Rodey took the middle of the couch, which is what Rodey did, and put both arms along the back of it, which was also what Rodey did, and looked around the apartment for a while before he said anything.
"It's clean," he said.
"Thanks."
"No, my goat, listen to me. It's clean." He pointed at the coffee table with his chin. "There's nothing on that. That's a flat surface in a young guy's home and there is nothing on it."
Josh looked at the coffee table.
He hadn't, in fairness, looked at the coffee table in some time.
There was nothing on it. There was nothing on the counter either, and the sink was empty, and the two mugs he had definitely left somewhere on Tuesday were in the cupboard, and the throw on the armchair was folded in the specific way a throw got folded by somebody who'd decided to fold it.
"Yeah," Josh said. "It's, uh. Yeah."
(Rodey:Tall queen runs a tight ship.)
Rodey settled back, satisfied, having answered the question, and moved on.
✦ ✦ ✦
He was there to check on his friend. That was the whole of it. He had said so at the door and he said it again on the couch, "I'm just checking on you, man, that's it, you live nine feet from me and I haven't seen your face in weeks", and Josh, who wasn't used to anybody arriving with no agenda, took a while to stop waiting for the catch.
"How is it? Honestly. New place, new life." Rodey tipped his head sideways at Luna, who was on the far end of the couch with her knees up and Josh's phone in her hand, and who had said perhaps six words since opening the door. "New everything."
She was still very tall. She sat with a foot and a half of leg overhanging the arm of a couch that Rodey himself had bought and, from that position, still managed to be looking down at both of them.
(Rodey:Six three. I've measured that door frame. She doesn't duck and she should.)
✦ ✦ ✦
(Rodey:And there's the floor.
Everybody who rents up here comes to me inside the first month, same embarrassed face, same sentence: I think there's somebody else living here. Things get moved. Taps stop dripping. A light you left on is off. Nobody's ever scared, because whatever it is, it's nice. So it isn't haunted. It's a quirk. I live up here too, and I like it.
And he's been up here for months and hasn't said a word.
Which is fine. Some people just don't notice.)
✦ ✦ ✦
"The place is unbelievable," Josh said. "Genuinely. Compared to the studio — the studio was one room, Rodey, the fridge was under the desk—"
"I know what the studio was. I own the studio."
"The water pressure alone. There's water pressure. And the bedroom door closes, which — you don't think about that until you've lived somewhere where it doesn't, and then it's the only thing you think about. And the fridge is a real fridge, so she's stopped—"
He stopped.
"So she's stopped what."
"Buying so much frozen stuff," said Josh.
"Sure."
"And there's a living room," Josh went on. "That's the thing. There's a room that isn't the room the bed is in. Do you know what that does to a person? And it's quiet. It's really quiet. Fifth floor, nobody above you."
Rodey nodded along, warm, pleased, and waited.
Josh finished the list.
The list was over.
(Rodey:Huh.)
✦ ✦ ✦
"Anyway," Josh said, "we're looking at cars."
Rodey lit up, because Rodey had opinions about cars, and for a while the conversation was entirely his. Not a sedan, sedans are for dudes who have given up. Not new, never new, you lose a third of it in the parking lot. Certified pre-owned, three years old, somebody else's depreciation, and for the love of God get something with a back seat because (and here he stopped and looked at Luna's legs and then at the ceiling and then continued at slightly higher volume) because of storage, obviously, because of groceries.
Then he pointed out the window, down at the street, at the thing parked below.
"Also, and I say this with love. That has to go."
The Lincoln sat down there being enormous and black and about a hundred years old, on tires nobody had made since before Rodey's father was born.
"It runs," said Luna.
"It's a museum. It's a museum and it's double-parked."
"It runs better than anything you've ever sat in."
"Where did you even get it? Genuinely. Is that a rental thing? Is it a promo?"
Luna laughed, a real one, short, out of nowhere, and said:
"It's a family heirloom."
Rodey went off like a firework.
"A car. A car as a family heirloom. Not a watch. Not a ring. She's out here inheriting a vehicle—"
Josh laughed too, half a beat late, and stopped a bit before Rodey did.
✦ ✦ ✦
Then Josh said what they'd been thinking of spending.
"Eighty, maybe. Financed. It comes to about fifteen hundred a month."
Rodey's face didn't move, but he stopped talking for slightly too long, and then said, "Fifteen hundred."
"Yeah."
"A month. On a car."
"We think so. Probably. Yeah."
(Rodey:Okay.
Okay, let's do this one properly.
This guy makes ten grand a month drawing. He told me that himself, sitting right there, and he was embarrassed about it.
Fifteen hundred a month on a car, out of ten grand, with her in the house? I've seen the shopping go up those stairs. I watched that girl push three carts in one trip and she wasn't breathing hard.
So either that number's doubled, or tripled, or she's earning too. And if she's earning that kind of money, why is she in my building, with him, paying nothing—
Or the two of them are about to do something very stupid with money they don't have, and I'm the only one in this room who's ever watched that happen to anybody.)
"Look," Rodey said, and put his hands out flat, "not my business. But. A little bit my business. You've had a good few months, both of you, obviously, and there's a thing that happens where a good few months starts to feel like it's the new normal, and then it isn't, and you've got a car—"
"We make that much," said Luna.
She said it with total confidence, not looking up from the phone, in the tone of a girl correcting a small factual error about the weather.
"...Right," said Rodey.
"Both of us. That much. Easily."
She does not know what that much is. She does not know what any of the numbers are. She has never once looked at them and I have offered four times.
"Okay — okay, what she means," Josh said, getting in front of it, "is that it's not just the comic anymore. She's got her own thing going, it's doing well, and the two of them together are — it's fine. The number's fine. I've run it. I ran it eleven times."
"You ran it eleven times."
"I have a spreadsheet."
"Of course you do," said Rodey.
(Rodey:A guy with a spreadsheet who says eleven times isn't ruining himself.)
He let it go.
(Rodey:Her own thing. What thing.)
He let it go.
✦ ✦ ✦
"So how is it, then. Living together. Actually."
He asked it lightly, expecting the easy answer, and there was a pause of exactly the wrong length.
"It's fine," said Josh.
"That was a long pause, my goat."
"It's fine. It's good. There's — you know. Adjusting."
"Adjusting."
"There's a lot of adjusting."
Luna, from the end of the couch, without lifting her eyes: "He does the cooking."
"I do the cooking."
"He's good at it."
"I do all of the cooking. And the shopping list. And the trash. And the dishes — and you have no idea, Rodey, you have genuinely no idea how many dishes there are in this house — and I want to be clear that I am not complaining—"
"He's complaining."
"—I'm just saying that if we're describing the arrangement accurately, that's the arrangement."
"And what does she do?" said Rodey, delighted, because this was the first thing all afternoon that had sounded like two people who actually lived somewhere.
"She works," said Josh.
There was a small silence with a lot in it.
"She's on the phone," he added, "all day. Which is the work. It genuinely is the work, that's not — that's real. She's working."
(Rodey:MY GOAT IS A HOUSEWIFE.)
✦ ✦ ✦
"Okay, but hang on." Rodey sat up. "Then who cleans?"
"What?"
"Who cleans. Because I've been in your places, man. Both of them. You keep a place fine — you keep a place fine for a guy, you're not disgusting, but this—" he gestured at the whole apartment, at the coffee table with nothing on it, at the folded throw, at the sink "—this isn't yours. I've seen yours. This is somebody else's."
Josh opened his mouth to answer, and then didn't, because he had gone to answer the question and found nothing there.
"I haven't cleaned anything," he said.
"Right, so—"
"No, I mean — I haven't. Not this week. I don't think I've cleaned since—" He stopped and actually tried to place it and could not place it. "I've been on the computer all day every day."
They both looked at Luna.
"Not her," Josh said. "Sorry, but no. She's — no offense, but you're the laziest thing I have ever—"
"I keep this place clean."
She said it fast. Faster than she said anything. She put the phone down on her knee to say it, which she didn't do, and she said it with her chin up, at both of them, in a voice with an edge on it that was doing about forty percent more work than the sentence needed.
"...Do you?" said Josh.
"Yes."
"When?"
"When you're asleep."
"When I'm asleep."
"You sleep a lot," said Luna. "You sleep constantly. You're the sleepiest guy alive. I do it then. That's when it happens."
Josh sat there with his mouth slightly open, running an audit, in real time, of every morning since they'd moved up here.
Rodey looked from one face to the other.
(Rodey:Wrong answer. That's the wrong answer and she knows it, and he's about to say so, and then we're all going to have a lovely evening.)
✦ ✦ ✦
"Fifth floor thing," Rodey said loudly.
"What?"
"The fifth floor's got a thing. You haven't said anything about it, which — honestly, I've been sitting here waiting, so let me just tell you." He was already talking faster, steering, both hands up. "Every single person who's ever lived on this floor comes to me in the first week or two and says the same thing. I think there's somebody else living here."
"Stuff moves. Taps stop dripping. Lights go off. Nobody's ever been scared of it — that's the bit, right, nobody's ever been scared. It's nice. Whatever it is, it's really nice. I had a girl up here saying good morning to it every day."
"Rodey."
"So it's not haunted," said Rodey firmly. "It's a quirk. Every building's got one. Mine's a nice one."
He sat back, pleased, crisis averted.
Josh didn't say anything for a moment.
He was somewhere else. He was in a room with beige wainscoting, watching Solaris write an address on a form, slow down halfway, and reach for the binder.
Registered spirit. Same building. Name of Shirly.
"Luna," he said.
"What."
"That place we went. There was a name. The one who's registered here."
Luna looked up.
(Luna:Oh, we're doing this now.)
"I don't know," she said.
"You don't know."
"I don't know anything about it." She picked the phone back up. "I've never met her."
(Luna:No rune in here. It's just a sentence.)
Josh accepted it. He had no reason not to.
So there's a spirit registered to this building. And every tenant on this floor has felt somebody else living with them. And I haven't cleaned this apartment in weeks.
And the third one doesn't go with the other two. It just doesn't. There's no version of that where—
Luna's phone rang.
She looked at it, said "It's the meetup people," stood up, went to the bedroom, and shut the door.
Josh let it go too. It had been a long month, and it was all stacking up.
✦ ✦ ✦
They talked for a long time after that, the two of them, which was the best part of the afternoon.
Proper catching up. Rodey's wife, who was still at the office. Rodey's tenant on the second floor, who was a disaster in an expensive way. The gym Rodey had joined and been to twice.
And Josh complained about Luna.
Steadily, cheerfully, at length. She takes his phone. She has always got his phone, she has her own, she has had her own the whole time. She never asks before she decides something. She eats — and here he had to visibly select a smaller word — a lot. She has taken over every account he owns and he cannot read his own messages. She sleeps diagonally.
He was enjoying himself.
(Rodey:Why is he complaining.
It's been a few months. A few. That's the good bit. Nobody complains in the good bit — you don't even see the stuff in the good bit, that's the whole point of the good bit.
He's doing the chores and she's on her phone and he's got a list. He's got an actual list. That's not the honeymoon. That's year four.
So either they skipped it.
Or there never was one.)
Rodey turned his glass around on his knee.
"Hey. Can I ask you something."
"Go on."
"How did you two actually—"
And he stopped.
(Rodey:Meet. How did you two actually meet. It's been sitting there since the day I handed over the keys, since "as long as he is alive," and it gets heavier every week.)
"—how'd you two end up looking at cars," Rodey said, "when neither of you can drive."
"She can drive."
"That's not driving, my goat. That's a girl in a museum."
✦ ✦ ✦
He left in the evening.
At the door he did the thing he always did: one true sentence, very fast, buried before anybody could pick it up.
"You look better," he said. "You looked like hell in that studio. You didn't know it, but you did."
"Rodey—"
"Anyway. I'm sending you three links tonight and you're going to hate two of them."
And he was off down the hall. Nine feet. Home.
Josh shut the door.
✦ ✦ ✦
The bedroom door was still closed. It had been closed all evening. Through it he could hear about a third of a conversation in the voice she used on the army, which meant she would be in there a while yet.
He stood in the living room.
It was a nice living room. It was, in fact, a very nice living room, and he looked at it properly for the first time in weeks. The folded throw. The empty sink. The counter. The coffee table with nothing on it.
He hadn't put anything on that table in a long time. He could not remember the last time he had taken anything off it either.
So he went to the kitchen, got a mug down, made tea he didn't particularly want, drank about half of it standing up, and came back.
Then he put the mug down in the middle of the coffee table.
He squared it up.
Then he went to bed.