Page 35 of Victory Lap

He goes still under my hands. All of him. Even the loud parts.

“She says it at the end of every call. Say hello to Bastian.” I hold his jaw so he cannot look away.

Bastian Fontenot, who has a bit for everything, has nothing. His eyes are wet. He says, very quietly, “Hello back.”

I will make sure it is delivered.

After, I get a washcloth. He lets me take care of him. He has learned to let me. He lies in our bed with his hair everywhere, both cats staging a border dispute at our feet.

They gave every man a day to take the Cup home.

He heard that and understood the assignment differently than anyone. He knew I did not have an address. So he did not take me home. He took home, and he moved it, piece by piece, into the tenth floor of a building in Atlanta. Pot and jar and gumbo.

Home is not a place I lost. It is a thing he cooks in now. It stays. It is mine.

Chapter 12: Baz

The photographer’s name is Dominique and she photographs animals for a living. Within four minutes of walking into our apartment she has looked at the Stanley Cup, the backdrop stand, the garment rack, and the two cats watching her from the bookshelf. “Okay,” she says. “I’ve done weirder.”

She has not done weirder. I have hired a professional pet photographer to shoot formal portraits of two cats in the Stanley Cup. There is a garment rack in my living room holding two tiny custom jerseys, FONTENOT 00 and VOLKOV 00. There is a third, tinier jersey that says LITTER C, which was Sadie’s idea.

“What does LITTER C mean?” Dominique asks, pinning it to the rack.

“Nobody knows,” Sadie says. “It arrived in a dream. It felt right.”

Sadie let herself in at nine with iced coffee and the energy of a woman who has been waiting since January for this. She is wearing a shirt that says CAT WRANGLER, which she had made. She and Tikh divide the room the way they always do, her volume, his stillness, both of them somehow in charge.

“Day two of the Cup,” she announces. “How’s it going so far?”

“Nine out of ten,” I say.

“What’s the missing point?”

“Keeps everybody humble. That’s what Berger says.”

Tikh, from the kitchen, where he is portioning out the emergency treats into little dishes like ammunition: “The missing point is that yesterday cannot be repeated.”

Sadie looks at him. Looks at me. Points between us. “I don’t know what happened yesterday and I want it noted that I’m being incredibly cool about it.”

The Cup wants to be photographed. It has been doing this for a hundred years, it hits its angles, it needs nothing. The cats are a different professional situation entirely. Bug regards the Cup as furniture that betrayed her by being interesting to other people. Mishka regards it as a throne he has been owed since birth. He will occupy it on his own schedule. That is not on anyone’s schedule.

Dominique builds the set like a pro. Backdrop, bounce light, the Cup on a riser draped in black. Tikh stands off-frame with the treats, because the cats will do things for Tikh they would never do for the rest of humanity. Same as me.

“What’s my light situation?” Dominique asks, metering off the bowl.

“The Cup has no bad angles,” I tell her. “A hundred years of pictures. It knows what it’s doing.”

“I was asking about the window.”

“The window is also a professional.”

“One picture,” Tikh reminds the room. “The agreement was one picture.”

“The agreement was one posted picture,“ I say. “The shoot is unlimited. This was in the fine print, Tishka. You should read contracts.”

“I have read our contract. It says I get final approval.”

“It says we both get final approval.”