The Landing Light

Orson left the landing light on, then went back upstairs and turned it off. Anouk was coming for supper. She had not asked to stay, and illuminating the route to his bedroom seemed an unnecessarily literal expression of hope.

Downstairs, the potatoes were nearly ready. He had bought more than two people could eat, partly because he liked leftovers and partly because he had needed something to do in the shop while thinking about her. The flowers on the kitchen table were from the front garden. He had put them in a jam jar, reconsidered, and left them there.

At seven she knocked.

“I brought dessert,” she said. “It has structural integrity.”

He took the paper box from her. Inside were two small tarts, carried flat and uninjured.

“You’re setting a high standard.”

“I thought you could rise to it.”

She wore a dark green dress and sandals, and her hair was loose. He had seen her several times since Tuesday: once for a walk, once by accident at the grocer’s, once because he had sent a message asking whether she would like tea and she had arrived twenty minutes later with a book she wanted to complain about. He was beginning to know the expressions that preceded her jokes. This evening she looked nervous.

It helped. He kissed her in the hallway, gently at first, and felt her hand settle against his side.

“Hello,” she said afterwards.

“Hello.”

“You look nice.”

“I changed my shirt.”

“Was the first one terrible?”

“Perfectly adequate.”

“Dangerous, adequacy.”

He laughed and took her through to the kitchen. She noticed the flowers without making him sorry he’d left them.

“I like those.”

“The garden’s mostly doing things without permission.”

“Sensible garden.”

While he finished the food she sat at the table, in the chair nearest the window. He had learned not to offer an alternative unless there was an actual defect. She told him about an author who’d sent fourteen pages of changes after approving the index, and he told her about having spent half the afternoon searching for a tool that had been in his apron pocket.

“Were you wearing the apron?”

“Yes.”

“That’s worse.”

“I know.”

They ate slowly. She took a second helping without asking whether he minded, which pleased him absurdly. He had made something she wanted. That was all; it didn’t need to be proof of anything.

Afterwards she insisted on washing up while he dried. He let her. She sang three uncertain notes of a tune, stopped, and said she couldn’t remember what came next.

“Perhaps that’s the whole thing,” he said.

“Very efficient.”

“An index to a song.”

She turned, soap on one wrist. “That was appalling.”

“I’ve been saving it.”

“You should have kept saving.”

He caught her clean hand and kissed her knuckles. She stopped smiling, not because she’d ceased to be happy but because something more concentrated had arrived in her face.

“Orson.”

“Yes.”

“I brought a toothbrush.”

The kitchen went very still around him.

“All right.”

“That wasn’t an announcement. It was—” She shook her head, amused at herself. “No. It was an announcement. But you can decline it.”

“I don’t want to decline it.”

Her fingers tightened around his.

“I want to stay,” she said. “Tonight. With you.”

He set down the towel. There were still two plates in the sink, and he would remember that later: that he had been able to leave them.

“Then stay.”

She came into his arms without any further explanation. He kissed her with a relief that felt almost like laughter, and she answered with a hunger she had not allowed him to mistake all evening. His hands settled at her back. Hers moved into his hair, drawing him closer, then loosened when she wanted to look at him.

“Slowly,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I don’t mean reluctantly.”

“I know.”

He touched her cheek with his thumb. She turned her face into his hand and kissed his palm, and the tenderness of it struck deeper than the wanting. He had expected to feel fortunate. He had not expected to feel exposed.

They went upstairs together. At the turn he switched on the landing light. Anouk noticed his small laugh.

“What?”

“I turned this off earlier. It seemed presumptuous.”

She looked up at him. “You may turn it on now.”

In the bedroom she put her bag by the chair and came back to him. He had changed the sheets, another hope he could no longer disguise, but she only ran her hand over the cover and said she liked the blue.

“You don’t have to make this easy for me,” he said.

“I’m not. I’m making it happen with you.”

He sat beside her on the edge of the bed. For a while they did nothing but kiss. The night outside deepened, and he learned how she liked to be held: firmly enough to feel his wanting, lightly enough to move as she pleased. When he paused, she drew him back. When her breathing changed, he asked quietly, and she answered in words he would remember long after their exact order had gone.

There was no performance he could prepare. No good chair to offer, no finished object to set before her. Only his body, his attention, the willingness to let her see what she did to him.

She touched his face when he grew too careful.

“You’re allowed to want this,” she said.

“I do.”

“Then let me feel it.”

He kissed her again, and this time he let the longing show. Her answering closeness was immediate. The room held the hush of sheets, the warmth between them, her voice saying his name without any question in it. He kept listening. So did she. Later, when the urgency had softened into quiet, he lay with her tucked against him and felt her fingers moving idly over his arm.

He had not known how much he missed that: touch with no next thing required of it.

“Are you comfortable?” he asked.

She laughed into his shoulder.

“I had to say it once,” he said.

“Yes,” she told him. “Very.”

· · ·Scene break

Anouk woke before him and lay still, considering the unfamiliar slope of the ceiling. Morning made every room honest. A shirt on the chair, a glass of water on the table, the faint mark where someone had once hung a picture. Orson’s hand rested near hers on the sheet, not holding it. She could leave the bed without waking him.

She stayed.

He looked younger asleep, though not young; the lines at his eyes remained, and there was a small crease between his brows. Forty-three. A man with a whole life before this morning, whom she had met barely more than a week ago and had already allowed close enough to alter the feel of an empty kitchen.

He opened his eyes while she was looking.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

“Was I doing something embarrassing?”

“Not yet. I was waiting.”

He smiled, then reached for her slowly. She moved into the invitation. His kiss was soft and unhurried, carrying none of the uncertainty of the night before. It made her want things she hadn’t put into her plans for Sunday.

“Tea?” he asked.

“Eventually.”

He settled back beside her. She liked that he could hear eventually and remain. They lay facing each other, knees touching beneath the sheet, and talked about nothing that would have sounded significant from outside the room: the noisy bird in the garden, his dislike of fitted sheets, the way she’d once packed two left shoes and no right one.

“How?”

“They were black. It was early. I was arrogant.”

“You recovered?”

“I bought sandals. My career in packing never did.”

He traced the edge of her hand with one finger. She felt the small touch everywhere.

“I don’t want to rush you out,” he said. “But I have promised Zadie I’ll help move the cupboard down again at noon.”

“The cupboard has reconsidered?”

“Zadie has. It blocks the radiator.”

Anouk laughed. “I have work. Not urgent work. The sort I want to do before it becomes urgent.”

“So we can have breakfast.”

“Yes.”

Neither pretended that the other obligation spoiled anything. That pleased her more than an entire day abandoned in her honour would have done.

Downstairs, he made tea while she found plates. She knew where they were from drying them. It gave her a small, unreasonable pleasure, which she distrusted and enjoyed at the same time.

The blue bowl held apples. She touched the rim on her way past.

“Does it always live here?”

“Usually on the shelf.”

“Why did you move it?”

“So you’d see it.”

She looked at him. He was buttering toast, apparently unaware that he had said anything considerable.

They ate by the open window. A neighbour’s radio came and went with the breeze. She took the last slice of toast and then offered him half; he accepted rather than insisting she have all of it. Progress, she thought, and loved him a little for the taking before she caught the word and put it away.

Not loved. Liked. Enjoyed. Wanted.

Words mattered. She made a living knowing which ones belonged together.

At half past ten she went upstairs for her things. Her toothbrush lay beside his. She dried it and put it back in its case. The gesture felt larger than it should have done.

Orson appeared at the doorway. “There’s no hurry.”

“I know.”

“You can leave that, if you like.”

She looked down at the case in her hand.

He saw it. “Or take it. I wasn’t—”

“I only have one.”

“Oh.”

“And I still have teeth when I’m at Meriel’s.”

He laughed, relieved, and she crossed the room to kiss him because the relief had moved her.

She did take the toothbrush. She also asked if he was free on Wednesday, and watched the answer come into his face before he said it.

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll cook something that requires fewer rings on the hob.”

“Ambitious.”

He walked her to the door. Outside, the morning was already full of people with ordinary destinations. She had one too: a rented flat, a desk, a book that needed finishing. None of it had changed.

Halfway down the lane she turned back. Orson was still there, one hand on the doorframe.

She raised her hand. He raised his.

Then she went home to her work, carrying the toothbrush and the unfamiliar knowledge that she wanted Wednesday to come quickly.