Apples Never Fall

“Hello?” Logan panicked. He hadn’t thought it through! But the man said instantly, impatiently, “Come on up. Second floor.”

The security buzzer went, and in his relief, Logan pushed the glass door so hard it crashed against the wall with a bang.

When he got to the apartment he saw that the door had been propped open with a battered old sneaker.

Logan tentatively pushed open the door.

“Hello?”

Nothing. He could hear music playing from somewhere inside. Norah Jones. It was like the guy was doing everything possible to make himself look benign.

Savannah had mentioned his name but Logan was struggling to remember it. Something bland and one syllable.

He looked at the abstract painting leaning against the wall. It was god-awful. Indira would love it. He remembered when he and Troy first came here, Savannah had said the boyfriend was the artist. He studied the signature. Did it possibly say David? Was that the bloke’s name? Dave? Dave.

“Dave?” he called out.

A voice called over the music, “Yeah! Thank you! Just leave it anywhere.”

He walked into the dining room. It was like walking onto a building site, albeit one with Norah Jones crooning from a speaker. A giant paint-stained tarpaulin protected the carpet. The unpacked mover’s boxes had been stacked in a corner, and the coffe

e table had been tipped on its side and propped up against the wall. Dave—he assumed his name was Dave—stood in front of a giant easel. He was in the process of squeezing paint from a tube onto a piece of cardboard he was using as a palette. He wore a mechanic’s blue boilersuit. There was a blob of paint on his glasses, another on his earlobe. The canvas he was working on featured swirls of queasy yellow similar to the color of Logan’s kitchen. The mood in the apartment was industrious and joyful. This was someone completely lost in something they loved to do, and Logan found himself feeling envious. He’d once lost himself in tennis, and then only sex and television. Now there was only television left.

Indira wanted to paint. Like this, maybe, Logan wasn’t sure. She’d told him this about a year ago, as if she were confessing to something deeply personal and private. “Go for it,” Logan had told her. She said she needed somewhere to paint and that maybe they could think about moving to a bigger place where she could have a studio. “Just do it right here,” Logan had said, and he’d pushed the coffee table up against the wall. Not passive listening, active listening. Very active listening! It was a heavy coffee table. The woman wants to paint, the man makes space for her to paint. But she’d said, sadly, “No, that won’t work.” And then she stopped talking about it.

If she really wanted to paint, she’d have painted. Look at this guy. This apartment had half their living space.

“Yeah, hi, thanks for that, did you … need something?” said Dave. He replaced the lid on his tube of paint.

“I’m Logan.” His mind was still on Indira.

Logan was totally supportive of her desire to paint. He just didn’t want to sell the town house. Just in case it didn’t work out. No, absolutely not, that was not the reason. He was committed to the relationship. But sometimes you lost when you were meant to win. The town house was in his name. If it didn’t work out, nothing needed to change, the girl left, Logan stayed. And see, look what happened: the girl had left. Once again. His strategy was sound.

“Yeah, thanks, Logan,” said Dave, a bit impatiently. “So the pizza is…?” He looked over Logan’s shoulder.

“Oh,” said Logan apologetically. “I’m not delivering pizza. I’m, um—hoping you might talk to me about your girlfriend. Your ex-girlfriend. Savannah. Just quickly.” He remembered his strategy: ask for help, throw himself at his mercy. “I need your help.”

Dave took a step backward. “Fuck.” He put down his tube of paint. “You’re one of the angry guys who came with her that day.” Logan had a sick feeling that the poor guy was urgently scanning the room looking for a weapon with which to defend himself. He was even younger and smaller than Logan remembered.

Logan lifted his palms. “I come in peace.” What in the world? He tried to stoop and round his shoulders to make himself smaller and less intimidating. “I just want to talk. Savannah is staying with my parents.”

“Your parents?” Dave had picked up a paintbrush, which he clenched in his fist as if he might stab Logan with the pointy end. “She’s staying with your parents? Not you? And she’s okay?”

“She’s fine,” said Logan. He thought of Savannah gliding about his mother’s kitchen with his mother’s haircut. “She’s good.”

“How does she know your family?” asked Dave.

“She doesn’t.”

“I don’t get it.”

“She turned up on their doorstep late one night, bleeding. She said that you hit her.”

“Hit her?” Dave’s mouth dropped. His face became stupid with shock. “She really said that? That I hit her?”

“That’s why my brother and I came here to help her pick up her stuff. But then the other day I saw something on TV. It was a girl telling the same story as Savannah told me. About you. Almost word for word. It made me think she might have made it up, and well, that’s fine if she made it up.”

It wasn’t fine if she made it up, but he wanted to be clear that he was an easygoing, accepting kind of guy. All he wanted was information.