I worked on, selecting, manipulating, gluing, balancing. Silence settled around me, grew loud within the after-hours-big-building emptiness.

When I looked up, the clock said six-twenty.

Why was that wrong?

Ryan was due at my condo at seven!

Flying to the sink, I washed my hands, tore off my lab coat, grabbed my belongings, and bolted.

Outside, a cold rain was falling. No. That’s being kind. The stuff was sleet. Icy slush that clung to my jacket and burned my cheeks.

It took ten minutes to hack through the glacier on my windshield, another thirty to make a drive that was normally fifteen.

When I arrived, Ryan was wall-leaning outside my door, a bag of groceries beside his feet.

There exists some indissoluble law of nature. When encountering Andrew Ryan, I look my worst.

And Ryan looks like something sketched out by a matinee-idol planning committee. Always.

Tonight he wore a bomber jacket, striped woolen muffler, and faded jeans.

Ryan smiled when he saw me, purse drooping from one shoulder, laptop in my left hand, briefcase in my right. My cheeks were chapped, my hair wet and plastered to my face. Runoff had turned my mascara to an Impressionist study in sludge.

“Dogs got tangled in the traces?”

“It’s sleeting.”

“I think you’re supposed to yell ‘mush.’”

Ryan pushed from the wall, relieved me of the computer with one hand, and with the other brushed aside my bangs. Several held form as a solid clump.

“Close encounter with Dippity-do?”

“I’ve been gluing.” I dug out my keys.

Ryan moved to the cusp of a comment, held back. Bending, he snatched up his bag and followed me into the condo.

“Chirp?”

“Charlie, boy,” Ryan called out.

“Chirp. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.”

“You and Charlie spend some quality time,” I said. “I’m going to de-glue.”

“Tap pant-”