes in, which Varga’s mother had recommended over Christmas. He told me twice that he loved it. There was a baking competition. It was offering the ninth season, and I was sure he’d watched the previous eight. I scrolled past a documentary about goalies that he said he watched ironically, and then watched two more times.
AndPose. He’d watched all three seasons.
I hadn’t known when he watched it. He didn’t mention it. It must have been on planes or in hotel rooms.
I went back to the home screen and clicked RV.
The continue-watching bar had another baking show on it. We’d watched four episodes together. I clicked on one of them, and it was the one with the man whose pastry never set.
He kept apologizing to the judges. Varga had pointed at the screen halfway through and said, “That man needs a husband.”
I let the episode play to the end. Then I turned the TV off and walked to the kitchen.
I put a pot of water on, salted it, and started a sauce. It was a quick one with tomatoes, garlic, and the basil from the pot on the windowsill. Varga bought it in June. I said it wouldn’t last a week, but four months later, it was still refusing to die.
When I had nearly finished, I heard the garage door go up.
Varga came in with his bag on one shoulder and his face still slightly flushed from the rink. He set the bag down. He looked at me at the stove, and his face did the thing it did at 4:12 when nobody was watching—the public mouth softening half a degree, the eyes going from the room I’d cooked in to me in it.
“You cooked.”
“Pasta. It’s not cooking. It’s water.”
“You salted the water?”
“I salted the water.”
“Then it’s cooking.” He came around the island and put his hand on the back of my neck. I closed my eyes while he kissed the side of my jaw. “What’s in the sauce?” he asked.
