For Now
Maybe it's those soft, pie-makin' hands, or the way he winces when he thinks about that dad of his. Or maybe it's the fact he's a real-live fuckin' magician, a wizard, a man with the power to speak to dead people, and not in a hokey "Here I am on live TV, and I want your money, but I don't know shit about your grandma" lucky guessing way. No, he speaks to 'em in a real way you can watch with your own eyes and ears and admire from up close.
Thanks to my no-nonsense detective mama, I've always been a skeptic when it comes to magic. But he's the real deal. It don't get realer than him. And what we have together may not be send-you-flowers-give-you-kisses-tell-your-mama-hi, but it's definitely something real too, and just as inexplicable as those sparks comin' out of his magic finger, wakin' up dead folks, and makin' 'em dead again.
Sometimes I catch myself wantin' to knit him a scarf or somethin', but I know he'd care too much if I did that, so I won't do that. We're business partners, and we don't have feelings for each other that excuse a scarf, especially a hand-knitted one. We have our secrets and we like them. It don't need to be a tell-all kind of thing. We just need to be together and not say anything and not think about it. It's kind of nice not to think. Really nice, maybe.
He's a good-lookin' man. Maybe a little skinny, but I don't have to feign interest by any means, and his hands, like I already said, are soft. And he's eager to please, even when nothing means anything, cause he can't turn that part of himself off when you're lying next to him. To ask him to do that would be cruel and insensitive, even if we aren't what you'd call lovers, and even if we aren't what you'd call gay.
It's something we do. I'm not sure how it started really, and now that it's started, I'm not sure how it's going to end. I don't knit him anything, and he makes me pay for my pie like everyone else, and if he gets scared, sometimes he looks over at me, and just the fact that I'm there seems to be enough to help him calm down. With my look, I tell him I'm not going anywhere. No words required.
He's slept over once or twice, afterward. I move around in my sleep, but he doesn't. He's as still in sleep as he is when he's awake, like he doesn't know what to do with himself, what the rules are, so he best do nothin' at all. I like that he's not into everyone's business, even if sometimes I wish he'd talk about his own maybe just a little more, between us, between business partners. But, no. He's a mystery.
You'd think the most mysterious thing about a guy like Ned, like Pie-Boy, would be his gift, when in reality that's the most out-there, most un-secret part of himself. Someday, he may have a special lady with hands small enough to get inside his hollow places and bring out what he don't want brought out, what he don't want to deal with. For now, all he got is a business partner who understands sex, understands being there, understands no-questions-asked, no-answers-given.
I don't think too hard on the loneliness in his eyes that he doesn't want me to try and fix, that I don't want nothin' to do with. Cause I don't care enough, or maybe too much for what's proper between a private eye and his pie-makin' sidekick, and he's too delicate inside for any touch but a special lady's, and I ain't never gonna be one of them.
I'm okay with a ball of unused yarn that makes me think of his rhubarb pie. It can stay wrapped up forever. Or maybe, someday, when he has that special lady, I can open it up then, and make that scarf, and with her around it won't mean anything.
I like knowing how things happened, but I don't care much about how they're going to happen, usually. Honestly, I don't care what's gonna happen. For now, it's just kind of nice not to think. To eat my pie, keep conversation light, and not think about it.