Page 84 of Puck You Both

"—plays like he’s been a rookie for ten years running, and this— This… podcast-voiced coward has him at two."

The man whose honor is being defended is fine, calm and hydrated. The man defending him is doing seventy-five and steering with his knee while gesturing with both hands at a windshield.

“Focus on the road, I’m begging you.”

The host comes back from the commercial break a few minutes later.

"And speaking of the Vipers, they are the definition of a bubble team, so let's get honest about that roster. You're not touching the young defense, so you shop the margins. Rental-grade deals. Your Moreau types. Listen, great motor, the building loves him, but that's a fourth-line engine. You can rent one anywhere for half the price."

The car goes quiet.

Not the radio. The radio is thrilled with itself. Just Theo’s side of the car, where nothing is being yelled for the first time in two counties, and my side, where I'm now conducting the world's fastest silent debate. Say something, and it becomes a thing that happened. A thing that needed saying. Change the station, and I've announced it needed changing. There's a third option somewhere, the one where I'm supportive and smooth about it.

I'm sure I'll find it around midnight tonight, staring at the ceiling.

"Oh, you're braking?" Theo is already leaned over the wheel, locked onto a sedan minding its own business a hundred feet ahead. "Now? On a straightaway? What did you see there, dimwit? A vision? Did the road tell you something?"

And we're off. The sedan gets a piece, then a landscaping trailer, then a minivan whose entire crime is existing adjacent to an on-ramp. The host moves on to somebody's groin injury, talked clean out of the car by a one-man traffic tribunal that has nothing.

He doesn't change the station either.

At the next red light I reach over and take the volume down two clicks, under cover of fixing the air. If he notices, he doesn't say. So we're even.

The shelter shows up before either of us has to grow as a person.

Theo swings into the lot and parks in one try. An eight out of ten by his own standards, which converts to roughly a two in regular scoring.

Inside, the kennel room has gone full studio. Backdrops, light stands, a folding table drowning in leashes. We wave to the few Vipers already milling around.

No Wolf in sight. Either they haven’t arrived yet, or they have and are all hiding somewhere. I can’t really put anything past them.

We make it four steps before Mama Paws claims us both, hugging us like we invented dogs. Wanda materializes at her elbow and puts a clipboard in my hands before I've finished saying hello.

"You're keeping the schedule, sweetheart. The artist runs the camera. You run the clock."

I look down. Run-of-show, twelve setups, plus five spares, timestamps. Forty seconds on site and I've been promoted to management, which is fine by me. Give me a clipboard over a camera every day of the week, and twice on media day.

Theo has already stolen the assignment sheet from the table.

"July." He says, beaming. "They gave me July, Patrick."

"The algorithm gave you July," Wanda corrects.

"The thirst month, Wanda. The best month."

Wanda seems skeptical. "It's a dog wash. You're washing a dog."

"In July."

I get one look at the sheet before she repossesses it, long enough to find my own name. It happens to be followed by a comma, and then by a Wallace, and the month is February. Wall and I, glaring at each other over the shortest month of the year, which also happens to contain Valentine's Day, a detail whoever planned this either missed or enjoyed very much.

Twelve months in this calendar, and mine is the one where I get paid in exposure to be publicly hateful at a man I—

At a man. At two forty.

I write 2:40 on my clipboard, then I cross it out, because it's already printed right there.

"Fair warning," Wanda adds, already moving off. "I hear the big one has his own problems today."