The Wrong Hour

By the third week I had learned which drawer held the soft weights and which tram was full of children at eight in the morning. I was learning a third thing less quickly: a day could be good without Felix hearing about it before I slept.

The jacket had gone back into its box with my examination record. Mette had given me a silk scarf with a worn edge and asked for a treatment proposal, not a treatment. I spent two mornings measuring loss and one afternoon discovering I had used the wrong light to read a dark mend. Nothing had been damaged. I had to write that I had changed my assessment, and Mette signed her name beneath mine.

“You can be wrong here,” she said. “The record has to show how you became right.”

I liked her for that. I liked the work even when I walked home too tired to describe it.

On Wednesday Felix and I had agreed to call at nine. I bought fish and bread on my way back, ate standing in the little kitchen, and put on the coat whose cuff I had promised to show him how to mend. He had sent a photograph of his attempt: an uneven line of stitches that held. I wrote, You have committed a useful crime against elegance.

At nine the phone was quiet. I read. At nine fifteen I sent a message asking if he was still at the workshop. At nine forty I called once and let it ring out. I knew he had been finishing the florist’s sign. I knew a paid job could take longer than a drawing. Neither fact made the waiting pleasant.

I had not spent the whole day waiting for him. A colleague at the studio had taken me to a small café after work. We had argued happily about whether the scarf needed more support at its narrow end and agreed to bring the question to Mette in the morning. On the way home I had bought a postcard with a blue tram on it for Felix’s father. I wanted to tell Felix about the argument, the postcard and a man on the tram who had been carrying a chair upside down. They were the minor things that made a day mine. At ten I grew angry that I had arranged them in my head for him and he wasn’t there to receive them. I took the postcard from my bag and wrote to his father instead. I could share one part of my day without asking his son to account for the rest.

At ten past ten his name appeared. I let it ring twice, which was a small unkindness I did not have to commit, and answered.

“Nina. I’m sorry. I lost track of the hour at the florist’s. The bracket was sound, but the old fixing behind the sign wasn’t. I should have stopped and called.”

I sat on the bed. “I was here at nine.”

“I know.”

“When I didn’t hear from you, I wondered if something had happened to your father.”

“He’s well. I should have sent a message before I went up the ladder.”

The apology was plain. I wanted to make the evening larger than it had been so he would understand it. I also wanted to say it was nothing, which would have spared him and left me alone with it.

“I don’t need a detailed account of every hour,” I said. “I need to know if our hour has gone. I made the time for you.”

“I know you did. I didn’t keep mine.”

“Are you home?”

“On my way. I’m outside the shop.”

“Then go home. It’s late for both of us.”

“Can I call tomorrow after supper?”

“Tomorrow I have a session that runs late. I’ll tell you when I’m back.”

“All right.”

He did not ask me to declare us repaired before either of us had changed anything. I slept badly anyway.

· · ·Scene break

The next morning Mette and I set the scarf beneath a sheet of protective fabric and compared the photograph I had taken in the wrong light with a new one. The dark mend had not vanished; the light had made it appear part of the ground. I wrote a correction in the record. It mattered that the first photograph stayed there. A person looking at only the second would never know why I had proposed the wrong treatment.

At lunch I went outside, where a woman was attempting to fold an umbrella against the wind. I called Felix.

“I said I would tell you when I got back tonight,” I began. “This isn’t that call.”

“I thought it might not be.”

“I don’t want to be the person who measures one missed hour against every good one. I also don’t want you to think an apology means I didn’t mind.”

“I don’t. I put the sign up before I left. I told the florist I needed to go at nine. Then I stayed because the fitting took longer. Next time I will stop and tell her. If I can’t leave, I’ll send you a message before the time we chose. I have put the time where I can see it at work.”

“You sound as though you’ve given yourself homework.”

“I have. It was an appointment with you. I treated it as something I could remember while doing another thing.”

His answer took the weight off the wrong question. I had been wondering whether he wanted me enough to stop working. He had told me what he would do while continuing to want the work.

“I will be home about eight tomorrow,” I said. “I want to tell you about the scarf. And I want to hear about the fixing behind the sign.”

“I would like that. Did you eat last night?”

“Fish and bread. You can’t make up an hour by counting my meals.”

“No. I was interested.”

I told him I had, and we both laughed. The woman with the umbrella finally caught the strap around it and looked at me with the fierce pride of someone who had finished a difficult job in public.

· · ·Scene break

Friday’s call began at eight. Felix rang from his kitchen; I heard a saucepan lid put down. He had closed the workshop and gone home before he cooked.

He asked to see the cuff. I propped my phone against a mug and showed him how I had turned the frayed edge under without pretending it was new. Then he held his own cuff near his camera. The stitches were still crooked.

“It holds,” I said. “You didn’t need me to do it for you.”

“I did need you to show me where to put the needle. There is a difference.”

He told me the florist had paid the full quote and sent him home with a stem of something that had refused to grow in her shop. He had planted it beside his basil. I told him about the dark mend and the record that held both my error and its correction. When the call came to its end, I did not ask him to promise never to miss another. I asked what hour would suit us next week.

He checked his work list. I checked mine. We chose one and wrote it down. The old ease had been the belief that we could find each other whenever we wanted. The newer thing took a little more effort and gave me a place to bring my whole day.