"Okay." An exhale, all faux concession to Jude's unfathomable mental state. So mysterious! So impenetrable! No one could possibly understand! "You're extremely worried I'll turn you in to your to your evil fucking family. That's why you followed me back to my apartment, right? Always let them take you to a second location, I've heard that's good life advice."
He hefts himself into a chair at a diagonal from the sofa; it's all concave plastic and so spindle-legged it looks like it could buckle beneath the weight of any substantive sitter but somehow manages to maintain its dignity as Near settles with his own legs open, leaned forward, somewhere between at-home casual and an animal with no real defenses trying to make itself look bigger than it is.
He follows Jude's line of sight to the hallway. "That wasn't my dog," he says.
Not technically.
"I don't like dogs."
He doesn't.
"I stole her, put her in the back of a car, and drove across state lines with her because I was pissed off that her worthless junkie owner" -- his boyfriend, sort of, but he decides to skip that part -- "was being a worthless junkie. Which was stupid, I know. Thinking he'd be anything else, I mean. Maybe taking the dog, too." At this point, he feels curiously removed from the whole saga of Isa and Lew, like he's describing the plot of a movie he watched once.
"But don't worry," -- because Jude doesn't look worried about it in the least, but what does Near know? -- "I made it up to him when I got back."
He hefts himself into a chair at a diagonal from the sofa; it's all concave plastic and so spindle-legged it looks like it could buckle beneath the weight of any substantive sitter but somehow manages to maintain its dignity as Near settles with his own legs open, leaned forward, somewhere between at-home casual and an animal with no real defenses trying to make itself look bigger than it is.
He follows Jude's line of sight to the hallway. "That wasn't my dog," he says.
Not technically.
"I don't like dogs."
He doesn't.
"I stole her, put her in the back of a car, and drove across state lines with her because I was pissed off that her worthless junkie owner" -- his boyfriend, sort of, but he decides to skip that part -- "was being a worthless junkie. Which was stupid, I know. Thinking he'd be anything else, I mean. Maybe taking the dog, too." At this point, he feels curiously removed from the whole saga of Isa and Lew, like he's describing the plot of a movie he watched once.
"But don't worry," -- because Jude doesn't look worried about it in the least, but what does Near know? -- "I made it up to him when I got back."