Chapter 66: Progress
Daisy was still standing on the sidewalk when he turned back around, which told him she'd expected him to turn back around.
He hadn't intended to. But she'd pulled something from her coat pocket — a small plastic bag — and held it up with the expression of someone who had prepared a second move.
He looked at the bag. Looked at her.
"Miranda asked me to give you that too," Daisy said pleasantly.
Andrew took the bag. Looked inside. Looked back at Daisy.
"She said you'd probably want to deal with that before the subway," Daisy added, with the tone of someone delivering a message exactly as received and enjoying the delivery.
Andrew walked to the trash can on the corner and dropped the bag in it without ceremony. Then he turned back.
"What do you actually want?" he said.
Daisy dropped the performance — not entirely, but enough. She had the quality of someone who used charm the way a good poker player used tells: deliberately, as misdirection, comfortable enough with it that switching it off was its own kind of signal.
"My friends and I have been trying to find your truck for six weeks," she said. "You're not on a consistent schedule. We got lucky in February and nobody's been able to find you since." She tilted her head slightly. "We'd like to know when you're out."
"How many friends."
"Three, usually. Sometimes four."
"And you want to pay double."
"We want reliable access. The price is negotiable upward." She said it without embarrassment — the directness of someone who understood that leading with the money saved time. "The food is worth it. The risotto especially."
Andrew looked at her for a moment.
[Observation (Proficient): 70/100]
She was telling the truth about the food. People who lied about that had a specific quality — slightly too enthusiastic, performing appreciation. Daisy was matter-of-fact about it, the way people were matter-of-fact about things they genuinely wanted.
"Regular schedule starts Monday," he said. "Columbus between 79th and 80th. Tuesday through Saturday, eleven-thirty to two-thirty. I'll be consistent."
"That's it? No number?"
"You don't need a number if I'm consistent."
She considered this. "Fair." She extended her hand. "Daisy Kaplan."
"Andrew Sanchez." He shook it. "You already knew that."
"I did." She smiled — the real one this time, not the performance. "Monday."
"Monday," he confirmed, and left.
He was half a block away when he heard another voice — different from Daisy's, slightly rougher, with the particular drawl of someone who'd grown up somewhere that wasn't the Northeast.
"Who was that?"
"The food truck guy I told you about." Daisy's voice, receding behind him. "Andrew Sanchez."
"Cute."
"He's mine. Don't."
"I didn't say anything—"
"You were thinking it. Don't think it either."
Andrew kept walking. The city had its own ambient noise that absorbed conversations quickly. By the time he reached the subway entrance he could only hear the train.
The apartment was quiet when he got back.
Christie's room had the specific absence of someone who had taken everything they needed and gone somewhere else, which was correct and also slightly strange — the negative space of a presence he'd gotten used to. Her practice exam papers were gone from the counter. The cereal she liked was still in the cabinet, which was either sentiment or practicality, he wasn't sure.
He changed clothes, put a load of laundry in, and stood in the kitchen thinking about what to do with the afternoon.
His phone rang.
"You're home," Miranda said, when he picked up.
"Just got back."
"Good." A pause that contained information. "I need to tell you something about Ross. Professionally I can't tell him directly, but you're not a client so the constraint doesn't apply."
Andrew sat down at the counter. "What happened."
"Carol filed a termination of the divorce petition this morning." Miranda's voice was careful and precise, the way she spoke when she was navigating the line between what she could say and what she shouldn't. "She did it through her own attorney. Which means as of this morning, the proceedings Ross agreed to this afternoon are effectively suspended."
Andrew was quiet for a moment.
"Carol stopped the divorce," he said.
"The petition is terminated, yes. What that means for their situation going forward is—" Miranda paused. "Not my area anymore, since Mr. Geller dismissed me before Carol's filing came through. I'm telling you as a — courtesy."
He turned this over.
Carol had gone to Vermont to make a decision. She'd come back, or her attorney had acted on her behalf, and the decision she'd made was not yet. Which meant Susan had said she'd wait, or Carol had said she needed more time, or both, or something more complicated than either.
Ross had just sat in a coffee shop and said file with the specific relief of a man finally accepting something. And Carol had, apparently simultaneously, pulled it back.
"He doesn't know yet," Andrew said.
"He won't hear from her attorney until tomorrow at the earliest." Another careful pause. "I thought you should know before he does, so you're not caught off-guard when he calls."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. I'm not supposed to be telling you this." But her voice had the quality of someone who had decided the rules applied differently to people she'd chosen to trust slightly.
"How are you?" he said.
A beat of surprise, brief and genuine.
"Busy," she said. "It's a heavy caseload."
"That's not what I asked."
A longer pause. "I'm fine, Andrew. That's what I asked you to call and I told you it wasn't necessary." The professional register again, but lighter. "Take care of your friend. He's going to need it tomorrow."
She hung up.
Andrew set the phone down and looked at the kitchen wall and thought about Ross sitting in the armchair with both hands around a coffee cup saying file in the voice of a man putting something down.
Tomorrow Carol's news would arrive and he'd have to pick it back up, not knowing if it was a reprieve or just a delay.
He checked the panel out of habit.
[Cooking (Expert): 4/100][Boxing (Proficient): 94/100][Observation (Proficient): 70/100][Martial Arts (Proficient): 89/100]
Boxing still stalled at 94. He'd been circling the problem for weeks — the panel required genuine challenge, and the gym had stopped providing it. Bolton had said it plainly: you need live competition at a level we can't give you here.
He'd been avoiding the obvious answer, which was that there was a sanctioned amateur circuit, and he was good enough to move through it, and he didn't want the visibility.
There was also the other answer, which Bolton had started to mention once and then put away, and which Andrew had been pretending he hadn't noticed Bolton almost saying.
He thought about it for a while.
Then he made dinner — simple, just for himself, the quiet kind of cooking that was about the process rather than the product — and ate at the counter, and thought about what to tell Ross tomorrow, and what to tell himself about the boxing problem.
[Cooking (Expert): 5/100]
Even cooking for himself, attentively, moved it a little.
He noted this. Filed it. Washed his plate.
[Reader Support Milestones]
500 Power Stones → +1 Chapter
10 Reviews → +1 Chapter
Enjoyed the read? Leave a review.
20+advanced chapters on P1treon Soulforger