“Good question,” Cass said. “Other people meet, they fall in love, they move in together, they marry. But Nan didn’t get the memo, it seems.”
Micah let a brief pause develop and then he asked what Deemolay had been up to—her most troubled, most disruptive student. Deemolay caused chaos the instant he entered the classroom, but he lived in a car with his grandmother and Micah knew Cass had a soft spot in her heart for him.
Deemolay had poked a plastic ruler into Jennaya’s back at lunchtime and told her it was a switchblade. That was an interesting topic.
After supper they cleared the table, stacking the dishes on the counter because Cass didn’t share Micah’s belief that they should clean up before they left the kitchen. Cass’s dishes were actual china, and her cutlery came in a set, and she owned numerous nonessentials like a lettuce dryer and a knife rack. Not only that, but the furniture in her living room was substantial and deeply cushioned, and all her linens matched each other, and houseplants and ceramic doodads dotted her many small tables. Micah found this a bit claustrophobic, but at the same time he was impressed. He sometimes felt that his own place didn’t look quite grown-up.
They relocated to the living room to watch the evening news, sitting together on the couch on either side of the cat, who had finally deigned to make an appearance. He was a skinny black adolescent with, yes, noticeably long white whiskers, and he hunched between them purring with his eyes closed. The TV had to compete with the music still playing from the kitchen, until Micah finally rose and went to switch off the radio. He didn’t know how Cass endured that constant flow of sound. It made his brain feel fractured.
If it were up to him, he would have done without the news as well. Micah had about given up on this country, to tell the truth. It seemed to be going to hell these days, and he didn’t have the sense he could do anything about it. But Cass was very conscientious, and she insisted on absorbing every depressing detail. She sat erect in the darkened living room and watched intently, the light from the TV gilding her profile and the curve of her throat. Micah loved the curve of her throat. He leaned closer and set his lips to the pulse just below her jaw, and she tilted her head to rest it on his, briefly, but kept her eyes on the screen. “Every day’s worth of harm we do the planet will take a decade to reverse,” she told him. “And some of it we can never reverse.”
“Why don’t I spend the night tonight,” Micah murmured in her ear.
“You know tomorrow’s a school day,” she said, patting his hand.
“Just this once,” he told her, “and I promise I’ll wake up early and clear out of here.”
But she said, “Micah?”
Her questioning tone implied that he was being unreasonable; he had no idea why. Almost always she agreed to let him stay. But she drew away from him and said, “Besides, I thought this was your night to set the garbage bins out.”
“I can do it first thing in the morning,” he said.
“And I haven’t finished my grading!” she told him.
He knew when he was defeated. He sighed and said, “Okay, okay.” And when the next commercial came on, he rose to leave.
“Don’t you want your leftovers?” she asked as she followed him to the door.
He said, “You can keep them.”
“Well, thank you.”
“Hey!” he said. He turned to face her. “Maybe tomorrow I could fix my world-famous chili. And you could come for supper and bring the rest of the cornbread.”
“Oh, I don’t know…”
“Chili on top of cornbread! Yum!” he said enticingly.
“Well,” she said, “I guess. If we make it early.” And she opened the door and gave him a real kiss, finally, and stood back to let him go.
* * *
—
Driving home, he had the streets almost to himself, but he stayed under the speed limit anyway. He didn’t hold with the theory that the law allowed a tad bit of wiggle room. If thirty-five miles per hour really meant thirty-eight, they ought to go ahead and say thirty-eight.
“The man talks sense,” Traffic God commented approvingly.
Micah headed west on Northern Parkway. He turned left on York—signaling first, of course, even though he was in the left-turn-only lane. At the back of his mind, he felt a prickly little burr of unease. It seemed to him that Cass had acted less affectionate than usual. Since when had she cared if it was his night to set the garbage bins out? But she wasn’t the type to go into those mysterious sulks the way some women did, so he shook the feeling off. He started whistling “Moonlight in Vermont,” which was the last tune her kitchen radio had been playing.
Farther down York Road the little stores and cafés grew more familiar. Most of the stores were closed by now, their neon signs unlighted and barely visible in the dusk. He took a left onto Roscoe Street and then a right just before the used-clothing store, heading toward the parking lot.
When he got out of the car he retrieved his carryall from the passenger seat and plucked his TECH HERMIT sign off the roof and set them both at the top of his steps. Then he started wheeling the garbage bins to the alley. 2B’s bin—Mr. Lane’s—had a long cardboard mailing tube slanting out from under the lid. Recycling, on a garbage day! “Ooh-la-la, monsieur,” he said reproachfully. “You are un pee-saw,” which was how he thought the French might pronounce “pissant.” And he shook his head as he parked the bin next to 2A’s.
Some people; they just didn’t have a clue.
2
EARLY THE FOLLOWING MORNING, when he was just approaching the edge of waking up, Micah dreamed he found a baby in a supermarket aisle. He rounded a corner and there it was, sitting erect on the floor in front of the breakfast cereals and wearing nothing but a diaper.
He stopped short and stared at it. The baby stared back, cheerfully—a round-faced, pink-cheeked, generic sort of baby with a skimming of short blond hair. There wasn’t a sign of another grown-up around.
Micah rose to consciousness slowly, as if his sleep had layers to it. He opened his eyes and blinked at the ceiling. He was still trying to figure out what to do about the baby. Take it to Lost and Found, he supposed, but this meant picking it up, and he worried it would start crying. Then its parents would rush to the rescue, and they might very possibly leap to the wrong conclusion—accuse him of kidnapping, even. How to convince them he’d meant no harm? He knew it didn’t look good.
He turned off his alarm before the radio could click on and he struggled out of bed, but the baby stayed in his mind. He couldn’t understand why it had seemed so unperturbed. So expectant, even, as if it had been certain that Micah would show up. And once he was out on his run, taking gulps of the nippy air, he had the incongruous thought that he would startle the baby to bits right now if he were to wrap his cold hands around its naked torso.