[DESIRE LEVEL: 18/100]
[SHE AGREED TO GO OUT WITH YOU.]
[THIS IS NOT NOTHING.]
[REMINDER: THIS IS NOT A DATE. YOU ARE A HELPFUL NEW TENANT BEING SHOWN AROUND BY A LANDLADY.]
[ALSO, THIS IS DEFINITELY A DATE.]
'Thanks.'
Mike took just the right amount of time to get ready, neither too much nor too little. He wore clean clothes. His hair looked as though he had put some thought into it, but it wasn't overtly styled.
At 18:58, he stood at the front door, ready to go. Petricia came down at 19:01, indicating she had also taken her time to prepare.
She wore a deep burgundy blouse that he hadn't seen before. Her hair was down, and it appeared she had put more thought into her look than usual; however, she was missing her cardigan.
She looked good. She clearly knew she looked good and was pretending not to know.
"You found it," Mike said, a phrase typically used when someone comes downstairs, but it did not reflect his true meaning.
She looked at him once, quickly. "Ready?"
"Whenever you are."
It took them about twelve minutes to walk to Callen Street. The night was warm enough to be comfortable but not too hot, and there was enough going on in the street that talking didn't have to fill every gap.
Petricia walked like someone who knew exactly where they were going and didn't need to show it. She pointed things out as they went, not like a tour guide, but like someone who knew the area well and was showing it to someone else.
"Everyone learns the hard way that that bakery is closed on Mondays," she said. "The hardware store on the corner is open late on Thursdays, which is the one day Gerald really needs it and forgets to go."
Mike asked, "How long have you lived here?"
"Eight years," she said. "When we bought the building, we moved here."
"Did you two run it from the beginning?"
"We had help in the beginning." She paused. "People move on. It ended up being just us."
"You don't sound like you're too worried about that."
"I like knowing how everything works," she said simply. "If it's just me, I know how everything works."
He gave her a sideways look. "You don't believe that people will do things right."
"I believe people will do things differently than I would."
"Is that the same thing?"
She gave it some thought. "Most of the time."
The restaurant on Callen Street was exactly what she'd described, and it's not looking all fancy or expensive.
The restaurant had eight or ten tables, proper tablecloths that were slightly mismatched in a way that felt deliberate, warm lighting that made everything look a little better than it actually was, and a menu handwritten on a board on the wall.
The woman who seated them recognized Petricia immediately.
"Oh, it's been too long," the woman said, sounding like she really meant it. "Where have you been?"
"I've been around," Petricia said, and her smile was a little different from how she usually smiles.
Maybe not as tight. The restaurant made her think of a version of herself that she didn't usually see.
"And you brought someone," the woman said, looking at Mike with the open curiosity of someone who thought they had earned the right to notice things.
"New tenant," Petricia said.
"New tenant, huh?" the woman repeated, using a tone that conveyed her opinions about that description. "Hello~! I'm Sofia, and you picked the right place for your first time here."
Mike said, "I had good advice."
Sofia raised one eyebrow slightly as she looked at Petricia and then went to get menus.
Petricia sat down across from Mike and picked up her menu with the focused look of someone who didn't want to talk about what Sofia's eyebrow had meant.
Mike took his menu and didn't say anything about it either, which she noticed. The corner of her mouth did something small that wasn't a smile.
'She fucking knows, huh...?'
'I think Petricia too, but she chooses to ignore it.'
...
The food was good, which helped.
When you're eating something that needs your attention, it's difficult to be completely safe. Petricia got the pasta, and Mike ordered the house special without asking what it was.
It turned out to be a braised lamb dish that was well worth the wait.
"You ordered without reading the description," she said.
"I like things that are unexpected."
"What if it had been something you didn't like?"
"Then I would know I hated it," he said. "That information is still helpful."
She thought about it. "That's an odd way to think about food."
"I use it on most things." Mike said, "You learn more by going in than by reading about it from the outside."
She was quiet for a while. "That sounds like it got you in trouble."
"Sometimes," he said. "But the kind that's interesting."
"Is there a difference?"
"There's always a difference," he said as he picked up his glass. "The boring kind of trouble is when you don't know something's wrong until it's over."
"The interesting kind is when you're in the middle of it and can still see all the exits."
She looked at him through the glass. "And you always know where to go out?"
"It's a reflex now," he said.
The conversation flowed like a good dinner conversation, covering a lot of ground without feeling like an interview. She told him about the building and the problems she had when she first started running it and how she fixed them.
She asked him where he had been before Erosyne, and he told her a version of the truth that was true in feeling but not always in detail.
Countries that are distinct. A lot of relocating. Someone who understood him deeply and is now gone.
She didn't ask about the parts that weren't clear. She understood that some parts were intentionally vague, even though he did not explicitly state this.
"You don't talk about yourself very much," she said at one point, not as a complaint but as an observation.
"I'm more interesting to listen to than to talk to," Mike said.
She laughed, which was the first time she had really laughed in front of him. It changed her face and opened it up in a way that the professional landlady version usually kept it closed off.
"That's not true," she said. "You're actually very easy to talk to."
"Thanks," he said. "You're not as hard as I thought."
She gave him a look. "What did you think would happen?"
"Someone who kept everything at a distance," he said. "You're more open than that."
She turned her glass slowly in her hands. "Don't let that fool you."
"Too late," he said. "I've already decided you're interesting."
"And what if I'm not?"
"Then you're very good at faking it, which is just as interesting."
She looked at him for a beat too long before looking down at her plate and concentrating a little harder than she needed to on cutting something.
[DESIRE LEVEL: 24/100]
Mike noticed the notification at the edge of his vision and did not react.
Twenty-four. In one dinner.
"Don't stop," he said to himself.
After they'd finished eating, Petricia suggested they walk back the long way, which added fifteen minutes and told him something about whether she was ready to call the night finished.
He didn't point that out.
They walked by a row of small shops that were closing for the night. The owners were rolling down security gates and flipping signs.
The street was quieter now, more comfortable, like when a neighborhood settles into its nighttime version.
"Do you miss the other countries?" she asked at one point.
They were walking next to each other at a slower pace, but neither of them said anything about it.
"Some of them," Mike said. "Things that are different from each one."
"What do you miss about the last place?"
"The food was better," he said. "The weather was worse. It balanced out."
She smiled at her toes. "What made you really go?"
"I had done everything I needed to do there," Mike said. In a way, that was true.
"And here?"
"I haven't started here yet."
She looked at him. "Started what?"
He stared at her. "Anything that comes next."
She didn't know the answer to that, and she didn't try to come up with one, which was the right thing to do. There was no need to answer the question.
They walked by a flower stand that still had one bucket of flowers out, but they were starting to wilt at the end of the day. The seller was getting ready to leave, but they hadn't taken that last bucket yet.
Mike stopped, looked at the bucket, and without making a big deal out of it, bought one stem from the vendor, who was surprised to have a sale this late.
He held it out to Petricia.
She looked at it. She looked at him. "What's that for?"
"You recommended a good restaurant," he said. "This is part of my gratitude towards you."
"That... doesn't require flowers."
"I know," Mike said. "I wanted to get you one anyway."
Petricia chuckled. "You and your gifts... Alright, might as well take it even though I already receive some bread from you."
[DESIRE LEVEL: 29/100]
"Twenty-nine," Mike thought.
Almost at thirty on a Tuesday night. He had acquired bread, a dinner, and a wilting flower from a street stall.
He felt genuinely good about that. Not too smug, but just satisfied in the clean way of a person who does something well.