He leads me to a hallway and gestures for me to wait there while he goes back and turns on the lights in the kitchen again, like they were before I came in. The indignant voices of a political talk show yap from the front room, around the corner. The hallway has gray wallpaper and a smattering of family pictures in dusty frames.
“Did you let Molly in?” Otis calls from out of sight.
“Yes,” Linus says loudly.
“How’s the basement?” he calls.
“It’s done. Give me ten minutes to take a shower and we’ll eat,” Linus says.
He gestures to me again, and I follow him softly up the stairs. At the top, he pulls me into a bathroom and pulls down the shade, the same one I saw from the outside. He leans past me and turns on the shower so the rushing noise fills the little space. As I get my first decent look at Linus, I find him covered with dust and webs, like he’s been cleaning out a tomb. He’s taller and his dark hair’s short and his earrings are gone, but he’s not the stiff, slick TV show host that I feared. He’s still himself. I forgot how expressive his eyes and dark eyebrows could be, even when he’s simply watching me back. Steam starts to fog the glass of the window and the mirror.
“Welcome,” he says solemnly.
I burst out laughing and quickly cover my mouth with both hands.
He smiles in his grim, quirky way. “I cannot believe you’re actually here. In my bathroom no less.”
“Me, neither.”
“Want to get naked?”
“Linus!”
“Worth a try.”
It’s a cozy bathroom, so when Linus stands with arms akimbo, one of his elbows is over the sink and the other bumps the shower curtain. Color rides high along his cheekbones, and his dark eyes gleam. He needs a shave. He looks wonderful, actually. He’s looking me over, too, and I’m highly conscious of my pickings from Sammi’s wardrobe: a gray jacket, a brown shirt, and skinny jeans.
He points to me. “Coat.”
I shrug out of my jacket, and he hangs it on the back of the door. The drain makes a gurgling noise, and the shower keeps hissing into the tub.
“I have to get back down there. We’ll have to talk later,” he says, his voice low, and his gaze shifts to the shower. “You don’t mind if I jump in, do you? Don’t look. Or actually, look all you like.”
I laugh again, but then I put down the toilet lid, sit on it, and gaze pointedly at the floor. Beige tile. He shucks off his sneakers. I hear him disrobe, and his dirty jeans and shirt hit the rug an inch from my shoe. Boxers in the jeans. The rungs screech as he adjusts the curtain, and I peek up to see if anything shows. It doesn’t.
This is truly the last place I expected to find myself. Naturally, I want to giggle. Most uncool. I try to get a grip. Yes, he’s Linus, and yes, he’s in the shower, but I have to calm down. Tangy shampoo laces the moist air, and not seven minutes later, the water goes off. His hand reaches out for a towel, and I zero in on the floor again.
“How’s that? Better?” he asks, stroking his jaw and looking for my approval.
He shaved in the shower. I didn’t know guys could do that.
“Yes,” I say.
Linus scoops up his clothes and passes me my coat. “Okay,” he says. “Come quietly.”
A brown towel hugs his hips, and drops glint on his skin. His bare feet leave wet tracks on the wooden floor as I follow him down the hall to a bedroom. He brings me in, closes the door, and points to his bed.
Am I really going to get on his bed? I am. I do. I sit on his blue quilt and try not to look, but I’m fully aware that he’s jimmying into fresh jeans. Then I hear his zipper. I glance up as he towels his head savagely and then he chucks the towel in a laundry basket. He shoots me a smile, eyebrows up. Then he pulls a gray, long-sleeved shirt out of a drawer and pulls it over his head, covering his chest and lean belly.
I let out a breath.
“You look very sweet there,” he says. “Stay put. Don’t make a sound. Don’t get off the bed.” He dances his fingers downward. “The floor squeaks.”
“I’m hungry,” I say.
“I’m on it.”
For a second, he hovers, considering me as if he’s going to lean over for a kiss. The next moment, he rifles through his dirty jeans, digs out a phone, and slides it in his pocket.
“I won’t be long,” he says, and steps out of the room.
As he closes the door, I feel like a whirling tornado of energy has left the room. I silently set my shoes on the floor with my bag, pull my feet up, and try to get my heart to quit pounding.
I check around for cameras, just in case. Linus’s bedroom is a small, corner room with an angled ceiling and two windows. On his desk, a box of Magic cards, in slipping stacks, rests beside a Swiss Army knife and a bucket full of pencils. Tinfoil gum wrappers litter the bedside table. Stacked wooden crates, filled with aging, fusty paperbacks, line one wall. A dartboard hangs on the back of the door, and extra holes pepper the wood. He has no photos of his parents. What I like most is a big Lego model of the Death Star that hangs from the ceiling. I suspect it was glued together, and I wonder if he did it alone or with Otis and Parker.
Distant clinks and voices come from below me, and my mouth salivates as I think of them eating. The last time I ate a proper meal was days ago, at Burnham’s. I consider texting him to tell him I made it to Forgetown, but then I don’t.
A faint static noise draws my attention to the bedside table; I’m surprised to find a walkie-ham, the twin of the one I had at Forge. It’s connected to a small recording tablet. Impressed, I realize Linus has rigged a way to listen to the channels even when he isn’t here. It takes me a bit to figure out how it works, but then I find two files marked Emma and Woman 1. Gently, I disconnect the tablet from the walkie-ham so I can’t possibly send out an accidental signal. Then I turn the volume down, one notch above mute, and click the first file.
On comes a young female voice that I’ve never heard before.
“But you promised. You said you’d be here,” she says.
“I know. I’m sorry. I feel terrible about it. Things just came up here, and I couldn’t get away.”
My skin shivers as I recognize Dean Berg.
“It was the one thing I asked you to show up for,” she says. “The one thing. I even told my friends you were coming!”
“I tried to call you,” Berg says.
“After the dance,” she says. “I don’t know why I bother anymore. Mom told me you wouldn’t come. She warned me. I should have asked Darren like she said.”
“Who’s Darren?”
“Her latest. Don’t you know anything?” she says.
I like this girl. Give it to him, I think.
“What can I do to make it up to you?” Berg asks. “Would you like a trip? I could take you to Paris. Brian, too, if you like. Let’s make a memory.”
“I already have enough memories of promises you don’t keep,” she says. “You can stuff your Huntington’s crap. I don’t care about it anymore. I don’t care at all.”
“Don’t say that, Emma.”
“No,” she says, and she sounds a little choked up despite her words. “Go ahead and rot. You won’t find me crying at your funeral.”
“I’ll find an answer for you in time,” Berg says. “I promise.”
“Fifty-fifty, Dad,” she says. “You don’t even know if I have it.”