Page 20 of Knocked Up

"That's junk," she said behind me.

I hadn't heard her set the bowl down.

"Okay."

"They send them to everybody. They bought the strip mall on the corner and the practice on Sheridan. They are buying up this whole block," she said. She picked it up and put it in the drawer.

She did not handle it like junk.

"How much do you sleep?" I said. "You've been here since when?"

"Beckett."

"I'm asking a question."

"And I'm telling you it's not a question you get to ask." Not meanly, but with a door in her voice. "Thank you for the soup. Take your bowl."

"Keep the bowl."

"I don't want to keep your…"

"Keep the bowl," I said.

And she stopped arguing about the bowl.

I've thought about that more than I should have. She was a woman who would not accept a strike plate. She kept the bowl.

In the truck I told myself that the clinic was not my business. She had a brother and a staff and an entire life she built without me anywhere in it. A man does not fly into a woman's life on the back of a dying dog and start reading her mail.

I told myself I was on a one-year deal with nothing in it that stopped anybody moving me. There were two ways this season ended, and both of them had me in a different city.

And I told myself none of it was about her. The soup was about a bad phone call and a pot on a stove.

Three lies and a true thing.

I drove home the long way. The long way went up Thirty-Eighth.

The diner sat on the corner with a dead sign and a sheet of plywood in the door where the glass used to be. There was a dumpster in the side lot that wasn't his. There was a leasing sign in the window with a phone number on it.

I pulled over across the street and put the truck in park.

Bear sat up in the passenger seat and looked out the window at it. He looked at me and lay back down.

I sat there longer than I'd meant to.

Through the plywood I could see about four inches into the room, not far enough to see the back booth. I knew exactly where it was anyway. Left side, past the pie case, under the vent that dripped.

Then I put it in drive. I went home and washed a pot.

Chapter 6: Tessa

The last appointment on Thursday was a four-fifteen that arrived at five-forty. By the time I'd finished with a cat named Beans and his questionable ear, the building was empty. Marisol was gone and the fosters were fed. Bear's kidney recheck was on the schedule at seven o'clock, where I had put it myself.

He came in at 7.

"You're early."

"Two minutes early is on time," he said. "On time is late."