“I choose bathroom.”
“I wasn’t offering you a choice,” said Potash, “I was pointing out that full avoidance is impossible.” His voice was maddeningly calm, and I had to exert every ounce of my self-control to maintain a similar expression. I felt like a tornado turned inside out: the windless eye of the storm was on the outside, placid and emotionless, but trapped in the middle was a raging vortex of movement and fury and violence. I took a deep breath, staring at my half-eaten salad and my piles of carefully ordered papers and my living room without a couch. I should move to the bedroom, I knew—it was the only way to work in privacy—but that would mean giving in, and I felt a hot, irrational aversion to even considering it. Better to sit here getting nothing done and making him uncomfortable than to retreat to the back room and let him rule the front uncontested. I tried to think of how to do it rudely, knowing there was no way to just “not move” dramatically, when someone knocked on the door.
Potash and I looked at each other.
“Probably a neighbor,” said Potash softly. “Someone on the team would have called first.”
“The only neighbor I know is dead,” I whispered, standing. “I’ll answer it, but if it’s a Withered I’d better see that concealed weapon you keep bragging about.”
Potash said nothing, only standing to follow me and then stopping just where the opened door would hide him from the visitor. I heard a foot shuffle outside,and a low canine yelp. I frowned and opened the door.
“Oh good, you’re home.” It was Christina Tucker from apartment 201; I’d seen her collecting her mail now and then, and walking to and from her car. She had a white Honda Civic with one missing hubcap and she worked part-time at a bank where she earned just barely enough to pay the rent. She hated her mother and broke up with her boyfriend three weeks ago. At night she slept with a face mask and a white-noise machine, and you probably don’t want to know how I know all of that. “I’m Christina,” she said, brushing hair from her eyes. “I live in 201.”
“I think I’ve seen you around.”
She was bent nearly in half, holding Boy Dog by the collar. “Do you know where Mr. French is?” she asked. “The guy in 202? Nobody really knows him, but I’ve seen you talking to him and I know you take care of his dog sometimes.”
Withered bodies collapse into ash when they die, so there was no decaying body for anyone to smell and get suspicious. We hadn’t reported his death, so unless his boss called the landlord, it was unlikely anyone here would realize he was gone until the rent came due at the end of the month. I looked at the big basset hound, then back at Christina. “I haven’t seen him.”
She tugged on the basset hound’s leash, dragging the heavy dog forward a few inches. “He left his dog with me yesterday and hasn’t come back. I can’t keep him anymore and I don’t want him just running around the complex pooping on everything.” She tugged the leash again, pulling the dog closer to my doorway. “I suppose we could call the pound, but I don’t really know how that works—I don’t know if he could get the dog back when he shows up again, or if they’d sell him to somebody, or God forbid they put him to sleep.” She tugged again. “Can you watch him?”
“The dog?”
“Yes.” Tug. “I’ve seen you take care of him before, maybe he’ll be better for you. It will only be a day or two, I’m sure.”
I have rules about animals: I don’t own them, I don’t touch them, I don’t even talk to them. I’d watched Boy Dog for an hour or two, twice, so that I could get closer to Cody French and kill him. Now that he was dead I needed to stay as far away as I could. Especially now that I had Potash in the house—adding a dog to the equation would be idiotic. Worst of all, despite Christina’s uninformed promise, I knew that French wasn’t coming back. If I took this dog, it would be forever. It would be stupid and irresponsible.
I started to form a protest, stepping slightly to the side to give Christina a better view of how little space I had, but she seemed to interpret the move as an invitation to let go of the leash. Boy Dog wandered in, walked straight to Potash’s makeshift bedroll, and peed on the blankets. Potash muttered a low curse, and I turned back to Christina.
“I’ll take him.”
*