The Wrong Order

The Thursday after the hearing was the sixteenth of July, and it was the last one, because the contractor took possession of the site on the Monday and after that the building stopped being ours and became a place with a signing-in book.

Kwame had a stomach thing. He sent a message at half four with too much detail in it.

I read it at my desk, and the correct response was three words long, and I knew exactly what they were, and I sat there for four minutes not typing them.

Then Daniel came past my desk — not stopping, not making anything of it, with his bag already on his shoulder — and said, “I’m going to go and finish the shoe drawing. It’s the last night we can get in without a permit.”

“I know.”

“Right.”

And that was the whole conversation. That was how two adults…