I’m making coffee, and it should be a completely normal morning. Pandora is still asleep, Mr. Whiskers is sitting outside the bedroom complaining like he hasn’t eaten since the Eisenhower administration, and John Mercer is nowhere to be seen. None of this should bother me. Pandora occasionally sleeps late, Mr. Whiskers considers an empty section of his food bowl a humanitarian crisis, and John is perfectly capable of leaving the apartment without filing an itinerary with me. Still, something feels off. When I walked into the living room, John’s backpack was sitting beside the front door even though John himself was gone.
I pour my coffee and stare at the backpack. Obviously, there are reasonable explanations. Maybe John went downstairs for something. Maybe he went to his car. Maybe he forgot the backpack. Those are all considerably more likely than whatever my brain is preparing to suggest, which is precisely why I immediately start examining the situation like I’ve arrived at a crime scene.
Then I notice Pandora’s phone on the coffee table.
It’s on silent.
That shouldn’t mean anything. People put their phones on silent all the time. I put mine on silent whenever I don’t want anyone calling me, which, now that I think about it, is practically the definition of why phones have a silent setting. But Pandora usually leaves hers on vibrate. More importantly, why is her phone in the living room if she’s asleep in the bedroom?
I look at John’s backpack again.
Then Pandora’s phone.
Then the backpack.
Something happened here.
Mr. Whiskers strolls into the living room and sits beside the backpack.
Great. Now there’s a witness.
“Do you know something?” I ask him.
Mr. Whiskers looks at me, looks at the backpack, and begins licking his shoulder.
That is not a denial.
I remember something from last night. Pandora and John were talking quietly in the kitchen while I was looking for something to eat. I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time because people are allowed to have conversations without inviting me, despite how suspicious that policy now seems. When I walked into the kitchen, however, they stopped talking.
At least, I think they stopped talking.
Maybe they had simply finished talking.
No. They stopped.
I remember John looking at Pandora, Pandora looking at John, and then both of them looking at me. John asked whether I had found the crackers I was looking for. Pandora smiled. I said yes. At the time, that seemed like an entirely normal interaction.
It no longer seems normal.
They were coordinating something.
I take my coffee to the couch and begin reconstructing the previous evening. John had been checking his phone more than usual. Pandora disappeared into the home office for about twenty minutes. Later, I found the two of them in the kitchen. Then John vanished sometime during the night while leaving his backpack behind. Now Pandora is sleeping unusually late and her phone is sitting on silent in the living room.
Individually, these facts mean absolutely nothing.
Together, they mean slightly more than absolutely nothing.
Which is enough for me.
Mr. Whiskers jumps onto the couch beside me and stares toward the bedroom.
“You noticed it too.”
He yawns.
Exactly.
I’m beginning to think Pandora and John were working on something together last night, and whatever it was, they deliberately kept me out of it. Maybe Pandora needed John’s help with something. That would be reasonable. Maybe John needed Pandora’s help. Also reasonable. Maybe they were planning something that involved me.
Less reasonable.
Much more interesting.
I start thinking about the possibilities. My birthday isn’t coming up. There’s no anniversary I’ve forgotten, unless there is, in which case I have a considerably larger problem. Nobody has mentioned a trip. Nothing in the apartment is broken badly enough to require a secret committee. So what exactly requires whispered conversations, abandoned backpacks, silent phones, and suspicious kitchen meetings?
Then I notice a folded piece of paper sticking halfway out from underneath John’s backpack.
There it is.
Evidence.
I don’t touch it because I have principles. Also because if I touch it and John catches me, I’ll have to explain why I was investigating a backpack before eight in the morning.
Instead, I lean sideways.
There are words written on the paper.
I lean farther.
Mr. Whiskers watches me.
“Don’t judge me.”
He absolutely judges me.
I can make out what looks like a list. There are several lines, maybe five or six, with something crossed out near the bottom. I can’t read the words from where I’m sitting, but lists are rarely innocent. Grocery lists are innocent. To-do lists can be innocent. Secret lists underneath abandoned backpacks following whispered midnight conversations are something else entirely.
That’s when Pandora walks into the living room.
I straighten so quickly I nearly spill my coffee.
She looks at me, then at Mr. Whiskers, then at John’s backpack.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
Pandora narrows her eyes.
I sip my coffee.
Mr. Whiskers abandons me immediately and walks over to her.
Traitor.
Pandora picks up her phone from the coffee table and checks it. “John texted?”
Interesting choice of words.
“You tell me.”
She looks at me again. “Why would I tell you if John texted my phone?”
A tactical mistake on my part.
Before I can recover, the front door opens and John walks in carrying a paper bag and a cardboard drink tray. He stops when he sees me sitting on the couch.
Pandora looks at John.
John looks at Pandora.
There it is again.
The look.
“I got it,” John says.
Pandora smiles. “Perfect.”
I slowly put down my coffee.
“What did you get?”
Neither of them answers immediately.
That’s all the confirmation I need.
“I knew it.”
John looks confused. “Knew what?”
“You two are working together.”
Pandora folds her arms. “Working together on what?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
John looks at Pandora. Pandora looks at John. Then they both start laughing, which is exactly what people do when their operation has been compromised and they’re desperately trying to maintain plausible deniability.
John sets the paper bag on the table and pulls out breakfast sandwiches.
Pandora reaches inside and takes one.
I stare at them.
John holds one toward me. “You want yours?”
I don’t take it.
“My what?”
“Your breakfast.”
Pandora is still smiling. “You complained yesterday that nobody ever brings you breakfast.”
I look at the bag.
Then at John.
Then at Pandora.
Then at the folded paper underneath John’s backpack.
John notices where I’m looking and picks it up.
It’s a breakfast order.
My name is on it.
Extra bacon.
For several seconds, nobody says anything.
Mr. Whiskers jumps onto the couch and sniffs the bag.
I take my sandwich.
“So,” Pandora says, “what exactly did you think we were doing?”
“Nothing.”
John grins. “You said we were working together.”
“I meant on breakfast.”
“You didn’t know about breakfast.”
“I suspected breakfast.”
Pandora laughs.
I unwrap my sandwich and retreat into the safest available position, which is eating something while refusing to elaborate.
Fine.
Maybe I got a little carried away.
Maybe Pandora’s phone was on silent because she forgot to take it to bed. Maybe John left his backpack because he walked out to get breakfast. Maybe their secret conversation last night was just Pandora giving him our orders so they could surprise me.
All perfectly reasonable explanations.
Still, I saw the way they looked at each other when John walked through that door.
And Mr. Whiskers has been staring at the breakfast bag for almost three minutes.
So I’m willing to admit that I may have misunderstood the situation.
But I’m keeping an eye on the cat.