Silas stayed standing for seven minutes.
I knew because I watched the cheap clock above the stove and refused to tell him to sit.
He knew because he was Silas.
Neither of us mentioned it.
Snow melted from his coat onto the floor in a small dark patch. My apartment had no staff to notice, no warming system to compensate, no discreet machine to adjust humidity because a billionaire was dripping on rental wood.
"Your coat," I said.
He looked down as if he had forgotten he owned a body.
"May I take it off?"
The question should not have mattered.
It did.
"You may."
He removed it slowly and held it in one hand.
There was nowhere elegant to put it.
I pointed to the back of the chair.
He hung it there with the seriousness of a man placing evidence before a court.
The chair survived.
