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,…