I walked in and told the guard I was there to see Mike. The guard called up to Mike to confirm that. The guard came around the desk and keyed me up. He was a large black man in an orange jacket and white cap. It had a very doorman look, but somehow, it seemed more like a military uniform on him. His movements were tight and orderly with no showiness. I couldn’t make out if he was a norm or not. On the one hand, it made sense for there to be a powerful door guardian. On the other hand, they were more likely to get hit with a terrorist attack from humans than anything else. It would be very bad news if anyone but another human hurt him in the process of trying to stop him.

When I got to Mike’s door, I had to knock. He opened the door, while talking into his work headset, and he motioned me into his apartment. I waved and mouthed “Hi.” He waved back in a distracted sort of way that made think he was not happy to see me. I pulled out a beer and held it out to him. He declined it with a shake of his head. Shrugging off his refusal, I walked into the kitchen to put the rest of the beer in the fridge.

In the living room, his couch was covered in detritus again. Since he didn’t wear pants or underwear the man must have had a hundred T-shirts to make that much mess. Clean clothes, books, and random electronics covered the living room. The only thing that approached being neat was the upside down Frisbee where he kept his grinder, lighter, baggie, and the other objects of his habit. Mike had gone back into his bedroom. I could hear him talking on his phone. I sipped my beer, wondering if I was embarrassing myself. Staring at my phone was almost enough to keep me distracted while I waited for him to come out. I started to wonder if he was going to come out. Maybe he had been too polite to tell me to go away, and he didn’t want me there. By the time I finished my first beer, I was pretty sure I was a desperate moron, and he hated me and would never come out of his room.

Obviously, since I was feeling like that, I needed another beer stat. I went back into the kitchen. The sink was filled with dishes again, and the coffee pot was off and still full of coffee. Not really knowing what else to do with myself, I went to work cleaning. It was comforting to clean someone else’s space. If I had to clean my own kitchen, I would have wanted to be doing basically anything else. Cleaning someone’s stuff didn’t seem like work. There was enough to do that I’d downed my second beer about the time I was finished. His floor still could have used a mopping, his trash needed to be taken out, and his fridge could have been cleaned, but I didn’t know him well enough to get into all that.

After grabbing my third beer, I was feeling pretty brave and ventured into the living room again. Mike was still in his room. Not knowing what else to do, but feeling a bit buzzed, I wandered into his room and stood in the doorway. He didn’t notice me, not at all. He was too busy staring at his two monitors and talking into his headset at an alarming rate. It didn’t look like he was going to finish anytime soon.

His giant bed looked comfortable, and it had been a long day. Filled with the false bravado that comes in a bottle, I went and laid down on his bed. I lay on the sheet, sprawled out holding a beer and stared at the ceiling. I very intentionally did not look at Mike for fear I would lose my nerve. His bed was comfortable, and his ceiling was at least not my ceiling. The smell of man and horse from his bed was intense, almost overpowering. He must have heard me come in. He could have sensed me some other way. I had no idea what, if any, extra senses he may have had as a centaur. I couldn’t even remember if horses were particularly good at anything. I had a vague notion they could see okay. For a moment I wondered if I should research horses to learn more about him. It would probably be insulting to tell him that. Pete would probably find it hilarious if I made a brief study of wolves. Pete’s face flashed before my eyes, and I winced a bit at the twinge of guilt that flashed through my brain. Somehow I figured he probably wouldn’t be thrilled with the idea of me laying on another man’s bed, even if the man wasn’t in it.