Page 28 of Shades of Grey & Gold

Bart, who has apparently decided my office couch is his. Bart, who looked at me this morning with the absolute certainty of an animal who has assessed a situation and found it acceptable. He and I have an arrangement: he huffs at me first thing in the morning, takes the pets I offer, and he forces Max to come into my office to check on him at least three times a day. During the times she is not in my office, Max looks at him, then at me, then back at her screen with a very deliberate neutrality that I find extremely interesting and beautiful.

I take a sip of the whiskey.

A phone buzzes on the kitchen counter.

I already know who it is before I pick it up. There are exactly two people in the world who call me after ten on a Friday on this phone. I just wish one of them was Max, which would require her to have this particular phone number, which is something I can’t rectify at this moment.

“Nico.”

“Brother.” The sounds behind him and his tone make it clear he’s been managing something all day and is now in a car, which means he’s either leaving something or going to something and neither scenario gives me a feeling of reassurance. “How’s the law firm?”

“Fine.”

His voice goes up an octave, mocking me. “Are you billing hours? Are you wearing a fancy tie? Are you having midday whiskey neat in fancy lowball glasses with your fancy lawyer friends? Are you—”

“What do you need.”

A pause. The sound of city traffic filters through the line. “People are getting anxious, Cal.”

I set the whiskey down and scrub my hand over my jaw.

“Dad’s been gone a long time,” Nico continues, and his voice has shifted—the humor not quite gone, just below the frustration, because it’s always underneath with Nico, humor is structural, load-bearing for him—but under that there’s something real. “People keep asking questions I don’t have answers to. About who’s making decisions. About the long term. About—”

“You’re making decisions.”

“I’m making temporary decisions. Everyone knows they’re temporary. I know they’re temporary.” Another pause. “You know they’re temporary.”

I look at the window. At the street below. At the cab making a left and disappearing.

“Goddamn it Cal, they better be temporary. I wasn’t made for being in charge of shit and you know it,” his voice is loud now.

“I’ve done what I can from here,” I say. “The Ferraro situation, the northern territory problem, the Marchetti contract—I handled all of it.”

“Remotely. In between what I imagine are very important depositions, and bending your very important secretary over your very important desk and—”

“Nico.” My voice comes out firm, but the picture in my head of Max on top of my desk takes up a brief second of my time.

I shake it off and focus back on the sound of Nico’s voice.

“I’m not criticizing the quality of the work, I’m saying the men want to see you.” His voice drops slightly. “Mom wants to see you. Sophia and Maggie keep asking when—”

“I know.” The word comes out rougher than I intend; I pick up the whiskey again. “I know. I’m not—it’s not that I don’t understand what you’re telling me. I understand exactly what you’re telling me.”

“So… then…”

“So, then… I need a little more time.”

Silence.

“The law firm.”

“The…” I pause and think about him rolling his eyes behind the wheel of a black SUV. “The work is—yes. The firm is—”

“Cal.” And now his voice has shifted again into the register he uses when he’s done dancing around something in the little brother way he does. “I’ve known you your entire life. You have never, in the full twenty-nine years I have been acquainted with you, been unable to even describe a single important case and then needed thirty seconds to come up with the word ‘work.’”

I say nothing.

“Is there something at that firm,” Nico says, slow and deliberate, because he’s building toward something he doesn’t really care to ask but needs to know the answer to, “that is keeping you there. Specifically. Think real hard, brother.”