Chapter 2 · Amnesiac Himbo Insurance (1)

Here is what I learned in nine days of housing a six-foot-four amnesiac with the survival instincts of a golden retriever and the physical beauty of a war crime:

<b>One: He has never seen a phone.</b> I gave him mine to call — no one, he has no one — and he held it like it was a bomb. "It's flat," he said, appalled. "You carry a mirror that contains the entire sum of human knowledge, and you use it to look at other people's breakfast."

"I use it for the bus, actually. And memes."

"The bus." He said the word like it was a small, sad animal. "You ride a machine that stops for other people. Lynn. This is not acceptable."

"It's four dollars a ride, it's very acceptable, and you need to stop saying my name like it's a prayer, it's weird."

"I'm not saying it like a prayer. I'm saying it correctly."

"You're —" I gave up. "You're saying it like a prayer."

He smiled, slow, like he knew something I didn't. "Then perhaps I should pray more often."

That's the other thing I learned. <b>Two: He says everything like he knows something I don't.</b> It's in the way he watches me — not at me, but around me, like he's cataloging my habits, my fears, my exits. It's in the way he moves — silent, even on my screaming floorboards. It's in the way he asked, on day two, entirely out of nowhere:

"Lynn. The man who owns the building. He frightens you."

"Mr. Demetriou? He's a landlord. That's his job."

"No." He shook his head, and for a moment he looked less like a lost puppy and more like a man who had ended wars. "He frightens you. You tense when his name comes up. Why?"

"Because he's threatening to evict me? Because I'm two months behind on rent? Because I'm a twenty-two-year-old with three dollars and a philosophy degree in progress, and the universe is a haunted house where I pay admission?"

He considered this. Then he said, "I'll handle it," and went out, and when Mr. Demetriou knocked on my door that evening to "discuss the situation," he was white as a sheet, stammering about "an extension, absolutely, take your time, no rush at all, the building is honored to have you, Ms. Voss, honored."

I have never been Ms. Voss in my life.

I cornered Kael — yes, he'd remembered a name, "Kael, I think, Kael, it feels right, does it feel right?" — in the kitchen. "What did you say to him?"

"Nothing." He was eating cereal. Directly from the box. Like a heathen. "I told him the truth. That you were under my protection, and that if he touched a single one of your belongings, I would feed him his own kneecaps."

"YOU —"

"I phrased it politely."

"THERE IS NO POLITE VERSION OF —"

"I said 'sir.' Twice."

I stared at him. He poured more cereal into his mouth, serene as a monk, crumbs falling onto his chest like snow.

"Also," he added, "he is afraid of the dark. I have no idea why. The apartment was well lit. But he seemed very convinced about it."

I had a lot of questions. I asked none of them, because I've learned that asking him questions is like drinking from a fire hose of nonsense. <b>Three: He lies by telling the truth in a way that means nothing.</b> "Where are you from?" "Somewhere colder than this." "What do you do?" "I was a — collector. I collected things." "What kind of things?" "Debts." "Did you have many?" "I had everyone's."

None of it made sense. All of it made me feel like I was standing on a trapdoor.

But here's the part I didn't expect, the part that made it impossible to kick him out:

He was useful.

Not in a "washes the dishes" way, though he did that too, with the reverent intensity of a man performing a ritual. Useful in a way that made my chest ache. On day three, I came home from a double shift to find he had reorganized my entire apartment — my books by color, my spices alphabetically, my emergency money — I had hidden emergency money under the mattress, twenty dollars for "if the world ends" — folded into a neat fan on the nightstand with a note that said: <em>You hide it in your sock drawer, not under the mattress. I found it in the sock drawer. This is the second place I looked. You are not as sneaky as you think, and I find this adorable.</em>

On day four, he learned how to use the microwave by watching a tutorial online — "how did you —" "the mirror taught me" — and presented me with a bowl of instant noodles that he had, somehow, elevated into a religious experience. "You have to crack an egg in it, Lynn. At the end. It's the only correct way. I don't make the rules."

"You don't know how phones work but you know how to cook instant noodles?"

"I don't know how to cook instant noodles. I know how to make these instant noodles. It's different."

"Your memory is coming back?"

"No." He went still for a second — a flicker of something dark, gone as fast as it came. "I just feel like I've done this before. Long ago. With someone —" He stopped. "I don't remember."

I didn't push. I've stopped pushing. That's <b>Four: He gets sad in a way that makes me want to fix the world.</b> It's rare, and it's brief, but every so often — when he thinks I'm not looking — his face goes somewhere far away, and the gold comes back to his eyes, banked and burning, and he looks at the rain like he's counting the dead.

I don't know why I care. I've never cared about anyone. Caring is a tax I can't afford, and the cold thing in my chest has spent sixteen years making sure I never paid it.

But on day five, I found myself standing in the doorway of my own kitchen, watching him rewire my lamp with a paperclip and a screwdriver he'd found in the laundromat, muttering, "this is barbaric, who built this, this is a crime against electricity," and I thought:

<em>I'm in trouble.</em>

Mia, of course, agreed.

"You adopted a man," she said, on day six, when Kael was in the back of the café — yes, he followed me to work, yes, he "volunteered," yes, Mr. Ashworth looked at him for a long moment and said nothing, which was somehow worse — "You adopted a MAN, Lynn. A whole man. A man the size of a building. You adopted a HIMBO."

"He's not a himbo."

"He doesn't know what a cell phone is, he thinks the toaster is a 'heat box,' and he told Mrs. Kowalski that her cat 'carries the eyes of a small predator and should be respected.' That's not a himbo, that's a cryptid. You adopted a cryptid. From a forest."

"He doesn't remember the forest."