“Yeah, it’s a beautiful house,” I said.
“They have a Rauschenberg, too,” she said, “upstairs.” I nodded, although I didn’t know who that was. Mychal would, probably. “You can go and see.” She gestured toward the stairs, so I walked up, but didn’t pause to examine the assemblage of recycled trash at the top of the staircase. Instead, I took a quick look inside the first open door I came to. It seemed to be Davis’s room, immaculately clean, lines still in the carpet from a vacuum cleaner. King-size bed with lots of pillows, and a navy-blue comforter. In a corner of the room, by a wall of windows, a telescope, pointed up toward the sky. Pictures on his desk of his family—all from years ago, when he was little. Framed concert posters on one wall—the Beatles, Thelonious Monk, Otis Redding, Leonard Cohen, Billie Holiday. A bookshelf packed with hardcover books, with an entire shelf of comics in plastic sleeves. And on his bedside table, next to a stack of books, the Iron Man.
I picked it up, turned it over in my hands. The plastic was cracked on the back of one leg, revealing a hollow space, but the arms and legs still turned.
“Careful,” he said from behind me. “You’re holding the only physical item I actually love.”
I put the Iron Man down and spun around. “Sorry,” I said.
“Iron Man and I have been through some serious shit together,” he said.
“I have to tell you a secret,” I said. “I’ve always thought Iron Man was kind of the worst.”
Davis smiled. “Well, it was fun while it lasted, Aza, but our friendship has come to an end.” I laughed and followed him down the stairs. “Rosa, can you stay until I get back?”
“Yes, of course,” she said. “I’ve left you some chicken chili and salad for dinner in the fridge.”
“Thanks,” Davis said. “Noah, my man, I’ll be back in twenty minutes, cool?”
“Cool,” Noah said, still in outer space.
—
As we walked toward Davis’s Cadillac Escalade, which Daisy was leaning against, I asked, “Was that your housekeeper?”
“She’s the house manager. Has been since I was born. She’s like what we have now instead of a parent, kinda.”
“But she doesn’t live with you?”
“No, she leaves every day at six, so not that much like a parent.” Davis unlocked the doors. Daisy got in the backseat and told me to take shotgun. As I walked around the front of the car, I noticed Lyle standing next to his golf cart. He was talking to a man raking up the first fallen leaves of autumn, but staring at Davis and me.
“Just gonna drop these two off,” Davis told him.
“Be safe, boss,” Lyle answered.
Once the car doors were closed, he said, “Everyone is always watching me. It’s exhausting.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Davis opened his mouth as if to speak, seemed to think better of it, and then, a moment later, continued. “Like, you know how in middle school or whatever you feel like everyone is looking at you all the time and secretly talking about you? It’s like that middle-school feeling, only people really are looking at me and whispering about me.”
“Maybe they think you know where your dad is,” Daisy said.
“Well, I don’t. And I don’t want to.” He said it firmly, unshakably.
“Why not?” Daisy asked.
I was watching Davis as he spoke, and I saw something in his face flicker without quite going out. “At this point, the best thing my dad can do for Noah and me is stay gone. It’s not like he ever took care of us anyway.”
—
Although only the river separated us, it was a ten-minute, winding drive back to my house because there’s only one bridge in my neighborhood. We were quiet except for my occasional directions. When we at last pulled into my driveway, I asked for his phone and typed my number into it. Daisy got out without saying good-bye, and I was about to do the same, but when I gave him his phone back, Davis took my right hand and turned it over, palm up. “I remember this,” he said, and I followed his eyes down to the Band-Aid covering my fingertip. I pulled my hand away and closed my fingers into a fist.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
For some reason, I wanted to tell him the truth. “Whether it hurts is kind of irrelevant.”
“That’s a pretty good life motto,” he said.
I smiled. “Yeah, I don’t know. Okay, I should go.”
Right before I closed the door, he said, “It’s good to see you, Aza.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You too.”
FIVE
AS DAISY AND I DROVE toward her apartment in Harold’s warm embrace, she wouldn’t shut up about the crush she was certain I had. “Holmesy, you’re aglow. You’re luminous. You’re beaming.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I honestly can’t even tell if he’s cute.”
“He’s in that vast boy middle,” she said. “Like, good-looking enough that I’m willing to be won over. The whole problem with boys is that ninety-nine percent of them are, like, okay. If you could dress and hygiene them properly, and make them stand up straight and listen to you and not be dumbasses, they’d be totally acceptable.”
“I’m really not looking to date anyone.” I know people often say that when secretly looking for a romantic partner, but I meant it. I definitely felt attracted to some people, and I liked the idea of being with someone, but the actual mechanics of it didn’t much suit my talents. Like, parts of typical romantic relationships that made me anxious included 1. Kissing; 2. Having to say the right things to avoid hurt feelings; 3. Saying more wrong things while trying to apologize; 4. Being at a movie theater together and feeling obligated to hold hands even after your hands become sweaty and the sweat starts mixing together; and 5. The part where they say, “What are you thinking about?” And they want you to be, like, “I’m thinking about you, darling,” but you’re actually thinking about how cows literally could not survive if it weren’t for the bacteria in their guts, and how that sort of means that cows do not exist as independent life-forms, but that’s not really something you can say out loud, so you’re ultimately forced to choose between lying and seeming weird.
“Well, I want to date someone,” Daisy said. “I’d make a go at Little Orphan Billionaire myself, except he wouldn’t stop looking at you. Hey, speaking of which, here’s a fascinating piece of trivia: Guess who gets Pickett’s billions if he dies?”
“Um, Davis and Noah?”
“No,” Daisy said. “Guess again.”
“The zoologist?”
“No.”
“Just tell me.”
“Guess.”
“Fine. You.”
“Alas, no, which is so unjust. I’m such a billionaire without the billions, Holmesy. I have the soul of a private jet owner, and the life of a public transportation rider. It’s a real tragedy. But no, not me. Not Davis. Not the zoologist. The tuatara.”
“Wait, what?”
“The tua-fucking-tara, Holmesy. Malik told me it was a matter of public record and it totally is. Listen.” She held up her phone. “Indianapolis Star article from last year. ‘Russell Pickett, the billionaire chairman and founder of Pickett Engineering, shocked the black-tie audience at last night’s Indianapolis Prize by announcing that his entire estate would be left to his pet tuatara. Calling the creatures, which can live to more than one hundred and fifty years of age, “magical animals,” Pickett said that he had created a foundation to study his tuatara and provide the best possible care for it. “Through investigating Tua’s secrets,” he said, referring to his pet by name, “humans will learn the key to longevity and better understand the evolution of life on earth.” When asked by a Star reporter to confirm he planned to leave his entire estate to a trust benefitting a single animal, Pickett confirmed, “My wealth will benefit Tua and only Tua—until her death. After that, it will go to a trust to benefit all tuatara everywhere.” A representative of Pickett Engineering said that Pickett’s private affairs had no bearing on the direction of the company.’ Nothing says fuck you to your kids quite like leaving your fortune to a lizard.”