Page 21 of Slander
Njal
I'm thinking about her when I shouldn't be.
It's the first thing in my head when I wake up Saturday, before I go take my medications, before my run, before anything—the woman next door with the wine, the dog, and the thing behind her eyes she wasn't telling me.
I don't have her name.
I've got a holey-hemmed memory of her standing in my yard apologizing for a dog that had no intention of being sorry, and a way she had of going quiet that wasn't shy, that was something closer to bracing.
I know that quiet. Hell, I do it myself.
I lie there and look at the ceiling and tell myself the truth about it, because lying to myself is how I ended up where I ended up.
The truth is I've got no business wanting anything out here.
I came to this town to get level and stay on track—the meds, the work, the long road back to have the opportunity to get patched in.
There's no time for a woman I met over a fence.
But she's the only person in this town who's looked at me like a man and not a problem.
Bodul does it, Meghan does it, but they knew me before.
Out here, I'm a stranger with a bike and scarred hands, and the smart thing for everybody is for me to stay away.
She didn't look at me like I was something to be leery of. She looked at me like I was human.
I'm allowed to be curious about that. That's all this is. A man can be curious.
I get up, take my pills with two eggs, and go run before the heat turns mean.
The neighbor's dog barks at me once from behind the house the way he does, and I lift two fingers off my side without thinking about it, like we've got an understanding now.
At least, if anything, there’s some sense of normalcy from all this.
* * *
The week works me hard, which is the point of all this, I guess.
Thursday and Friday we get a lot done. Drywall, then the long boring stretch of waiting on an inspector who doesn't show, because, Meghan tells us, somebody downtown still hasn't gotten what he wants, and Tor's still working on it.
Bodul and I hang a hood vent that fights us for three hours, and somewhere in the second hour, he stops, screw gun idle in his hand, and squints at me.
"You're somewhere else," Bodul says.
"I'm right here holding this vent you'renotscrewing in."
"No, you've been somewhere else all day. You've got a look." He points the gun at me, grinning, scenting blood. "That's a woman look. I know that look. I invented that damn look."
"You don't know anything."
"I know there's a look." He sinks the screw at last and reaches for the next one. "I'm not gonna make you say it. I'm just gonna sit here being right and enjoy myself while it eats you up inside."
I let him be right. It's easier than arguing, and arguing will just tell him more than being quiet would.
On Saturday, I'm back and showered with my coffee half gone when a car turns into my drive that I'd know anywhere.
My chest pulls toward it—and then tightens, because the one person who can see straight through me just parked in my yard.
