Georgie, All Along (27)

Hank chooses that moment to come in, and he nudges his snout against my thigh the way he always does after he eats, which I take to be a thanks.

“He’s a good dog,” she says.

“He is.” I scratch his head, the uninjured side. “Settle in, pal,” I tell him, and he moves into the living room, turning twice before lying down. He seems comfortable here, comfortable with Georgie, and maybe I should take a lesson. Paul and Shyla are good people; there’s no reason to think Georgie’s not, too. Carlos used to tell me I have trouble trusting people, which is an understatement. I don’t think he meant it as a judgment, just a reality, and he knew I had my reasons. Still, that reality is really fucking with my ability to solve a problem, so I better get over it.

I clear my throat, spearing another bite of her pasta. “I’d appreciate it,” I say, and it sounds as if it’s being wrung from my throat. “If you don’t mind.”

“Nope,” she says, ignoring my tepid response, and tucks right back into her food, a green bean bending into her half-smiling mouth.

That’s how Georgie Mulcahy becomes, for now at least, both my roommate and my dog sitter.

*

AFTER DINNER I insist on helping clean up, though Georgie resists, and I think it’s because it’s the first time she’s registered how big of a mess she made. She tries to shoo me out of the kitchen, telling me to keep an eye on Hank, but he’s out there snoring, the first good rest he’s had all day. I mutter something about letting sleeping dogs lie and start collecting all the food scraps into a bowl. Paul’s got a composter outside, similar to the one I have at home, so at least it won’t go to waste.

The kitchen’s small, too much brushing against each other for my comfort, but Georgie’s quieter now, and the job of cleaning up calms me. I’m sure we’ll work out a routine, for however long this lasts. And we’ll probably barely see each other, which means I won’t be as tempted to look at those legs every time she walks by me.

It’ll be fine.

Then she says, “So, docks?”

It takes me a second to realize she’s not doing some kind of random vocabulary exercise; she’s actually asking about my job. Too bad Hank’s sleeping. He’s a better conversationalist than me.

I nod, and move to take the towel she’s holding out to me.

“What’s that like?” she asks.

The only word I can think of for long seconds is wet.

I pretend to be very committed to drying off the pot she hands me.

“Busy this time of year,” I finally say. “We’re a small operation. Repairs to existing structures and small residential builds.”

There, that was pretty good. A normal answer. I look out the corner of my eye at her, see her nod as she rubs a sponge across one of the knives. After a few seconds, she passes it to me and speaks again.

“I guess I meant, you know. Do you like it?”

“Oh.” So, not a normal answer then? Well, whatever. I did my best. “It’s all right. Get to be outside, mostly. Get to be on the water, or close to it.”

In spite of the fact that I was more comfortable with the quiet cleanup, I get that it’s my turn, that I should ask her about her own job, the one with all that expansiveness she mentioned. I think about how she stretched her arms out. Might be nice to hear about it from her, rather than from Paul.

But before I can say anything, she speaks again. “How’d you get into it?”

I swallow uncomfortably. I don’t much want to get into the how of it. How Carlos pulled me out of the gutter on the worst night of my life. Gave me a chance when everyone I knew here had written me off.

I keep my answer simple.

“I’m good with my hands. Steady-legged on a boat.” I almost say, fast learner, too, but I don’t want to sound arrogant.

She passes me another dish. “Well, it’s more than that, right? Since you run the whole business now?”

I shift on my feet, clear my throat. “I apprenticed with Carlos for about seven years. I knew the business well. It only made sense.”

It’s more complicated than that, but I don’t know if I want to get into the details of why it made sense, of all the extra work I did and classes I took to make sure I could handle some of the things Carlos tended to have inefficient systems for. Recordkeeping, payroll, billing protocols. By the time he retired officially, I knew the business better than he did.

Once again, I’m on the verge of shifting the subject, or at least of shifting the focus to her. I’ve always known I’m uncomfortable talking about myself, but with Georgie, I see clearer than ever how truly strained I am at it. She seems easy and open, comfortable in this small space. To me, even a conversation about something as neutral as my job is full of tiny trap doors, spots in the story of it that’d lead to places I don’t want to go.

But then, impossibly, she makes things worse.

“I’m sorry I confused you with your brother,” she says, sudden and quick. “Yesterday, I mean.”

I clench my teeth together, the muscles in my jaw tightening. I have no idea what led her from asking questions about my job to bringing up the mistake from yesterday, but I don’t care what prompted it. I care that she’s opened up one of those trap doors to a mistake of my own, one I work hard not to think about, at least outside of my therapist’s office. And I haven’t been there in a while.