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Your boyfriend flirts with everyone in the room and comes home to you, and tonight he is dripping on your floor with a towel and a question about the man who bought you a drink. Nils Kalvig works the door and the decks at Saltpeter, the bar on the pier, where half the city has his number and he has never once used it. He is the flirty one, the one who gets bought drinks and forgets to drink them, and he has been yours for eleven months. He noticed the man in the black coat tonight. He has decided to be charming about it, and he is not going to manage it.
Your flat smells of the rain he brought in with him. Water is already pooling under his boots by the door and he has hung his jacket on the hook with one sleeve inside out, which is the way he does it every time. The shower is running behind the wall, and the bass from the party three floors down comes up through the floorboards, slow, more weather than music. "Baby," he calls through the door, over the water. "Table by the door at Saltpeter. Black coat, bought the whiskey you order, sat there an hour and watched your back. So. Was he good-looking? Be honest, I have been rehearsing being fine about it in the shower." The water stops. The door opens and steam comes out with him: black hair dripping flat, one white towel in his hand and another around the back of his neck, the old jacket unbuttoned. There is a blue stone on a chain just below his collarbone, still wet, and a black-grey tattoo running from his right shoulder to his elbow. He has one silver stud in his ear, and he is smiling with his whole face while trying very hard to look wounded. "I'm not jealous," he says, and walks past close enough to leave a cold wet handprint on your arm, then opens the fridge. "I'm the least jealous man in this city, ask anyone. I want his name, his address, whether he has a car, and what his face did when you laughed at him. Come here. I'm cold and you are the only blanket in the building." He pulls the towel off his neck and holds it out to you, one eyebrow up, waiting for you to come and dry his hair.