His Baby Boy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Ask First

Perrin walks home angry and Malcolm follows; he sets his terms, Malcolm agrees, and a photo of the empty corner table comes in with a goodnight text.

Perrin made it three blocks before he heard the footsteps behind him.

They were long, even steps, and they stayed exactly ten feet back.

He knew them the way he knew the sound of the milk steamer.

"Go home, Malcolm," he said without turning.

"I will," Malcolm said. "When you're inside."

Perrin kept walking.

It was the last week of October, and the wind off the harbor went straight through his cardigan.

He had left his coat on the hook at the café.

He had left his apron on the counter and his dignity somewhere on the floor between the register and the door.

At the laundromat on Congress Street he stopped under the yellow light and turned around.

Malcolm stood at the curb with his hands in his coat pockets and his collar turned up.

He had the careful look of a man who had decided not to take one step more.

"Say what you came to say," Perrin said.

"I didn't buy the café for you."

"Then why?"

"Agnes was going to lose the lease," Malcolm said. "The bank wouldn't extend it. The landlord had an offer from a company that wanted the corner for a pharmacy."

"And you just happened to know that."

"Bernie told me."

Perrin blinked.

"Bernadette told you?"

"She came to my table three months ago and asked if I knew a lawyer," Malcolm said. "She didn't ask for money. She asked for a lawyer. I looked at the numbers that night, and I knew I could fix it in a week."

"So you fixed it."

"I fixed it," Malcolm said. "And then I couldn't tell you, because I knew exactly how you'd look at me."

"Like this?"

"Like this."

Perrin's breath clouded white in the cold.

"I cried in the walk-in," he said. "When I thought it was closing. Nobody saw."

"I saw," Malcolm said quietly. "I came in for a napkin and the cooler door was open an inch."

Perrin's face went hot.

"That's not the reason," he said.

"It's most of the reason. Agnes and Bernie are the other part. I'd have done it for them alone." Malcolm's jaw worked. "But I won't lie to you. Part of it was that I couldn't stand to watch you cry."

The wind pushed a paper cup down the gutter.

"I want rules," Perrin said.

"Tell me."

"You ask first." He pressed his fingers into his palm to keep them still. "Before you buy anything. For me, for the café, for anyone I love. You ask, and I get to say yes, and I get to say no."

"Done."

"And I get to say not today. To anything. To you. And that's not a fight, it's just not today."

Malcolm took a moment with that.

"Not today is never a fight," he said. "What else?"

Perrin had not planned a third one.

He stood there with his arms wrapped around himself and found it anyway.

"You tell me if you're going to stop coming to the table," he said. "Don't just stop."

Something went across Malcolm's face that Perrin did not understand.

It looked like pain.

"I'm not going to stop coming to the table," he said.

"Okay."

"I have one rule of my own."

Perrin's stomach tightened.

"Every night you text me goodnight," Malcolm said. "Even when you're angry. Even if the text says go to hell. I need to know you got in."

"That's it?"

"That's all I'm asking."

Perrin looked at him for a long moment.

It was the oddest rule.

It was the only one that sounded like it came from somewhere deep.

"Fine," he said.

He took out his keys.

Malcolm did not move.

"Perrin."

"What?"

"You said yes before the letter," Malcolm said. "I want you to know I heard it. I'm not going to hold you to it. You can take it back tomorrow, and the day after, and I'll still say goodnight to your window."

Perrin's throat closed.

He nodded and went in.

The stairs creaked the whole way up.

His room was eleven feet by twelve, with a hot plate, a single bed and a window onto the street.

He dropped onto the bed and pulled the pillow over his face.

After a minute he reached under it.

Biscuit was where he always was, a brown stuffed otter with a worn left ear and a seam that Perrin's grandmother had sewn when he was seven.

Perrin held him against his chest.

His eyes stung.

"He called me baby boy," he told the otter. "And I said yes."

The otter did not answer.

Perrin turned his head and looked at the window.

The light on the street was still yellow.

A tall figure stood at the curb for a long time, and then it walked away.

Perrin watched until it was gone.

His phone buzzed on the blanket.

It was a photograph.

The corner table at the Gull & Kettle, in the dark, with the chair pulled out and the lamp off.

Under it, Malcolm had written: It is cold without you.

A second text came in a moment later.

Goodnight, baby boy.

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