Wednesday Off

At half past five on Wednesday, the rail above my cutting table came away from the wall with six winter coats on it.

I caught one coat and watched the others fold onto the floor. A length of plaster followed. Under it the old brick showed through, white with dust, and the screws hung from the rail as neatly as if they had been put there for display.

I had promised the coats to their owners by Friday. More urgently, I had to clear the table for the woman who was coming to look at the shop the next morning. If she agreed to work here while I was away, I could keep the lease. If she didn’t, I would have to find someone else before I left.

Felix had a drill, a box of fixings, and a habit of answering his phone before it rang twice. I had his number open before I remembered what he had told me at my door: one evening this week without anybody needing something.

I put the phone face down.

There were other walls. I shifted the coats one at a time to the fitting room, where the rail was fixed to timber I trusted because I had put it up myself. One sleeve dragged through the dust. I brushed it clean, checked the lining, and counted again. Six coats. All accounted for. The broken rail could wait until someone who knew the wall could look at it. Nothing would be gained by a second accident tonight.

At six, the woman due to see the shop called. Her name was Rafi, and she had spent nine years cutting clothes for a department store that called each alteration a personal service and paid her as though she did it with her eyes shut. She wanted my table and access to the fitting room. I wanted half the rent covered. It was possible for both of us to get what we needed, provided the room did not look as though it had tried to come apart.

“Does the ceiling do that too?” she asked when I told her about the rail.

“Only the wall.”

“I ask because I have a ceiling that does.” She paused. “I can still come in the morning. Don’t fix a wall at midnight to impress me. I need to know what I’d be taking on.”

It was a more useful kindness than an offer to help.

I took the loose screws out and laid them on the sill. My phone was beside them. Felix had not written. He had no reason to. I felt a small, unreasonable pinch of disappointment at the sight of the blank screen.

I had asked him to tell me when he had time. I had meant it when I said it. Apparently meaning something did not make me good at waiting for its consequences.

The bell over the shop door rang just before seven. It was the florist from the corner, carrying a paper bag of pears and looking pleased with the weight of it.

“Your light was on,” she said. “You ate nearly all of these last time.”

“I remember sharing them.”

“So do I. Felix got one.”

I stood in front of the bare patch on the wall. The florist looked past my shoulder.

“That won’t hold a coat until you put something solid behind it.”

“I’ve moved them.”

“Good.” She put the bag down. “He isn’t coming tonight, then?”

For a moment I was annoyed that she knew which person I would have called. Then I remembered that I knew whom she would have called about her warped door.

“He has the evening to himself,” I said.

“I’m glad somebody does. I shut at six on Tuesdays. It took me twelve years to learn that a flower will live until Wednesday without me.”

She left the pears and went home. I washed one and ate it standing at the table, juice on the back of my thumb. It tasted of late summer, which felt like an argument with the rain outside.

By eight the shop was orderly again. I spread a dust sheet over the work nearest the wall, wrote a note for Rafi about the repair and made a list of the equipment she could use. I did not include my favourite shears. She would have her own. I tried to picture another person at my table, choosing where to stand, changing the height of my lamp. The placement had been a wish for so long that its ordinary costs kept catching me unprepared.

At nine I went upstairs and found one of Felix’s messages on my phone.

I said I’d tell you when I had time. Tomorrow, if you want it. Eight thirty before I open the workshop?

I sat down on the top stair. He had left me the night he asked for. He had also come back when he said he would. The two things belonged together, and until tonight I had thought they were rivals.

Yes. Coffee?

I’ll make it. You may tell me if it’s bad.

I have plenty of evidence.

Three dots appeared, vanished, returned.

Tomorrow, Nina.

I went to bed with the phone face down again. The screen could tell me no more than he already had.

· · ·Scene break

Felix opened the workshop door at eight twenty-eight. He had rolled up his sleeves, and a pale line of sawdust crossed one forearm. His coat, with its badly aligned buttons, hung on the peg behind him.

“You got here early,” he said.

“You opened early.”

“I heard you outside.”

There was a small table between his workbench and the window, the sort he made from the sound pieces left after a larger job. He had set out two cups. Usually I would have walked past them and inspected whatever was on the bench, then made some remark about the way he had neglected to eat. This morning I sat at the table he had cleared for us.

The coffee was bad. He knew it from my face before I said a word.

“I’m keeping the beans,” he said. “They were expensive.”

“You can keep them. You don’t have to make me drink them.”

He exchanged my cup for water without making a joke about my standards. I watched his hands. Those hands had held mine in the square less than two nights ago. I had spent half of yesterday trying to remember whether his thumb had moved over my knuckles because he meant it to, or because the ground had been uneven.

“How was your night?” I asked.

“Quiet. I made supper and left the workshop at six.”

“Did you sleep?”

“Eventually.”

“You’re going to claim the quiet was good for you.”

“It was. I still wanted to see you.”

I looked at the water rather than him. “There was a small disaster at the shop. A rail pulled out. I almost called.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No. The coats are safe. The wall is not.”

“I can look at it after my morning job.”

“You can if you want the work. I’ll pay you for the fix. I don’t want it as a favour I get because I know how to find you.”

He gave me an astonished look. “Nina, I can mend a rail without invoicing you.”

“You can. I also run a shop. You have work to finish before your own supper, and I’m asking you to take a job.”

He sat opposite me. The table was just narrow enough that his knees touched mine if either of us stopped being careful. He stayed where he was.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll look. If the wall needs more than a new fixing, I’ll tell you before I do anything.”

“All right.”

“But I would have come last night if it had been an emergency.”

“I know. That wasn’t the part I had to learn.”

He could have asked me to explain. Instead he waited, which was what had made it so difficult to leave him in the first place.

“I wanted to call because I missed you,” I said. “The rail gave me a reason.”

His gaze went to my hands on the table. “You didn’t need a reason for that. You could have said you missed me.”

“On your one evening alone?”

“You could have said it today.”

“I am.”

The words moved through the small room. He set his hand on the table, palm up, close to mine but not under it. I laid my fingers across his. The touch was easier to choose here, in full daylight, with nothing to blame on the rain.

“Rafi is coming to look at the shop at ten,” I said. “She may take it while I’m away.”

“Does she seem good?”

“She told me not to patch the wall before she saw it.”

“Then she knows what a place costs.”

I laughed. “You like her better than I do already.”

“I don’t know her.” He turned his hand, closing it gently around mine. “I know you want the shop to be here when you get back.”

He saw what I had been afraid to say: the trip was a choice I wanted and a departure that frightened me. He had made room for both facts without asking me to be less pleased.

The clock by the door struck the half hour. Felix had a client due at nine. I stood; he did too, reluctantly enough that I felt it in my own body.

“When are you free after the rail?” I asked.

“Friday evening.”

“I might be, if you ask me.”

“Nina, will you have supper with me on Friday? Just the two of us. No broken thing to mend.”

“Yes.”

His smile came slowly. I had seen it for years, and had never before caused it by saying yes to the right question.

He let me go at the door. I took two steps into the street, then turned back.

“I’ll still have a shop on Saturday,” I told him. “You can bring the coat if the hem gives way again.”

“I’m hoping for a better reason to see you before then.”

He went inside before I found one.