Six Fridays

At the Sunday market I bought a blue plate with a painted lemon in the centre. I had promised Felix I would buy something neither of us needed. The plate fulfilled the promise and was too large for the shelf above my sink.

“We’ll have to eat from it,” he said.

“That’s an outrageous suggestion.”

He carried it home in both hands, declining the paper the seller offered. Every few steps I checked that his fingers were still secure around the rim. He noticed and began holding it at a different angle each time I looked, just to make me reach for it.

“You’re worse than your father with the radio,” I told him.

“My father got a shelf out of it. You got a plate.”

We were outside my shop when an email arrived from Copenhagen. The placement office had sent a provisional schedule for my first month: orientation, supervised sessions in the conservation room, two days for work that would be assigned when I arrived. None of it was news. Seeing hours written beside the work made the departure feel less like a place on a map and more like a room I would enter without Felix.

“Is it all right?” he asked.

“Yes. They have finally sent the rota.”

“You want to read it now?”

“I already am.”

He held the plate while I scrolled through the rest. The first free weekend fell earlier than I had hoped. There was a cheap flight that would bring him on Friday evening and take him back late Sunday. I opened the calendar and showed him.

“Could you come then? The second weekend. I could show you where I’m working.”

He did not give me the quick yes I had grown used to hearing before he checked his own plans.

“That’s when the reading tables go in,” he said. “They fixed the date yesterday. I told them I’d be there while they set up the room. I can’t give the weekend away.”

“They could manage without you after they’re delivered.”

“They probably could. I said I’d be there.”

It was a promise to a client. I would have defended a promise of my own with the same sentence. I still wanted him to see that the first month would be strange, and that his being there early mattered to me.

“I asked because I want you with me before the place becomes ordinary,” I said.

“I want to see it before that happens too. Can you have me the following weekend?”

“I don’t know yet. The rota only shows the first two.”

“Then we don’t have a date. I won’t pretend we do.”

I hated how reasonable he sounded, and then I hated that I wanted him to abandon a promise because I was frightened. I took the plate from him. Its smooth weight gave my hands something to do.

“For a moment,” I said, “I thought if you came at the beginning, we would be able to keep this.”

“We could have a lovely two days and still have to find out how to live the other six months.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t say no to coming. I said no to that weekend.”

We stood under my shop sign while two people passed between us and the door. I had a key in my palm. I wanted to take him upstairs and forget the dates until morning. I also wanted him to know that I had heard the difference between his two answers, even though the first had hurt.

“Come in,” I said. “I haven’t got anywhere to put the plate.”

He looked at me. “Are we going to spend the afternoon finding a shelf?”

“No. We can leave it on the table and be disappointed for a while.”

“I’d like that better.”

· · ·Scene break

I made tea and set the lemon plate between us. It was possible to be disappointed without making either of us the villain. That was a thought I had understood in the workshop on Sunday morning. It was harder with six Fridays left before a flight.

“What does your month look like?” I asked.

“The library tables will keep me busy through August. The sign bracket next week, between table days. Dad is going to visit his sister for a few days in August. He arranged the train with her. He’ll tell me when he wants a lift to the station.”

I nodded. His father’s visit was his own plan. Felix did not need to stay in London as a guard, and he did not need to travel to Copenhagen to prove he could leave.

“I keep thinking of your time as the part of mine I haven’t marked out yet,” I said. “Then you tell me what you’re doing, and I feel as though you’ve moved it.”

“I used to leave it blank,” he said. “I can’t tell you every hour is yours now because you finally asked for me.”

“I haven’t asked for every hour.”

“No.” He rested a hand beside the plate. “You asked for one weekend. I would come if it were mine to give.”

There was no point in punishing him for the answer. There was also no point in pretending it did not ache. I put my hand over his.

“I want you to visit,” I said. “I don’t need it to be the first weekend. When I know the next rota, can we choose one together?”

“Yes. I’d like to see the room you keep talking about. And whatever you eat when I’m not there to overcook onions.”

“You won’t be able to choose the plate.”

“I’ll survive.”

He turned his hand beneath mine. The disappointment had not vanished; it had stopped filling every part of the afternoon. I took the placement letter from the shelf and laid it beside the plate. On the back of an old receipt I wrote six Fridays, one under another.

“What are those?” Felix asked.

“The ones before I leave. Not a demand. I want to remember that there are evenings we can spend together without using every one of them to prepare for being apart.”

He took the pen. On the first line he wrote today is Sunday. On the second he wrote buy another plate.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know. This is my counterproposal. We can go wherever we want on a Friday. We can also change our minds.”

“And the other four lines?”

“Leave them empty until we get there.”

I had wanted a schedule that would prove we had enough. His ridiculous list gave me something else: a man willing to make room for pleasure in weeks that could easily become a rehearsal for loss. I took the pen and wrote no work talk after supper beside one Friday. He crossed out no and wrote unless one of us wants to tell a story.

“That is very like you,” I said.

“Is it a problem?”

“Not today.”

· · ·Scene break

That evening Felix cooked at my flat. He used the blue plate for bread and put the bowl of pears on the shelf where it could fit. We ate at the table I had cleared without ceremony. When I finished my tea, he took the cup from my hand and set it beside his.

“I’d like to kiss you,” he said. “I don’t want it to be the thing we do so we don’t have to finish talking.”

“We finished talking. We didn’t solve six months.”

“No.”

“Come here.”

He did. I unbuttoned the coat he had worn all afternoon and laid it over the chair. His shirt was warm beneath it. I had touched him at his workshop, in his flat, on the street, and each place had taught my hands something different. Tonight I wanted the part of him that had sat beside me through disappointment without asking me to call it gratitude.

He kissed me slowly. When he stopped to look at me, I moved his hand from my waist to the middle of my back and held it there. He waited; I drew him close again. There was no need to hurry toward a conclusion because the evening belonged to us even if we stayed in the kitchen.

“Stay,” I said. “I want you to.”

“I want to stay. Are you sure?”

“I am.”

He touched his forehead to mine. For a little while we stood still enough to hear the street below and the small settling noises of my shop. Then we turned off the light and went through to the bedroom together.

In the morning the receipt lay under the lemon plate, its remaining lines blank. I was glad we had not filled them. There was room on them for whatever we would choose next.