A Full Evening

Rafi agreed to take the shop on Monday, then spent twenty minutes telling me which parts of it she would not change.

I liked her better for the parts she wanted to change. She would move the press nearer the window and put the fitting-room mirror on the wall opposite. She had already drawn the new arrangement on the back of my rent figures.

“You don’t have to preserve me in here,” I said.

“I wasn’t planning to.” She put the pencil down. “The clients you’ve promised to finish before you leave are yours. The ones who come in after August will need to know whose hands are on their clothes.”

I had been so intent on keeping my lease that I had almost offered her a room without a name of her own. We amended the agreement before either of us signed it.

When Felix asked what I wanted to do to celebrate, I told him I was going to sleep. He sent back a photograph of the shelf he had finally made for his father’s radio. The radio was still at the repair shop, so his father had put the vase there while he waited for it.

He approves of the shelf, Felix wrote. He approves less of my admission that I measured the wall twice.

You only measured twice?

On Thursday Felix asked me to come to his flat on Friday evening. He said he would cook. He also said he had work Saturday morning and did not want me to think an invitation meant he expected me to stay the night. I looked at the message for a long time before I answered.

I have a client at nine on Saturday. I would like to stay if you would like me there. I can leave in time for work.

He replied after seven minutes. I knew he had been at his bench, because he never picked up his phone with glue on his hands.

I would like you here. We can decide the rest when you’re here.

I could have made that sentence mean anything I wanted. For once I let it mean exactly what it said.

· · ·Scene break

His flat had a kitchen large enough for one cook and one person who knew she ought to stay out of the way. I was neither. Felix was cutting tomatoes at the counter when I arrived. He kissed me at the door, a brief welcome that made me want to stay there with my bag still on my shoulder.

“You’re early,” he said.

“You let me in.”

“I was hoping you would come before the onions burned.”

“The onions look fine.”

“Then you can stay.”

I set my bag down. There was a basket for shoes by the door. His were lined up inside it except for a pair of work boots, which stood where he had stepped out of them. I had known him through his workshop and my shop, in rooms where every object had a task. Here a paperback lay face down on the sofa and a basil plant occupied the best light in the window. It was taller than I expected. He had kept something alive without asking my advice about it.

“What’s funny?” he asked.

“Your plant. I thought it would be dead by now.”

“You’ve never been here long enough to meet it.”

He said it lightly. The truth of it stayed with me. I had come to borrow a saw once and had stood in the doorway while he fetched it. I knew how to find him at work at any hour; I did not know which mug he chose when nobody else was there.

I took the onions off the heat while he fetched plates. He did not tell me where the plates were; I opened the wrong cupboard first and found three chipped bowls instead. One had a blue line running through the glaze.

“That one’s mine,” he said. “I broke it when I moved in. My father said I could throw it away if I wanted to.”

“And you didn’t.”

“I like the way it fits my hand.”

I turned the bowl over. He had joined it neatly enough that it could hold dry fruit, though not soup. For years I had assumed the worst thing Felix could do to a broken object was discard it. He had chosen what to keep by what he loved using, not by what he could repair.

We ate on the sofa because the table was covered with a board he had brought home to draw on. I could see the pencilled measurements and no finished shape yet. He told me about the commission he hoped to win: a library wanted reading tables for its new room, and the work would pay enough for him to refuse small favours for a while. I told him about Rafi wanting her name on the shop window while I was gone. He approved so quickly that I asked why.

“You said you wanted to come home to a shop,” he said. “You didn’t say it had to stop belonging to anyone else for six months.”

“I needed her to point that out to me.”

“You listened.”

He had put his empty plate on the floor. I leaned across to set mine beside it, and he caught my wrist just above the cuff. He waited until I looked at him.

“I want to kiss you,” he said.

“I have been trying to sit still through supper.”

“You could have said.”

“You were telling me about tables.”

“I can tell you the rest later.”

I moved closer. His mouth was warm from the food. He let go of my wrist to put his hand against my cheek, and I felt the care of that change all the way down my body. In the shop I had known how his hands steadied a heavy rail. Here he touched me as though he wanted to learn what I liked, not prove he already knew.

When I drew back, he did too. Neither of us apologised for needing air.

“Do you want to go to bed?” I asked.

“Yes. Do you?”

“Yes. I want to know I can change my mind after we’ve gone in.”

“You can. At any point.”

“So can you.”

His expression softened at being offered the same freedom. I had known Felix long enough to notice when he was tired and very little practice asking what desire cost him. Tonight he wanted me. He wanted to be here, in his own home, without owing me an easy version of himself.

He turned off the kitchen light and took my hand. At the bedroom door he paused. I stepped through first. The rest of the evening belonged to us, without a story we had to give anybody else.

· · ·Scene break

My alarm sounded at seven on Saturday. Felix reached over me to silence it, then remembered it was mine and withdrew his hand.

“You have the wedding dress at nine,” he said.

“I do.”

“I’ll walk you to the bus stop.”

“You don’t have to get up.”

“I know. I’d like to.”

In his kitchen I found the blue-lined bowl full of pears. He gave me one to take to work and kept one for himself. We ate them standing by the window while the street began to fill with delivery vans. It was so ordinary I had to look at him twice to be certain last night had happened. He caught me at it and smiled, without making me explain.

At the stop I told him I would come back after I closed the shop, if he was free.

“I have the library drawings to finish. I’ll be here by six,” he said. “You don’t have to come because you said you would this morning.”

“I know. I want to.”

The bus took me away before I could make another promise. All day I fitted the dress, packed two finished coats and found one more thing to tell Rafi about the press. At five thirty I washed my hands, turned off my own light and went back to Felix.

He opened the door with pencil dust on his sleeve. The unfinished board still covered the table. He had not put his work away to prove I mattered; he made room for my bag beside it.

“You’re here,” he said.

“I said I would be.”

“I know.” He took the pear I had bought him from my hand. “I liked seeing you choose it anyway.”

I kissed him in the doorway. Then I let him finish the line he had been drawing, and sat with him while the light went out beyond the basil plant.