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“That sounds like a reason to answer it.”
“She wants to know whether I’d take term or money.” It comes out easier than it has any business coming out, to a woman I married yesterday. “Two years at less, or one year at what I’m worth right now. There’s a third one where nobody calls and I find out in July.”
Astrid is quiet for a moment.
“Which do you want?”
Quinn asks what I’ll take. Silas asks what I’ll sign. The distance between those two questions and hers is about eighteen years wide.
“Term,” I say. “Two years at half is two more Octobers.”
“Then tell her that.”
“I will.”
“Tonight?”
“No.”
She lets it go, and the phone stays face down.
Then she says, “Has anybody else been in this bed?”
“Yeah.”
“How many?”
“You want the number, or do you want the answer?”
Astrid considers that. “The answer.”
“Enough that I’m not going to sit here and pretend otherwise. None in about two years. None of them twice.” I look at her. “And not one of them knew there was a piano.”
She’s quiet for a second.
“That is not what I was asking.”
“I know. You were asking whether I do this.”
Her eyes come up.
“Somebody already asked me that,” I say. “In your waiting room. She was twelve and she wanted to know whether I’m friendly at everybody.”
Astrid’s face does something complicated.
“What did you tell her?”
“Pretty much.”
“And tonight?”
“Tonight I got asked a question at a dinner table and had to think about the answer. That’s not something that happens to me.”
She looks at me for a while.
Then she puts the glass down on the nightstand and says nothing at all about it.
I get back into the bed and fold a pillow behind my right shoulder. Astrid watches me do it without reaching over, and then she lies back.
