The Warm Window

Keir cleaned his house until it no longer looked like his house, then put three things back where they had been.

The blue cup returned to the windowsill. The narrow lamp went back on the floor beside his chair. The bent spoon stayed on the table because he liked it and was forty-one years old and apparently needed to remind himself that a woman might survive evidence of his preferences.

Blythe arrived carrying pears.

“I considered mustard,” she said.

He kissed her before taking the parcel. She laughed against his mouth and held the pears out of danger.

“You will bruise them.”

“I am making a difficult choice.”

“Put them down first.”

He did. Then he kissed her properly, with the door closed and no evening audience walking past. She came nearer without hesitation, her cold hands settling at the back of his neck. He had imagined this enough times that the reality ought to have felt familiar. It did not. Her presence in his own hall was startling, and better than he had prepared for.

When they parted, she kept her hand on his chest.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

“For supper?”

She looked at him until he stopped smiling.

“For supper too.”

He took her coat.

They ate at the small table under the window. He had made a stew, which he admitted might be the only thing he could reliably cook. Blythe ate it with the seriousness of someone evaluating a useful new fact.

“Good,” she said.

“You sound relieved.”

“I had prepared to be tactful. It isn’t my best work.”

He told her she could save it for his furniture.

After supper she walked around the room, touching nothing without asking but looking at everything. The shelves of ordinary lamp parts, the unfinished handle, a stack of paper weighed down by a stone. She stopped at a clear glass bird with no tail.

“Did it break?”

“It never acquired one.”

“Why?”

“I couldn’t make a tail I liked. Eventually I discovered I liked the bird better than the idea of finishing it.”

She turned it in the lamplight.

“I understand that,” she said.

He was beginning to believe she did.

His evening course came next. Hers too. They had arranged it plainly in advance: supper early, their separate circuits, then her return if she still wanted it. He disliked the parting, but the arrangement had a dignity he would not spoil by pretending their work had become foolish because they desired one another.

At the door he handed her coat back.

“You can change your mind,” he said.

“I know. You can too.”

“I won’t.”

“Neither will I. But it is good that we may.”

She kissed him and went to her garden.

Keir worked without rushing. The lost green turn left a gap, and he found he could shape the course around it if he stopped trying to imitate what had gone. That was not a cure. The old turn had been good. The new route was awkward and would remain awkward for a while.

He came home tired, content with some of the work and annoyed by the rest. He washed, changed his shirt and put the kettle on.

When Blythe knocked, he nearly spilled the water.

She wore the dark green dress again, the ribbon loose. Her hair was pinned less firmly than usual. She held the key to her house between two fingers.

She set it beside his on the hall table.

“I want to stay,” she said. “If the invitation still includes morning.”

“It does.”

“Then come here before I find something sensible to say.”

She reached for him, and he met her halfway.

· · ·Scene break

Later, the kettle had gone cold and neither of them cared.

They sat on the floor beside the low lamp because Blythe had admitted she wanted to see how its light moved over the ceiling. Keir leaned against the chair. She sat between his knees, her back resting against him, his arms around her. There was nothing difficult about the position except how much he liked it.

“This is a very good lamp,” she said.

“I thought we weren’t going to discuss my work.”

“I am admiring the ceiling.”

“My apologies to the lamp.”

She tilted her head back and he kissed her, an awkward angle that made them laugh. She turned in his arms, then settled facing him. The laughter softened into something quieter.

“Still yes?” he asked.

She put her forehead against his.

“Very much.”

They went upstairs without a performance of certainty. She asked him to slow once on the narrow landing because her skirt had caught against the rail. He stopped at once; she freed it, swore mildly at the wood and kissed him again before they moved.

In his room she stopped by the window. The last light from the street lay across her hands. Keir waited beside the door, suddenly uncertain what to do with the ease he had wanted so much.

Blythe turned.

“Come here.”

He did. She took his hand and set it at her waist, then rested hers against his chest. Through the cloth he could feel the warmth of her palm.

“You have gone very quiet,” she said.

“I don’t want to make a fool of myself.”

“That seems an unnecessarily late ambition.”

He laughed, and she kissed him before he could answer. Her hand moved to the back of his neck. He drew her close, slowly enough to feel her choose the distance with him, and the kiss became less careful. She met him with a certainty that made his own restraint seem suddenly less like courtesy than another place to hide.

When he drew back, she caught his sleeve.

“Stay near.”

He touched his forehead to hers. Her eyes were still closed. He had seen her hold a colour steady with absolute concentration; now the small crease between her brows had eased, and she was holding nothing except him.

“I am trying to believe this is happening,” he said.

She opened her eyes.

“Then look at me.”

He did. The street light reached only one side of her face. He could see the faint mark her hairpin had left near her temple, the smile she was refusing to make easier for him, the little quick breath before she kissed him again. None of it belonged to an idea of her. It was Blythe, impatient and tender and here.

He slid his hand across her back, bringing her nearer. She answered by settling against him, her fingers loosening in his sleeve. For a while neither spoke. When she finally leaned back, her expression had become so open that he felt the risk she was taking more clearly than he had at the garden threshold.

“What?” he asked softly.

“I like being wanted by you. I had thought it would make me feel watched.”

“And does it?”

“No. It makes me want to come closer.”

He kissed her cheek, then the corner of her mouth. She turned toward him, laughing at the insufficient accuracy, and he found her mouth again.

They moved to the bed still holding hands. Blythe sat, drew him down beside her and leaned against his shoulder while he reached to lower the lamp. She stopped his hand.

“Leave a little.”

“Of course.”

The warm light stayed. She looked at him without pretending she was interested in the lamp, and he let her. He had spent years drawing people’s eyes toward something bright enough that they would not notice him waiting to discover whether they liked it. Here there was nothing to offer but his own face, his own wanting.

Blythe touched his cheek. “There you are.”

He turned his face into her palm and kissed it.

The night unfolded at their own pace. There were pauses, quiet laughter, the surprise of discovering that neither had to perform certainty to be met with tenderness. She asked him to hold her closer; he told her when he needed a moment simply to look. They remained with each other through the awkwardness as willingly as through the ease.

Later she rested against him, her hand still in his. The lamp had burned low enough that the room seemed to end at the edge of the bed.

“I used to imagine I would be less particular with someone I wanted enough,” she said.

“You have been quite particular.”

“I know. It’s a relief.”

He smiled into her hair.

She lifted her head. “Are you glad I came?”

The question was small and entirely serious. He felt how much of her courage was choosing to ask it.

“Yes,” he said. “Stay close enough that I can tell you again in the morning.”

She kissed him, then settled beside him without another word.

· · ·Scene break

Morning found her stealing the warm side of the bed.

“You left it unguarded,” she said when he returned with tea.

“I was serving the invader.”

“A sensible capitulation.”

He put the cups on the floor where they could reach them. Her hair had come loose over his pillow. She looked rested and faintly smug. He liked this version of her with unreasonable devotion.

“What time is it?” she asked.

He told her.

She sat up halfway.

“The garden?” he asked.

“I usually look at it before breakfast.”

“Does it need you?”

She considered the question honestly.

“Not until evening. I like to look.”

“Then you can go and look.”

She looked at him instead, then settled back.

“I should like my tea first.”

It was not a sacrifice, and he did not thank her for it as though it were. They drank the tea. She took the larger piece of toast without apology. He discovered she disliked pear skins and liked the burnt edge of bread, which seemed inconsistent to him and entirely reasonable to her.

They had the whole morning because she chose it and he had left his lamp deliveries for Monday. Ordinary decisions, made in advance. No flower had to go dark for this.

When she finally dressed, he watched her pin up her hair.

“Will you come again?” he asked.

She met his eyes in the small mirror.

“Yes. And you will come to me. I want to see what you look like in my morning light.”

He walked her to the gate in daylight. She took his hand before they reached the street. A neighbour nodded, interested but not hostile. Keir nodded back and kept walking.

The world did not change shape around them.

His day did.