“I contribute so much!” yells Brock. “You would be iron deprived without me, subsisting on powders and pavlovas and wineberries.” More laughter. “I stocked the freezer this very afternoon, you butt.”
“Did you get the marinated steak?”
“And the swordfish skewers and the chicken you like. I got all the things,” says Brock. “Paid for with the effing innocence of my effing youth. Okay? I bought you steak today with the sacrifice of my childhood.”
Tatum laughs. “Okay, seriously, that’s good. Thank you.”
“Arg,” says Brock lightly. “You know I’m gonna eat like half ofit.”
“You got a lot, though?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s awesome. I owe you.”
“It’s nothing.”
There’s a pause. “But Matilda,” says Tatum.
“Her room’s right there. She can probably hear you.”
Tatum’s voice drops. “She shouldn’t be here.”
“I know,” says Brock. “She’s going to mess Meer up. Now he’s going to be full of feelings all the time.”
“We shouldn’t add another person,” says Tatum definitively. “It’s just been us, you know? She shouldn’t be in our business.”
18
No one isdownstairs.
Meer said dinner at seven. My hair is still wet from my shower, but I put on a black cotton dress that I hope is appropriate.
The cavernous living room is minimalist but warm. The couches are a deep apricot color and look like they’re built of velvet spheres, linked together. One of the cushions is stained with dark liquid. The coffee table is double wide and stacked with books on art and architecture. From the wildly high ceiling hangs a mobile that stretches maybe eight feet across, turning in the breeze from the sliding doors that stand open to the evening.
There’s no art on the walls, except for one Cello painting that I recognize from seeing it online.
—
Odysseus Fleesshowsa man
standing at the wheel of a speedboat.
He wears a blood-spattered sweater and jeans.
He is very, very small. The painting is
mostly ocean. Violent, terrifying waves.
Behind Odysseus, on land in the distance,
a Cyclops lies dead,
stabbed through the eye with a spear.
You can barely make it out.
Odysseus braves this vast expanse of
