I Was Here(33)

             “Who?” And then I remember why I’m here. “Oh, the boys.”

             “Actually, about that . . .” he begins.

             “You had them snipped?”

             “Meg already did.” He stumbles over her name but then rights himself. “But they’re not boys, not both of them. Repeat’s a girl. I figured they were brothers.”

             “They must be littermates, and anyhow, it still works.”

             “What still works?”

             “The joke.” Ben looks at me, perplexed, so I explain. “Pete and Repeat went out in a boat. Pete fell out. Who was saved?”

             “Rep—” He stops himself. “Oh, I get it.” He scratches his head and thinks for a second. “Except she named them wrong, because it’s not the girl who’s saved.”

             And there we are. Back to the real reason I’m here. Not to see the kittens. But because of this. Because in some awful way, this binds us now. We stand there in the soggy afternoon. Then he sits down on the steps, lights up a cigarette. He offers me one. I shake my head. “Don’t drink. Don’t smoke,” I say, mimicking the eighties song Meg and I discovered on one of Sue’s old mixtapes.

             “What do you do?” Ben asks, completing the lyric.

             I sit down next to him. “Yeah, that’s a good question.” I turn to him. “What do you do?”

             “I do odd construction jobs, woodworking. I play some shows.”

             “Right. The Scarps.”

             “Yep. We had a show last night and another tonight.”

             “Doubleheader.”

             “You could stay. Catch the show tonight. It’s in Belltown.”

             “I’m staying in Tacoma.”

             “I could give you a ride back, probably not tonight but tomorrow. You could crash here.”

             Is he for real? I give him a disgusted look, and he sort of shrugs. “Or not.” He sucks on his cigarette. “What are you doing here anyway?”

             “Visiting the cats,” I say, defensive. “You invited me, remember?” After I texted him. Why the hell did I text him?

             “No, I mean on the coast. In Tacoma.”

             I explain to him about Meg’s computer, the deleted files, the encrypted folder, Harry’s computer wizardry.

             A weird expression crosses his face. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to read her emails.”

             “Why, you got something to hide?”

             “Even if I did, you already went and read my emails.”

             “Yeah. That’s what got me started on this.”

             He twirls the cigarette between his fingers. “But those emails were mine. Written to me. It was my right to show you those. I don’t think you should dig into private things like that.”

             “When you die, you’re not a person anymore and privacy kind of becomes a moot point.”

             Ben looks uncomfortable. “What are you looking for, exactly?”

             I shake my head. “I’m not sure. But something is suspicious.”