I shrugged. It was gettioo te to do much if I went to Amaranth, or to make too much progress on the house. “Sure. I was just stog up. In case I have a party.” I stood aside to let Kathy in, giving her plenty of room.

  Enough room that she absolutely did not o graze her chest against mine as she came in, so that was totally iional.

  Had I been missing some majnals?

  She sauntered inside and looked around. Things hadn’t ged much since she’d st been here, except for the crates of booze o ters. I’d been pnning to take them into Amaranth, so I hadn’t put them away. She walked over to take a better look at them, and I went with her.

  In the middle of the kit table, the gold bracer sat on a scale. “Hey Kathy,” I said quickly. “How do you think I should paint the living room?”

  She turned around, apparently without notig anything oable, to go bad take a look. “Didn’t you just paint it? There’s nothing wrong with the color it is, is there? Kinda ordinary, but nothing wrong with it. But you need a couch, Abel. And some chairs.”

  I nodded. “You know, I wasn’t expeg pany. But I’m gd you came. Mind staying here for a few minutes while I tidy up a few things?”

  She ughed. “Um, sure. I know it resumptuous of me, showing up unannounced. I’ll give you time to put away your porn or whatever.”

  “Just one moment,” I said.

  I grabbed the bracer off the table, shielded it with my body, and put it in one of the high ets i. It was a bit of a strete, and I retty sure Kathy would have to jump or use a step stool, even if she got really noisy. I’d locked the basement door when I went to the jewelers. Was everything else okay? I thought so. I took a deep breath, grabbed a couple of gsses, and rejoined her in the living room. I didn’t drink much, and I didn’t have cocktail gsses. ss gsses, even. Too much moving made gss a hassle to pad unpack. But I had some really ranslut pstic that was nigh unbreakable.

  “Okay, it’s all good!” I called out.

  Kathy walked bato the kit. “You’re pnning a party?” she asked, doubtfully.

  “Well, not so muning. Just trying to be prepared.”

  “Will I be invited?”

  “If it happens, sure.”

  “That’s a lot of liquor if you’re not having a party,” she said. “But you need better gsses to go with it. Got any brandy?”

  I nodded.

  “Grand Marnier or treau?”

  Somehow the trolls hadn’t struck me as the fruity liqueur type. I shook my head.

  “So much for a sidecar. One brandy, , please.”

  I found the brandy and poured her an inch or so. To be sociable, I poured myself some too. She held the pstic gss in her hand for a moment, swirling the brandy around in the gss.

  She went through the whole thing. She held it even with her chest, and ihen lifted it closer, and inhaled again. Then, finally, she moved it to her nose.

  “I don’t know much about brandy,” I told her.

  She shrugged. “You’re supposed to smell it at various distao see all the different aromas it give. Before taking a small sip. Like so.” She demonstrated.

  I tried it, but it was all too subtle for me.

  She chuckled. “Just when I think you’re more mysterious than the guy in the beer ercials, you prove to be human after all.” She shrugged, looked around seemingly for a pce to sit, rejected the seats at the kit table, and leaned up against the wall instead. The only other pce I had to sit down in the house was the bed, and invitio sit there would be awkward.

  “I could move the chairs to the living room?” I suggested.

  She ughed. “It will do, I guess. I don’t know how you live like this.”

  “It’s always been temporary,” I said. I picked up the two chairs and carted them to the living room.

  She followed me. “Ah, yes, the flipping. But it’s permaly temporary, so you always live like this? Like someone who hasn’t really finished moving in.”

  I set the two chairs up at a 45-degree ao each other. Now that I looked at it, yeah, a living room with two folding chairs in it looked kind of me. I didn’t always live this rough. I usually picked up cheap furniture at garage sales. When I’d been moving around Boston, I could cart them to the new p my van, but this move to DC had been a big one, and all that stuff had been doo thrift stores up north.

  She sat down on one, crossed her legs, and took another sip of brandy. I sat dowo her. She hopped right back up. “Abel, I ask you a question, a an ho answer?”

  I chuckled. That sort of prelude got one in trouble. “Either an ho answer, or a polite no ent,” I said.

  “Good enough. Abel, am I an unattractive woman?”

  “No. You’re very attractive,” I told her. It was an easy one, but I still wondered if I was falling into a trap.

  Apparently she’d stood up so I could make a proper evaluation, because she sat back down again. And took a gulp. “That’s what I thought. Well, or at least reasonably. I watch what I eat, I work out sometimes, I take walks, I’ve got some curves, my nose is straight, my eyebrows aren’t too bushy – not that some women don’t look great with big eyebrows, but I don’t think any of them are blondes – I think I’m okay.”

  “More than okay,” I agreed.

  “So what is it? I’ve tried oing, but it’s full of creeps. I go to singles meetups, but never seem to hit it off. At one point I decided I was asexual, but I’m pretty sure that’s not true, because when a guy is good looking and strikes me the right way, I get all the feels, you know? But it’s been me and my – this is way too muformation.”

  “You share what you want to share,” I told her.

  She drank more brandy, and nodded. “You’re a man of the world, aren’t you?”

  I ughed. “I suppose, if I uand what you mean.”

  “Any marriages?”

  “Nope.”

  “Straight, I hope? Now that wasn’t a nice way to say that.”

  “I like women, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Right. Like the chick with the green body paint.”

  I nodded. “Like her.”

  “Well, then you know what a womas up to when she’s alone.” She got up, and headed to the kit.

  I mentally reviewed what was i. Except for the gold bracelet in the upper et, nothing I minded her seeing.

  She returned with two inches of liquid in her gss.

  “Why’d you never get married?” she asked. “I was married o didn’t work out. But I got to keep the house.”

  “Well, I’m poly. Not that some poly people aren’t married, but it plicates things.”

  “Poly. Meaning you date around.”

  “Meaning that I’m open to falling in love with more than one person. And to being in a retionship where my partner and I have a good time without falling in love. And also, to letting go when it’s time to let go. Letting each retionship be what it’s meant to be, without trying to force it.”

  Kathy ughed and took a drink. “Force it. I guess that’s a good example of what my husband, ex-husband, and I did. We weren’t really ready to get married, either of us, but it seemed like the logical step. It was either that or end it, you know? Look for someone else? And we weren’t ready for that either.”

  “Sounds like retionship escator thinking,” I said.

  “Expin.”

  “Well, the retionship escator is the idea that there are steps to a retionship. The ht vary from person to person, but dating, making out, going steady, having sex, meeting the parents, getting engaged, living together, getting married, that sort of thing. Each step, higher tha. If the escator is moving, you keep hitting new milestones. If it’s not, theionship is ‘not going anywhere’ and you get off the escator, so you get on it again with someone else. If you’re monogamous, you ’t be on two escators at the same time, so the only way to hope to reach the ‘top,’ whatever that means, is to dump someone if the escator stops moving ever upward to whatever pce it's supposed to reach – marriage, usually.”

  She nodded. “Makes sense. Don’t you want to reach the top, Abel? Or are you afraid of itment?”

  I’d heard that one before. “No, I don’t think I’m afraid of itment. But itment and exclusivity aren’t the same thing, and you be itted t to make something work without being itted to a certain spot on the elevator. Do you remember when things were good with your ex? I assume there was a time.”

  Kathy nodded. “Yeah. There was a time. Times.”

  “Well, what if you had just been tent to let that be what it was?”

  “Stayed there, you mean. Dating, living separately, having hot sex now and then.”

  “Yeah.”

  Kathy shrugged. “I guess that would have been good, huh? Better? But maybe it would have also gotten stale. ge is good. Keeps things iing.”

  “A when people get to the top of the escator, they stop moving, too.”

  “Huh,” she said. And drank some more.

  I put my cup aside. Assuming her gss was full of brandy, I o make sure at least one of us was sober.

  “Don’t tell me that you don’t care about milestones,” Kathy said.

  “Of course. I’m human.” I thought about my excitement at getting to sed level. Yeah, I liked milestones. “But sometimes you don’t have to reach for the one, if it’s not meant to be.”

  “So you reach for it with someone else.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I’m not meant to go there with someone else, either. I have a good friend who I know wants more than what she has with me. We’re good together, but we’re not that kind of good. My lifestyle, moving around, living light – it’s not for her. Whe together we have a good time. We share stuff about each other’s lives. If she needed help, I’d want to be there for her, and I think she’d want to be there for me. But that’s as far as it goes. It’s good, ah know that we might find something else with someone else, and that’s good too.” I was talking about Sandra, but I could have been talking about Jill, too.

  “And you don’t get all jealous when they date uys?”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes I feel jealousy, sure. It’s not fun. I deal with it. It helps, I’m sure, that it goes both ways, and I know that she has tle with the same feelings. It tear people apart, or it be ahing you share. And jealousy has so many parts – is it a feeling that you weren’t good enough? A fear of missing out? Uainty or insecurity about whether you’ll still be wahose are separate things, and they nd differently. But none of us are perfect, I miss out on Kate Upton every day of my life and I’m fine, and the future was never really certain anyway.”

  “Kate Upton, huh?” Kathy said.

  “It was only an example.”

  “Well, at least you like blondes. When you were talking about your friend – that’s the girl with the green paint?”

  I shook my head. “No, I was talking about someone else. A friend named Sandra. The girl you saw was Xy.”

  “And how does Sandra feel about Xy?”

  “We haven’t talked about Xy much yet, because that’s all new. She knows I’m seeing someone new here, and she knows I have another friend, Jill, ba Boston. But probably she feels about the same way I feel about her dating Bill. I think we’re at a point where we both holy want the best for each other.”

  “That sounds like love.”

  I ughed. “Maybe, but we’ve never called it that. There’s another milestone, saying ‘I love you’ to someone.”

  “Everyone knows about each other?”

  I hesitated. That was the way it was supposed to work, alright. But I hadn’t talked much about Jill and Sandra to Gren or Xy. Nor had I hidden the fact that they weren’t the only women in my life. I deflected. “There’s a saying in poly-nd. Love is infinite, so there’s no reason one ’t love more than one person. Time is not. In general terms, yes, everyone knows I’m poly. At any given time, they might not all be up to date on what’s going on with who, when, because no one wants to spend all their time talking about other people. Whatever anyone says they want to know, I’m ho about.”

  “So there’s Sandra and Xy, who are local. And Jill, in Boston. Anyone else?”

  “A woman named Gren, maybe. Not sure if that’s something that’s developing, or not. Time will tell.”

  “And she dates uys, too?”

  I thought about the y, which might for all I knew be going ht now, if it hadn’t already happened. “Yes.”

  “And you’re fih that.”

  “Yes.”

  “And they’d all be fih you sleeping with me.”

  I wasirely surprised by her choice of an example. “I ’t guarantee anyone’s emotions but mine. But yes, I expect so.”

  She tipped the st of the drink into her mouth, and I was close enough I could smell that it was brandy. “I bet your bed is more fortable than your chairs,” she said, getting to her feet.

  She wobbled.

  “We’re not having sex,” I said. Which was a shame, because I’d already been open with her, and she was definitely a sexy girl.

  “We’re not?” she asked.

  “Not tonight. You’re not sober.”

  “I’m perfectly shober,” she said, with a very straight face. Then she unbuttoned a button on her blouse.

  I watched as she unbuttoned another one. Maybe I should have stopped her, but I’m human, and I khat she could be stark naked and I still wasn’t fug her until she told me she wa without the aid of alcohol. Not denigrating the cultural practices of trolls, I just had my own boundaries.

  Even if she had been sober, my life lenty plicated as it was.

  “This is my anniversary. Would be. en. It’s also four years sihe divorce. I don’t want to be aloonight, Abel. Please?”

  I’d never really gotteion of keeping track of dates that don’t make you happy. I had a hard enough time keeping track of other people’s birthdays, and once I even had to be reminded about my own. But I knew for some people, dates hit hard. “You don’t have to be alone, Kathy. We’re just not fug.” I stood up and put my hand out for hers. “Pretty bra. Keep your panties on, and we sleep together, if that helps.”

  “You’re a very strange man, Abel.”

  “I’m the only man I know how to be.”

  She took my hand. It wasn’t hard to avoid sex, because she fell asleep within minutes of getting in bed, lying cuddled up with her head on my chest and my arm around her waist.