Lena answered on the second ring.
"I heard it in the way you called," she said. "What happened."
"Can I come over," Damian said.
A pause. One second. Less.
"Yes," she said. "I'll put the kettle on."
Lena's apartment was on the fourth floor of a building that smelled like old carpets and someone's persistent cooking. She'd lived there for six years and had, in that time, accumulated the specific clutter of a person who lived fully in a space without worrying about what it looked like — books everywhere, two mismatched lamps, a kitchen table that served as a desk that served as a surface for whatever needed to be set down.
She opened the door before he knocked.
Looked at him.
"Sit down," she said.
He sat at the kitchen table.
She made tea without asking what kind and put it in front of him and sat across from him with her own cup and waited.
He told her.
