And just like that, the moment passed. Patrice brought the bowl to Dana and kissed her forehead as he set it down. He looked at Apollo quickly and then went back to the counter for Apollo’s bowl.
After they finished the food, Dana and Patrice cleared the bowls, the utensils. Apollo pushed back from the table. “I want to show you something,” he said.
He opened his bag, set down his phone. Lillian had been trying him since yesterday, must’ve been fifteen phone messages from her. She wanted to take him out to Brian’s gravesite. He should see his son’s final resting place. But when Apollo woke up on the couch that morning, after his first night home, he’d also found a text message waiting. Right after he read it, he called Patrice and Dana and asked if he could come over that night.
Out of his bag, he brought a smaller gift bag, one bought at the Duane Reade on 181st. Dana and Patrice had cleared the table. Dana wiped down the surface with a wet cloth before Apollo laid out the present.
“Take a look,” Apollo said.
Patrice opened it while Dana went on her toes to see.
“To Kill a Mockingbird,” Patrice read. He opened it, scanning through it like a pro. “Book jacket is Fine. Boards, too. Endpapers clean. And…it’s a first. Shit! You found an estate sale on Rikers Island?”
Dana reached for the book, but Patrice closed the cover and held it tight.
“Look at the title page,” Apollo said.
Both read quietly. Dana nudged Patrice. “Who’s Pip?”
Patrice shook his head, but couldn’t bring himself to say he didn’t know. He tapped the bottom of the page, by the author’s signature. “I do know who this is, though.”
“I drove up to Connecticut today to pick this up,” Apollo said. “The guy sent me a text to let me know it was ready. He’d been writing me for weeks. I guess he doesn’t watch the news. The appraisal certificate is folded in there.”
“This is some shit you retire on,” Patrice said. “Or at least go on a damn good vacation. Where’d you find it?”
Apollo swayed a bit but set his hands on the kitchen table.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I found it, and I want you to have it.” He didn’t let them interrupt. “I planned to sell that thing and have enough money to buy a place for me, Emma, and Brian. But that’s done now. All done. I don’t care about the money. I wouldn’t use it. I’m—”
He stopped speaking here, his throat clutching. He didn’t want to finish the sentence in front of them. Dana put up one hand and said, “We’ll take it.”
Apollo and Patrice both gawped at her with surprise. Her eyes were wide, and she seemed just as taken aback. She slipped the book from Patrice’s hands.
“It’s generous of you,” she said softly. “And we appreciate it.”
Then she turned and left the kitchen. Escaped to the back room, their bedroom, and shut the door. Patrice watched after Dana as if trying to catch up on an equation she’d already solved, but sighed as he failed.
“I guess that’s good night?” Apollo said.
When they were outside, climbing the back stairs, Patrice said, “You know why I always liked you? Why we became friends?”
“I’m a better bookseller,” Apollo said. “You wanted to learn from the best.”
Patrice raised his eyebrows. “Even you can’t believe that. First time I met you, I think it was at the West End Bar, back before it closed. Rich Chalfin had a bunch of buyers out for drinks. I told you I was just back from Iraq, just like I’d told everyone at the table at one time or another, and you know what you said?”
Apollo gently tapped the aluminum siding of the house. “?‘There’s an estate sale in Pennsylvania. You in?’?”
Patrice shook his head at the memory. “You never said any of that thank-you-for-your-service shit. You never asked me if I was against the war. Never asked me who I killed. You basically acted like you didn’t give a fuck. And I liked that. Right then I knew you were a dude I could be normal with. Not some vet. Just Patrice.”
He slapped Apollo’s leg once so Apollo would look at him. “So I’m going to break protocol and talk straight as I ever have with you.”
“Okay.”
“If you go off and kill yourself tonight, I’m going to soak that valuable fucking book you gave me in the toilet. Then I’m going to piss on it. And worse. That will be my revenge against you. I will ruin that book.”
“What are you even talking about?” Apollo said, not very loudly.
Patrice put a big mitt on Apollo’s shoulder, then lowered his head so they faced each other square. “I’ve seen that look before.”
“What look?”
Patrice watched Apollo. “This one. The one staring back at me right now. I have seen that look, and I know.” He squeezed Apollo’s shoulder tightly. “I know.”
Apollo yelped and pulled free. He hadn’t been planning anything like that. Had he? Now he took two steps backward and turned. Had he?
He walked around the side of the house and toward the front gate. He heard Patrice behind him.
“You’re a book man,” Patrice said at the gate. “So tonight I’m going to put that book online, and if you’re not around, you will never find out exactly how much someone would’ve paid for it. You. Will. Never. Know.”
Patrice stood at the fence, him on one side and Apollo on the other, clearly calculating whether he should tackle his best friend and put him on suicide watch.
“You’re a motherfucker,” Apollo said. “But I do want to know what it’s worth.”
Patrice pointed at him. “My man. I’ll be calling you as soon as I hear. You be alive to pick up.”
APOLLO RETURNED TO the apartment after midnight, and when he opened the front door, he heard someone in the kitchen, the hiss and tick tick tick of an oven burner being lit, and he had to grip the front door’s handle so he wouldn’t fall to the floor. The kitchen light had been turned on, the rest of the apartment stayed dark. He listened to a pot being pulled from a cabinet, water rushing from the tap. He almost turned and ran, but instead he closed the door behind him as quietly as he could. He slipped his shoes off and moved his socked feet across the floor. She was back. Maybe she’d been coming back to the apartment for all the months he’d been on Rikers. Maybe it had really been she who’d cleaned the place up just to clear away evidence. Maybe she felt so guilty, she just couldn’t help herself.
Apollo slipped into the living room. He could hear the quality of the oven’s flame change as the pot—or kettle?—was placed on the burner. He smelled, faintly, ginger in the air. In the darkness of the living room, he could almost see his breath as a faint cloud of blue electricity. Every sense became more finely tuned as he approached the threshold of the kitchen. Emma would be in there reenacting her crime, and this time he would find her, and they wouldn’t speak with each other. They would tear each other apart, down to the atomic level, a little nuclear fission in the kitchen, nothing left of them but the silhouettes of who they used to be burned into the wall.
“Apollo? Is that you?”