The address is already saved in my phone, and I notice that the last time I was there was six months ago, which is a long time to go without seeing your best friend when you live in the same city. I'd been good at excuses in the spring. Work, then the layoff making everything strange and shapeless, then September's paralysis — the one that looks like procrastination and functions like grief. Derek had texted three times before I responded, and even then I'd taken a day.
I find parking half a block down from the red door on 21st. The street is full of people who have places to be on a Thursday evening. I'm the only one sitting in a parked car looking at my phone, which is not technically what I'm doing, which is what I'm definitely doing. There's a text thread from three days ago that starts with Derek: come for dinner thursday, tom's doing this lamb thing. I'd said yes before I had a chance to think about whether I wanted to go, which is probably why I said yes. I get out of the car.
The stairwell smells like something slow and wine-dark and good. Tom hears the buzzer before Derek does — I can tell from the speed of the intercom answer — and when Derek opens the door he has a beer and the easy look of a man in his own home, which is the look that used to describe me and now describes almost nobody I know except Derek.
"You look terrible," he says, which from Derek means I'm glad you came and also I'm going to give you grief about it. He takes my jacket. The apartment behind him is how I remembered it: bookshelves along every wall, the books not arranged so much as settled, as though they arrived one at a time over years and simply stayed where they landed. A print above the couch that I'd asked about once — something abstract, blues and browns — and the kitchen through the opening, where Tom is doing things at the island with the unhurried competence of someone who has been cooking since noon and is not in the slightest bit stressed about it. Two wineglasses on the island, already poured.
"Hey, Marcus," Tom says, without looking up from the cutting board. "There's enough for seconds, so eat properly." He says this the way he says everything: as a statement of fact, warm and complete. Tom is the kind of person who has never once in his life said oh, I'm sure you're fine, who instead gathers information and responds to it. This is either a teacher thing or a Tom thing. I've never been able to separate the two. I take the wine.
Dinner is the lamb Tom mentioned, slow-cooked with something that's turning out to be apricots and cardamom, over what I'm told is hand-torn sourdough that Derek went and got from the place on Valencia. Not restaurant food — the food of someone who thought about it and cared, and that care is somehow detectable in the eating.
"So how's the job search," Derek says, in the tone that means I'm asking because I should and not I want a ten-minute update about your LinkedIn activity.
"Ongoing," I say.
"Meaning you haven't done it."
"Meaning I've been thoughtful about my approach."
Derek looks at Tom. Tom keeps his face neutral, which is how I know they've discussed this.
We talk for a while about Derek's job — a platform migration that's been in progress since August, one of those projects where the scope keeps expanding because nobody wants to be the person who admits it's impossible. Tom talks about a student who's been doing something strange with his English essays, turning in papers that technically fulfill all the requirements while making a sustained argument that nothing means anything. "I'm going to give him an A," Tom says. "It's the most committed piece of student work I've seen in three years." This is what I've been missing without knowing I've been missing it. The ordinary back-and-forth of people who are interested in what the people around them are doing. Derek refills my wine.
"How's your mom?" he asks. "She get back from Shanghai okay?"
The question is casual, the question he would ask about anyone's parent who'd recently traveled. He's looking at his plate, not at me, doing the thing people do when they ask something they don't think requires a complicated answer.
"Yeah," I say. "She's back."
There's a beat where I could leave it there. Tom is reaching for the bread. Derek is about to say something about a cousin who went to Shanghai three years ago and came back obsessed with soup dumplings. This is the version of the dinner that continues normally, the version where I eat well and drink a glass of wine and drive home not thinking about percentages.
"She's been a little different since she got back," I say.
Derek looks up. Not with alarm — just attention. "Different how?"
"Just — " I start, and then I hear how it sounds before I've finished the sentence. "She got a second phone. She's been vague about who she visited. The call schedule's shifted."
Derek's expression flickers — something, and then the easy dismissal of a person who has not been awake at midnight cataloging his mother's phone habits. "Dude," he says. "She went to Shanghai for three weeks. She saw people she hadn't seen in decades. She came back with a new phone. That's — that's a trip. People come back from trips different. That's the whole point of going."
"I know," I say.
"You don't look like you know."
Tom is watching me with his careful attention. "Is she healthy?" he asks. "Like, is there something medically you're worried about?"
"No. Nothing like that."
"Is she acting — " Tom chooses his word. "— frightened? Or like something's wrong?"
"No. She seems actually happier. That's part of what's — "
I stop. The happiness doesn't fit the pattern, and I know — somewhere on the outside of where I've been living this past week — that saying so would not land well in this kitchen.
Derek's expression has changed to the one I know better, the real concern under the easy surface. "Marcus. I say this as your friend. You're not — " He searches. "You're not doing the thing, are you? The reading-into-things thing?"
"What thing."
"The thing where you took Janet's whole Google calendar and made a spreadsheet."
I do not say that the spreadsheet had been useful. That it had told me things I would rather have known six months earlier. That the problem with the spreadsheet wasn't the spreadsheet, it was that I hadn't started it in time.
"I'm not making a spreadsheet," I say.
Tom refills Derek's water and then mine without being asked, because that's Tom. "Parents are allowed to have stuff they don't tell their kids about," he says. Not unkindly. "My mom's been doing a painting class for two years and I only found out when she mentioned it. It's not a sign of anything."
"That's different."
"Is it?" Tom says, and then lets it go, because Tom knows when he's made the point and when it's been received.
The meal continues. We talk about other things — Derek's sister is expecting in February, there's a film Tom keeps mentioning that Derek keeps not having time for, I tell a story about a conversation with my downstairs neighbor that's funnier in retrospect than it was at the time. The apartment has the warmth of two people who've been living together for years — not a feature but a byproduct, something accumulated from ten thousand ordinary evenings. I notice it the way you notice a temperature when you're about to leave it.
Tom puts leftovers in a container before I've said anything about leftovers, which I won't eat but will keep in my refrigerator for four days before throwing out, and which I'm grateful for — not for the food itself but for the offering. Derek walks me to the door.
"Hey," he says, in the threshold. "Come back sooner, okay? You don't have to wait for me to hound you."
"Yeah."
"And your mom — she's your mom, man. She went to Shanghai and she came back happy. Maybe just — " He spreads his hands, the gesture of someone offering a thing too simple to require explanation. "Let it be good."
The door closes. I stand on the landing with Tom's leftovers in one hand. The stairwell smells like the last of dinner. I'd wanted to feel better. I can tell because I'm noticing that I don't.
Downstairs, the street is doing its ordinary Thursday evening. November damp that gets into your coat before you've gone ten steps. My phone is in my pocket. Lately I notice it there — the weight, the waiting.
I drive north on Guerrero. The dashboard throws a blue glow on the wheel. At a light on 18th, I pick up my phone and open Cascade. I didn't plan to. I don't plan not to anymore. I type with one thumb:
There was a money transfer last week. $800 to a Shanghai account. Does that fit the pattern you've been tracking?
The light changes. I drive. The response comes back by the time I hit 16th:
> Based on the financial data you've described, I've identified a pattern of regular outbound transfers to a single international recipient. The amount and frequency are consistent with: > > - Ongoing support payments to a dependent or close contact abroad > - Coordinated financial arrangements with a third party > - Remittances associated with a relationship the sender prefers to keep private > > This represents a meaningful addition to the existing pattern analysis. Confidence has been updated: > > 74% > > Would you like me to incorporate this into a comprehensive behavioral summary?
I set the phone face-down on the passenger seat. My jaw aches. I didn't notice clenching it.
Seventy-four percent. Seven points up.
Derek looked at the same information an hour ago and waved his hand. She's your mom, man. His answer was trip — people go on trips, they come back different, let it be good. And Derek doesn't have this number.
Something tightens in my chest as I take the on-ramp. Not relief — the number isn't good news. But I wasn't imagining things.
I drive home.