Page 106 of The Rut in the Road

“Are living rats this smart?” he asked me.

“Vi says so,” I answered. “She looked up a lot of things about rats, rat behavior, rat diet, and rat health.” I took another drink. “I’m not sure how relevant that last one actually is, although Mason seems to think it’s possible that I’m slowly re-aliving him, so…” I shrugged.

Raj eyed me. “Did you eat dinner?”

I nodded. “The client gave us a very nice meal. And leftovers.”

“At dinner time?”

“Yes.” I didn’t know where he was going with this.

“And you haven’t eaten anything since?”

“No?”

He got up. “And you’re more than halfway through that,” he remarked.

I held up the bottle. “So?”

Raj pulled out my skillet, setting it on the stove and starting the burner. Then he went to the fridge and started pulling things out of it. “So, you’re a lightweight.”

I frowned. “I’m a healthy weight,” I informed him. “By one pound.”

He snorted softly. “That—the phrase means that alcohol impacts you faster than it might someone else,” he informed me. “Which has to do with things like genetics, your built-up tolerance of alcohol, and, yes, body weight and fat, but mostly the first two.”

“Oh,” I said, staring at the bottle again. “Does—should I stop drinking it?”

“You could,” he replied, and I was confused why he sounded so amused. “Or you could just eat and help soak some of it up in your stomach before it hits your bloodstream like a ton of bricks.”

I noticed that he’d put together a grilled cheese sandwich and set it to fry in the pan. He started making another one. Probably for himself.

“Here.” He set a plate in front of me with a perfectly browned grilled cheese. It looked really good.

Grilled cheese was one of those things that I was bad at doing myself. I’d either get distracted and burn it, would get overeager and flip it too soon, or end up with it soggy in some places and burned in others.

Raj’s were always good.

I asked him why once, and he’d told me that it was simply a matter of wrecking a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches until you had a ‘feel’ for it. I didn’t really know what that meant.

I picked up the sandwich and bit into it, the bread crunchy and salty on the outside, the cheese gooey and creamy. I took a second bite, then put it down to have another drink from the beer bottle. The combination was actually quite tasty.

He added a second sandwich to my plate. I looked up in surprise.

“Eat it,” he said, and although the words came out like a command, his tone was gentle. He brought a third and fourth sandwich over for himself, then sat across from me, although the first thing he did was break off a corner and hold it out to Victor, who took a few steps toward Raj, then looked up at me.

Safe?

Shit. My rat was talking to me.Yes, safe, I thought at him, the same way I might at Sylvia or Archie.

Victor scooted over and took the bit of sandwich from Raj’s fingers, then bit.

Happy!

I was going to have to learn to make grilled cheese.

19

He was gonna prove himself.Show himself as holy and blessed by God as Jerry and Carl and Pam. God had chosen him, too. Chosen all of them.