“I’m right, aren’t I?”
“You’re cocky,” I say.
“How was the wine, by the way?” he calls out again as I reach the door. “Did you like it?”
“No idea,” I say, and then, before I can stop myself: “Want to find out?”
Just then, Hannah appears in an upstairs window and shouts: “Dad! I’m ready!”
“One minute, sweetheart.” He smiles. “I’ll come by after I tuck her in. Can’t let a lady drink alone.”
I bump into the low, plaid-upholstered couch as I enter the darkened living room, and curse at it, as though it is the idiot who just invited Condor over for a drink and not me. I’m used to tight spaces, rooms that open straight into other rooms, apartments too small to even need a hallway, but this house makes me uneasy, because it’s not my space. And the disarray of items the owner has chosen to keep around are even worse—they should add up to form a picture of the people who once lived here but there’s no story, just junk.
Quickly, I slip on a casual T-shirt, one that hangs off my shoulder a bit and shows the straps of my bra. Brush my teeth and wash my hands. Wash them again.
I head to the kitchen to dig up some glasses, but the cabinets are as disorganized as everything else. Mouse droppings along the back of one of them.
Condor knocks on my front door so lightly I almost miss it. He’s carrying a box of Chik’n Biscuit crackers and a block of cheddar.
“Hannah’s favorite,” he says, gesturing to the box of crackers. “Don’t tell her.”
“Jars okay? Couldn’t find actual wineglasses.”
—
In the living room, Condor takes the sofa. I grab a rickety chair and set it across from him. He pours us each some wine and tells me there’s a way to open a bottle by using a shoe. He tells me about the store, about his favorite wines, about the garbage Hannah watches on TV, about how he likes to hunt on the weekends. Most of it is not very surprising. He brags about his great aim, then laughs.
The first glass makes me warm and the second glass makes me feel loose and the third, when we’re nearly at the end of the bottle, brings him more strongly into focus: his jaw, the way his eyes crease when he smiles, the way he uses his hands. His lower lip, perfect for biting.
“What is it?” he says, and I realize I’ve been staring. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m not.” I stand up quickly, so he won’t see me blush, and pass into the kitchen. Of all the things the landlord left, one of them is a bottle of Johnnie Walker stashed beneath the sink. “I mean, I was just wondering what it’s like to live here. That’s all.”
“Didn’t you used to live here?” Condor asks. He doesn’t blink when I set down the whiskey.
“I meant now,” I say. I’m half-drunk and work will be a bitch tomorrow. But it’s too late anyway. It was too late when he called out to me across the yard. “What’s it like, living here now?”
Condor leans forward and tips the last drops of wine into my glass. He spins the empty bottle between his palms. “I haven’t only lived here,” he says, in a different tone. “I took Hannah and moved to the coast of Florida when her mom and I—” He breaks off suddenly, and a shadow moves across his face and takes the rest of his smile with it.
He uncaps the whiskey and pours us each a glass. When he looks up, his expression is unrecognizable.
And again, dimly, I remember the rumors: some trouble in high school, something Condor did.
“It’s all right,” he says with a shrug. “I’m still angry about it, I guess. Hannah’s the best kid in the world, and her mother wants nothing to do with her. Drugs,” he clarifies, in answer to a question I haven’t asked. “She had an accident and then got hooked on the pain pills. She’s in Indianapolis. Or she was. Went through rehab a few years ago. Still has visitation rights.” Condor frowns into his glass.
“Sorry. For asking.” Again, it isn’t quite the right thing to say.
“I bet you are.” Condor’s crooked smile is back. I want to tell him that isn’t how I meant it, but I can’t—what’s the point, anyway? “It’s better now that Hannah’s old enough to understand. I’m very honest. She knows her mom’s an addict, that she’s sick, that it’s not Hannah’s fault.” He looks away. “Ah, well. Mistakes of our youth, you know? You never really outrun them.”
“I hope that isn’t true,” I say, which makes him laugh.
“What about you?” he asks, settling back again in the sofa. “What’s it like coming home after all this time?”
“I’m not really coming home,” I say, as if he’s accused me of something. “I’m just here for a job.”
“Still. Must be weird to see how things have changed…”
“And how they haven’t,” I say, and he raises his eyebrows. I’m more than a little drunk now, and it feels great. All the doubts and uncertainties are drowning. Condor is here and we both know how this goes, and until then there’s nothing to do but keep going.
Condor sets down his glass. In the silence, he fingers the scar over his lip.
“What happened there?” I ask.
Condor just shrugs again. “Another childhood mistake.”
I lift up my glass. “To childhood mistakes, then.”
Slowly, he smiles. “And grown-up ones,” Condor says.
“Sure,” I say. “To grown-up ones, too.”
He tastes like whiskey when he leans in to kiss me, and long after he leaves, my skin continues burning.
Chapter Ten
My sleep is restless, full of nightmares that feel more like memories, one bleeding into the other. Now I’m shivering yet drenched in sweat. All my life I’ve been like this—too hot or too cold, too conspicuous or too plain, too tall or too thin or too something. My mother used to say I was like Goldilocks, trying out Big Bear’s and Little Bear’s things. She used to call it “Middle Bear” when something was just right. I wake up and for a second the smell of my mother, her lotion, her hands, seems to float through the room.
In the bathroom I touch my lower lip, as if Condor might have left an impression. Instead, the Bordeaux has left a black stain. Weak spots. The words float suddenly to my mind. He kisses just how I thought he would, as if he needs it.
And yet it went no further than that. As soon as I started to take off his belt, he stopped me.
Wait, he said. I should get home.