Same as last time, Hobart is there and no one else. He’s thrilled we’ve come and wants to chat—about the weather, about the holidays coming up, about the enormous dog Donna Anvers bought last week to help guard the nursery. “Is she crazy? No one wants anything she’s got in there anyway,” says Hobart, which is a fair point though I wonder whether he’s just miffed that a dog got the job over him, a professional security guard. But we’re anxious to be inside, so we say goodbye and hustle in and pull the door shut against the chill behind us. Inside is just like last time: sleeping. I smell nothing—no chemicals, no people—and all around us is quiet, deep, no machines running, no one there to talk, but everything building, waiting, nearly ready to go.
We stop on the threshold of the only room that looks lived in, which must be his father’s office. There are papers on the desk, a computer, phone, and printer, and against one wall, a long, soft-looking blue sofa.
“What if your dad comes in?” I say.
“He won’t. He’s hardly ever here. He says his work is at the grocery store, the bar, the Little League games.”
“There are no Little League games,” I tell him.
“No, but you know what I mean,” he says, and when I don’t look like I do, he makes his voice deep like his father’s. “‘You can’t spread goodwill behind a desk, son. The most important work is always fieldwork.’” His voice returns to normal. “So you don’t have to be nervous.”
I am anyway. But that’s not why. He unlocks the office door, then stops and turns toward me.
“I was just kidding about taking off your pants, you know.”
“You were?”
“Not kidding exactly,” he hedges. “Trust me, I meant it when I said you taking your pants off gave me an idea. This idea.”
This is very honest.
“But I did not mean to suggest that what happened next would necessarily have to involve you taking them off again. Though you could. You know. If you wanted.”
I consider this. “Not by myself,” I say finally.
“No, no,” he agrees. “It would be a real shame to be the only one without pants.”
“Not first,” I add in a whisper because if we’re going to keep talking about what we’re talking about, I don’t want to do it out loud.
“Maybe together?” he suggests.
And that seems okay, and he reaches over and opens the door and takes me by the hand and leads me in and closes it behind us. And then, while we’re still fully dressed, he kisses me, standing there, first a little, then a lot. And then he leads me over to the blue sofa, and first we’re sitting on it and then I’m lying down on it and he’s lying over me, still with our pants on, stopping every once in a while to make sure it’s all still okay. It is. More than okay. Dizzying. When I said before falling was nothing like flying? I was so wrong.
And then he says, “Ready?”
And I wonder, for what? For taking my pants off? For what comes after that? Or for what comes after that? And since there’s no way to know what that is, how can I possibly know if I’m ready for it? But that’s Monday-logic, so I swallow it and breathe. “Yes, I’m ready. Yes I am. Are you?”
And we’ve been kind of laughing about everything, but now he stops and looks in my eyes and holds my hand against his chest and just nods. So I guess we’re both ready. Except I feel like he should know something so I say, “I’ve never done this before.”
“That’s okay,” he says.
“Have you?” I ask, and my heart beats hard while I wait for the answer, though that may or may not be why or what I’m waiting for.
“Are you kidding?” he says. “Loads of times. I take my pants off every night.”
* * *
Later, when Monday and Mirabel ask what this is like, which they will, which they should, I will have to lie. They have a right to know, I know, but I can’t tell them. There are words for it, but they don’t describe what it feels like. It feels like full. It feels like singing but not out loud. It feels like opening, like everything is opening, like everything in the whole wide world is suddenly open to me. It feels like magic.
After, we are lying together on the blue sofa, and I say, “What will he do with this place?”
“Who?” He is tracing a line on my shoulder with his finger.
“Your father.”
“When?”
“When we shut it back down. He’s got all this new equipment. All these new supplies. Do you think he’ll be mad?”