They finished their oatmeal in silence, while Adam puttered around the apartment, stripping the cheese-smelling sheets and oily pillowcases off his bed, rinsing the hairs off the soap, cleaning the toilet. Erasing the signs of their stay.“Well,” he said at length. “I should get going to the shop.”“Yeah,” Ed said, in George’s voice, and it cracked before he could close his lips again.“Right,” Adam said. “Well.”They patted their mouth and ran stubby fingers through their lank hair, already thinning though they were still in their teens. They stood and cracked their knuckles against the table. They patted their pockets absently, then pocketed the hundred and the ten.“Well,” Adam said.They left, turning to give him the keys he’d had cut for them, a gesture that left him feeling obscurely embarrassed and mean-spirited even though—he told himself—he’d put them up and put up with them very patiently indeed.And then he left, and locked the door with his spare keys. Useless spare keys. No one would ever come to stay with him again.
They finished their oatmeal in silence, while Adam puttered around the apartment, stripping the cheese-smelling sheets and oily pillowcases off his bed, rinsing the hairs off the soap, cleaning the toilet. Erasing the signs of their stay.
“Well,” he said at length. “I should get going to the shop.”
“Yeah,” Ed said, in George’s voice, and it cracked before he could close his lips again.
“Right,” Adam said. “Well.”
They patted their mouth and ran stubby fingers through their lank hair, already thinning though they were still in their teens. They stood and cracked their knuckles against the table. They patted their pockets absently, then pocketed the hundred and the ten.
“Well,” Adam said.
They left, turning to give him the keys he’d had cut for them, a gesture that left him feeling obscurely embarrassed and mean-spirited even though—he told himself—he’d put them up and put up with them very patiently indeed.
And then he left, and locked the door with his spare keys. Useless spare keys. No one would ever come to stay with him again.