“He can be quite an asshole,” she said.
“Sorry?” Marques asked.
“Thom. How long have you worked for him?”
“Four years.”
“So you know it’s true.”
Marques smiled. “No comment.”
“I did one of those checklists for borderline personality disorder once and he had seven out of ten. Not enough to make it a diagnosis but definitely enough to qualify as a jerk.”
“I wouldn’t say that. We took him by surprise. Sort of forced the situation on him. I’m not sure I would have reacted any differently.”
Ann-Sophie shrugged and looked around again. Her eyes fell on the alcove, an extra sleeping space in case the occupants of the apartment had a child. The bed there was made but had been slept in. She looked at it twice, feeling something slightly off. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was—the lack of stuffed animals and other detritus of childhood, perhaps? She looked away and back at Marques.
He suddenly seemed anxious. “Could I make you a coffee? I think I have it down with the Keurig thing.”
“No, thanks. I should be going. The kids are outside, probably playing with a rattlesnake by now.”
Marques laughed, a little too hard. “I know, we’re not really desert people. Kearie keeps wanting to go for a walk, and Beth’s like ‘Yeah, girl, if you find me a pair of cowboy boots.’”
Boots. That was it. Ann-Sophie turned her head to the side and looked at the bed again. There was a pair of boots beside the bed, toes neatly tucked underneath the end table. Definitely not children’s footwear, they were men’s boots, set carefully next to the bed, and that was a man’s chunky wristwatch on the bedside table.
That was not Kearie’s bed, Ann-Sophie realized. A man was sleeping in that bed, Marques was sleeping in that bed, which meant Kearie was in the bedroom with her mother, and why would they settle on that arrangement, unless they were having a fight? But Ann-Sophie had seen Marques and Beth around, and if they were a couple in the midst of a you-will-not-sleep-in-this-bed fight, they sure didn’t look like it.
She turned back to Marques, failing to hide the look on her face.
He looked back and forth from her to the bed. “What?”
“Hmm?”
“Sorry.”
It was a nonsensical exchange between two people who both knew what the other was thinking.
Marques brightened, suddenly and too much. “Oh, damn. Did it again.” He walked over to the bed, bold as he could muster, picked up the boots, and marched them over to the closet. He opened it and tossed them inside, shaking his head and smiling. “I leave my shit everywhere, drives her crazy.”
“OK.” She was thinking, and he could see she was thinking.
“I snore,” he added. “Pretty loud. Kind of a problem.”
“We never sent you patio furniture,” she said.
“What?”
“I do all the gifts for senior staff. Weddings, bar mitzvahs, housewarming, babies, all of it. Every single one of them, and I do them myself. We never sent anyone patio furniture. I would have remembered.”
Marques looked stricken. “That’s so weird. Shit, I wonder who it was, then? We owe somebody a thank-you note!”
“I am, literally, the last person on earth who cares if you lied to Thom.”
Marques looked around, nodding, buying time while he thought. When he turned back to Ann-Sophie, all pretense was gone. “Thank God. That was exhausting.”
“Beth is . . . what then?” Ann-Sophie asked.
“Next-door neighbor.”
“Are you a couple?”
“Nope. She’s gay.”
Ann-Sophie broke into the biggest smile she’d enjoyed in months. “So she just hitched a ride with you?”
“No, no, it wasn’t her, it was totally my idea. Everything they were saying on TV that was going to happen? She had no idea what to do. She’s on her own, with a little kid. I practically forced them to come with me.”
“And what you said about her father being dead?”
“Kearie’s father was a donor. Neither one of them ever met him. Goddamn, I feel so much better. I’m sorry, I’m not a natural liar.”
“That’s a good quality, not a bad one.”
“We’ll go if you want us to.”
“Don’t even think about it,” she said. “I consider what you did heroic.”
“Fuck, I feel better. Hey, do you want a drink? Like a drink-drink?”