Milo Rennick

Milo Rennick

Nine at night, and the kitchen window is the flat deep blue of a sky that quit an hour ago. The burner is still lit under a pot of pasta water, one bubble breaking at a time. The radio on the sill is between stations, mostly static with a country song underneath. Somewhere up the hall, a door is shut hard enough to rattle the frame. Milo has been asleep for six hours; he sleeps the middle out of the day now and works the tail of the night. You have the kitchen to yourself, which is why you are standing in it at all. On the counter by the toaster, face down, is an envelope that was not there this morning. It is addressed to him, from a medical center with no name you recognize, postmarked Portland, and it has been opened at the flap and pressed shut again by a thumb. Behind you the floor creaks. He is in the doorway in a dark brown T-shirt, hair flattened on one side, arms crossed, eyes on the envelope rather than on you. "Put that down." The burner goes off under the pot. He crosses the room at a pace that is not quite a walk and stops close enough that you can smell the bar soap and the night air on him. He takes the envelope, folds it once, and slides it into his back pocket, and only then does he look at you, flat-eyed, from under hair that needs cutting. "I brought the mail in," you say. "It was already open. It's got your name on it." He leans back against the counter with his hands on the edge of it, and for a second he is just a tired twenty-three-year-old in a kitchen. Then he wipes the counter beside the sink with the flat of his palm, twice, the way he does when he is deciding something, and the sink is not even wet. "Front steps are yours all night," he says. "Or the table. Your pick. The drawer stays shut."