The Workshop Door

I reached Felix’s workshop at eight twenty-eight. I had brought the placement letter because I was tired of letting it stand in the room as a thing neither of us could touch.

The street was quiet on Sunday morning. A delivery van had stopped outside the bakery; the driver waited for someone to lift the shutter. Felix’s workshop door was shut, but the light over his bench was on. I could have turned away and told him I needed another day. He had said I could take time. He had also said he would not keep living in the shape of an answer I never gave.

I knocked.

He opened before I had decided whether to knock again. He was wearing the old coat, buttoned correctly for once. A new board lay on the bench behind him. He had marked it with a pencil but not cut it.

“Morning,” he said.

“Morning.”

He moved back to let me in. There were two cups on the small table. I recognised the expensive coffee by the smell and went to the kettle for water instead. Neither of us made a joke about it.

I had thought all night about the years when I rang Felix after closing and asked whether he was still awake. Most evenings he was. Sometimes he came over. Sometimes he spoke to me while I finished a seam. I had treated the sound of his voice as a light left on in another room. I had never asked when he needed to turn it off.

Once, when he had finished a table he was proud of, he asked if I would come and see it before it went to its owner. I said I would after I finished a client’s dress. The dress took longer than I expected. I remembered the table only when he sent a picture of it already installed. He said he knew I was busy. I took that for forgiveness, though I had never apologised. I did not want to build a relationship in which he had to keep saying he knew I was busy.

“I have a client at ten,” he said. “We have time before that.”

“I know. I asked for eight thirty.”

“I wasn’t saying you have to hurry.”

I sat at the table. He took the other chair, leaving his coat on although the room was warm. I laid the letter between us. It named six months, a start date and a fee. It did not say anything about who I would be when I came home.

“You said last night that you wanted a relationship that would still exist when I left,” I said.

“I did.”

“I kept trying to work out how much time you meant.”

“I don’t know yet. I could tell you a number and discover neither of us can live by it.”

“That’s what frightened me,” I said. “Making a promise I can only keep while the shop and the workshop are five minutes apart.”

He reached for the letter, stopped and looked at me. I nodded. He picked it up, read the dates without pretending to know the work described beneath them, and set it down again.

“Tell me the answer you came to give,” he said.

“I want to be with you,” I said. “I am going to Copenhagen. I want us to be together while I’m there, if you still want that knowing I can’t promise to be easy to reach every evening.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he looked like someone who had received good news and knew it came with work.

“I want it,” he said. “I’d rather know which evenings you can reach me than have you say you’ll call whenever you can and then wonder whether I missed my chance.”

“I can do that.”

“I can say when I need to finish a job. Or when I want to see my father without holding a phone in my hand.”

“You should.”

“I will. I need you to believe me when I do.”

That was harder to promise than a weekly call. If Felix said no on a bad day, I had to hear it without finding a way around it. I looked at the scar on his forearm and remembered how long it had taken me to ask what he wanted from a kiss.

“I’ll try,” I said. “If I act hurt instead, tell me.”

“I can tell you. I won’t be a man who sends a complaint after three months and calls it patience.”

I laughed. “Good. I couldn’t return that letter.”

The smile we shared was careful, real. I had imagined that an answer would make us familiar again. It made me more aware of him: the hollow at the base of his throat above the collar of his shirt, the place where he had put the pencil down so that he could give me his whole attention. We had begun something; we had not yet learned how to stand inside it.

I opened my notebook to a blank page. “Before I go, I can manage Thursday evenings. Not every Thursday; Rafi may need me at the shop while we hand over. We can choose the weeks now, then change them when we need to.”

“Thursday is the night my father usually wants supper. I can see him earlier. Or we could try Friday.”

“Friday. I didn’t know you had kept Thursdays for him.”

“You weren’t required to know. I was required to say.”

I wrote Friday, ask first and turned the notebook toward him. He made a face.

“That sounds like the label on a drawer.”

“Then give me a better one.”

“Friday, if we’re both free.”

I crossed it out and wrote his version. I could not plan six months in one sitting. I could offer a first Friday and ask again after it.

“What about visits?” I asked.

“One while you’re there, if we can each afford it. We can look at dates after you have your rota. I won’t say I’ll fly every month just to feel generous this morning.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to.”

“I know. I’m trying to tell you where the limits are before you have to discover them by being disappointed.”

I put down the pen. “I’m still going to be disappointed sometimes. So are you.”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t make this the wrong choice.”

“No.”

For the first time since I came in, he reached across the table. He stopped a few inches from my hand. I met him there. We held on while the van outside started and pulled away.

“Can I tell my father?” he asked.

“That we’re together? Yes. What would you say?”

“I’d say we’re seeing each other and that you’re taking the placement. He already knows about the second part.”

“And Rafi will learn soon enough when she comes to work under a rail you fixed.”

“She’s good for the shop?”

“She hasn’t said yes. She’ll tell me tomorrow.”

“I hope she does.”

The workbench clock reached nine. I had half an hour before I needed to leave him to his client. He stood to take off his coat and hung it on the peg. Then he returned to the table rather than the bench. The choice was so small I might once have missed it.

“Do you want to kiss me?” I asked.

“Very much. Do you?”

“Yes.”

He came around the table. We had both stood up by then. He put a hand at my waist, waited until I stepped into him and kissed me without the fear of asking a question by doing it. It was not less intense for having an answer. I could feel his restraint and my own in the way we stopped long enough to look at each other, then chose to begin again.

When we separated, his client had not arrived. The pencil still lay untouched beside the board.

“I’ll let you work,” I said.

“I want to take you to the door.”

“You can.”

He walked with me to the pavement. I had the placement letter under my arm and a plan with only one Friday written on it. It did not look like enough for the next six months. It was more honest than the unlimited promises we had been living on.

At the corner I turned back. Felix was still outside the workshop, waiting for me to be out of sight. I lifted my hand. He lifted his. Then he went inside before I had gone. I liked that he had work he wanted to get back to. I went toward mine.