His Cat Stole My Underwear, and He Kept Every Pair novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Day One

Poppy keeps score on a chalkboard, Magnus arrives at the shop with forty clothespins, and Admiral wears the flamingo briefs as a crown.

"Day one," Poppy said, and wrote it on the chalkboard behind the register. "Lobsters."

"You don't have to put it on the board."

"I put everything on the board. It's where the truth lives."

Understory opened at nine, and by nine-ten Teddy had told the whole story to a fiddle-leaf fig and a delivery man.

Then he told it to Poppy, who listened with her arms folded and her face perfectly blank.

"So he washed them," she said.

"Ironed."

"Pressed."

"Thirty. With dates."

"And you told him to keep them."

"Yes."

"On purpose."

"On purpose," Teddy said. "And now I'm going to keep losing them."

Poppy set down her chalk.

"Teddy."

"Think about it. He's a surgeon. He's never been late, never been loud, never missed a bin day.

"And he is keeping thirty pairs of my underwear in a basket because he's too embarrassed to give them back. I want to know how long."

"How long what?"

"How long a man like that will keep a basket."

"You're going to starve him of a decent conversation and watch him fold."

"That's not what I said."

"That's exactly what you said."

Teddy leaned over the counter and lowered his voice, though the only other living thing in earshot was a snake plant.

"Here's the rule. I hang one pair a night. I do not say a word. And the game ends the day he says it."

"Says what?"

"I don't know. Whatever he's been trying to say. 'Your underwear is here.' 'I have your underwear.' I'll know it when I hear it."

Poppy looked at him for a long moment.

"You're the most normal person I know," she said, "and this is the least normal thing I've ever heard."

"Is that a yes?"

"It's a chalkboard."

She wrote, in small letters under DAY ONE, THE GAME ENDS WHEN HE SAYS IT.

At noon the bell over the door rang, and the shop went quiet in a way it never did on a Thursday.

Dr. Magnus Aldahl stood in the doorway in navy scrubs, with a rain jacket over them and a clear plastic bag in his hand.

He looked at the ceiling, which was hung with eleven pothos.

He looked at the floor, which was stacked with thirty-one kinds of fern.

He looked, Teddy thought, like a man who had walked into a jungle on purpose.

"Good morning," said Magnus.

"It's noon."

"Good noon."

Poppy made a small sound behind the counter and turned it into a cough.

Magnus crossed the shop in six long strides, set the bag on the register, and slid it forward with one finger.

Inside were clothespins.

Wooden ones, new, tidy, bundled with a rubber band.

"For the rack," he said.

"Thank you," Teddy said. "How many?"

"Forty."

"Why forty?"

Something flickered across that serious face, there and gone.

"It's what the package had," Magnus said.

Teddy picked up the bag and held it.

"They're very nice clothespins."

"They're standard."

"I'll treasure them."

"Please don't treasure them. Use them."

Behind him Poppy had given up and was openly watching, her chin in both hands.

Magnus's eyes slid toward her, and then back, and he cleared his throat.

"I also need a plant," he said.

"Okay! What kind? What's the light? What's the room? Are we talking tropical or are we talking a little joy for a desk?"

"For the clinic waiting room. There's one window. It faces a wall."

"North-facing," Teddy said. "Little water. Big attitude."

"Something that can't be killed."

"Everything can be killed."

"Something I can't kill."

Teddy gave him a long look.

Then he walked the aisle, picked up a squat, glossy, dark-green ZZ plant in a clay pot, and put it into Magnus's arms.

"This is Dwight."

"It has a name."

"They all have names. You water him once a month, and you leave him alone, and he'll outlive us both."

Magnus held the pot carefully against his chest.

Teddy found he could not look at those big hands for more than a second at a time.

"Thank you," said Magnus.

"You're welcome."

"I'll hang out your laundry."

"What?"

"I'll," Magnus said, and stopped.

His jaw worked, and his eyes moved to a point behind Teddy's ear.

"I'll leave the clips on your railing."

"That's great," said Teddy.

"Good."

"Great."

"Good day," said Magnus, and left with Dwight, and the bell rang after him for a long time.

Poppy slowly picked up the chalk.

She wrote, DAY ONE: HE BOUGHT A PLANT.

That night Teddy put the lobsters out, clipped with eight of the forty clothespins, tight enough to hold in a hurricane.

He left the gate open.

He went to bed.

At six a.m., through the curtain, he heard a very quiet door slide and a very quiet voice say, "No."

Then louder.

"Admiral. No. Down. That is not a hat."

Teddy was at the window before he was awake.

The rain had stopped.

On the railing in the gray light sat one orange cat, upright and solemn.

He wore a pair of green lobster briefs on his head.

Magnus was on the other balcony in his socks, with a coffee in one hand and murder in his face.

The clothespins were still on the rack, every last one of them.

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