Page 12 of Slander
"What's mostly?" A chair creaks on his end.
I look out the window over the sink, where the pines stand between my yard and the neighbor's. "Five, six hours. Woke up around four. Got back down."
"That's not bad." There's the sound of him pouring something, probably his own coffee. "How's the head?"
"Level."
"You sure?"
I scrub a thumb at a dried spot on the counter that won't come up. "I'm sure, Walter."
"All right." He lets a few seconds go by, and when he comes back his voice has dropped lower. "You did the work on a morning you didn't want to. That's the whole thing right there. The easy days don't count for much. It's the hard ones that save you."
I look at the thirty squares on the counter and I don't say anything, because there's a knot in my throat and I'm not about to let him hear it.
"Call me on Friday," he says, and hangs up, because Walter knows when a man's had all the kindness he can stand before noon.
I set the phone down and it lights up again before I've let go of it.
Bjorn:
You alive?
I thumb back a reply.
Me:
Unfortunately
Bjorn:
Good. Mom wants to know if you're eating. Say yes even if it's a lie.
Me:
I ate, and it’s not a lie.
Bjorn:
That’s a fucking miracle. Talk later, prospect.
The corner of my mouth pulls up at the phone before I catch it.
Prospect.
He's one too, same as me, same patch missing off both our backs—but he's older by four minutes and he's never once let me forget it, not in twenty-eight years, not through any of it.
Not even through the part where I gave him every reason to walk away and he didn't.
I put the phone in my pocket and head to work.
* * *
The new Beans and Babes is a gutted retail space off Apalachee, a box of bare concrete and exposed studs that Meghan's turning into her second location.
When I get there, Bodul's already up a ladder with a drill in his hand and a pencil behind his ear, and he looks down at me with the joy of a man who's been saving up material.
"Look who decided to grace us with his presence." Bodul sinks a screw into the soffit above the counter without looking away from me. "I was starting to think you got lost. You want me to draw you a map next time? Big arrows with ‘Njal, this way to the labor’."
