The Empty Hook

Anouk bought the hook because she was tired of dropping her bag on Meriel’s floor. It was brass, small enough to fit in her palm, and attached to a strip that could be removed without damaging the paint. She read the instructions twice in the shop, then bought two.

At the flat she put one inside the cupboard by the door. The other she left in its packet. Buying something for a place she was leaving in three weeks felt mildly rebellious. Buying two felt like a lapse in judgement.

Orson arrived while she was pressing the first hook firmly against the cupboard wall.

“Should I ask?”

“I’m acquiring infrastructure.”

“Ambitious.”

“Hold this.”

She handed him her bag. He stood patiently while she counted the required time under her breath, then waited a little longer because she did not trust adhesive on principle.

“There.”

She hung the bag. It stayed up.

“I can see why you needed an audience,” he said.

“You’re privileged.”

He kissed her cheek, but his smile did not quite remain. She noticed the tiredness first, then the way he set his own bag down as if it were heavier than usual.

“Tea?” she asked.

“Yes. Please.”

He sat at the kitchen table. Usually he came in and found some small way to help. Tonight he watched her fill the kettle, his hands lying still in front of him.

She put a cup beside him and waited until he had taken the first sip.

“Bad day?”

“Not terrible.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

He rubbed his forehead. “I lost my temper in class.”

She sat opposite him. “With someone?”

“With the room, supposedly. Which means with everyone.”

“What happened?”

He told her without making himself the hero of the account. A crowded table, repeated instructions not heard, a student who had needed more help than he’d understood. He’d become sharp. Nobody had cried or stormed out. That was not the point.

“I apologised,” he said. “Properly. Not if-you-were-offended. But it was still an unpleasant twenty minutes for people who came there to enjoy themselves.”

“Will you see them again?”

“Next week.”

“Then you can be different next week.”

“I know.”

She could have told him he was a good teacher. She believed he probably was. But she hadn’t been in the room, and the reassurance would have required him to accept her version over what he knew he’d done.

Instead she said, “Do you want to talk about it more, or would you rather I fed you?”

He looked at her, and something in his face loosened painfully.

“I don’t know.”

“All right.”

“I hate being like this.”

“Tired?”

“Unpleasant company.”

“You’re not unpleasant company. You’re company having an unpleasant evening.”

He gave a brief laugh. “That’s an indexer’s distinction.”

“An important one.”

She stood, went round the table and held out her hand. He took it but didn’t rise.

“Could we just sit?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“On the sofa. Close.”

The request was so simple that she had to swallow before answering.

“Of course.”

They sat with the window open and the late light across the rug. He leaned into her, awkward at first, then with more of his weight when she put an arm around his shoulders. She stroked his hair once and then rested her hand. She didn’t want to turn comfort into a task with visible effort.

For a long time neither spoke.

Anouk had been held when unhappy. She had held people. Yet this felt different from the consolations she’d offered in station cafés and spare rooms. Orson had not made a joke until she invited him to make one. He had asked for what he wanted and trusted her to decide whether she could give it.

After a while he said, “You aren’t trying to fix it.”

“I wouldn’t know how.”

“That’s never stopped anyone before.”

She smiled into his hair. “I can offer pasta.”

“Later.”

She let him stay.

· · ·Scene break

When he had gone home, Anouk found the second hook on the table. For a moment she imagined taking it to his house and putting it beside his own. A place for her bag. A declaration small enough to pretend it wasn’t one.

She disliked the pretence. She put the hook in her suitcase instead.

The next morning he sent a message: Thank you for yesterday. I slept. I also found the missing lid. No connection that I can prove.

She laughed aloud at her desk.

You’re welcome. I believe in the lid’s influence.

Then she put the phone aside and worked for two hours without checking it. The commission was going well. She had another lined up for September, and a smaller one between. The numbers in her notebook were familiar: income expected, rent paid, travel already booked, a margin she protected because clients sometimes paid late. Each move had to fit between the figures. She kept her possessions modest and her late-payment margin intact.

At lunch she walked to the grocer’s. Orson was there buying bread. They saw each other over a display of onions and both smiled before either could remember to be restrained.

“This is becoming a habit,” she said.

“I do eat most days.”

“Show-off.”

He looked better. Not transformed, merely rested. She wanted to touch him, and did, a hand against his arm while they discussed supper.

“I’ve got Zadie coming round,” he said. “We arranged it last week.”

“Good.”

“You could—” He stopped. “No. She asked to talk about something. I shouldn’t invite an audience.”

“No, you shouldn’t.”

“I’d like to see you tomorrow.”

“I’d like that.”

She kissed him goodbye outside the shop. Then she went home and ate her own lunch, pleased with him and unexpectedly pleased with herself. She had not been excluded. He had remembered another person existed. There was room for that.

· · ·Scene break

On Friday she had a bad day of her own. A client returned a file with questions she should have anticipated, and although the work was repairable and the tone courteous, she felt the familiar professional shame arrive with unreasonable force. She had been doing this for years. Apparently years were not a vaccine against feeling foolish.

She went for a walk. It did not help. She bought a pastry. That helped only with being hungry.

At five she sent Orson a message asking if he had twenty minutes. He called rather than appearing at the door, and she was grateful for the distinction. She had not yet tidied the pages scattered around the room or herself into a person fit to host.

“I’ve made a mess of something,” she said.

“Can it be repaired?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want help thinking about it, or company while you hate it?”

She laughed, surprised by the accuracy. “Company.”

“I’m here.”

She told him what had happened in terms he could understand without understanding her whole profession. He did not say the client was wrong. He did not tell her everybody made mistakes, which was true and therefore useless at that moment. He asked which part she was most unhappy with, and waited while she found the answer.

“That I knew better,” she said eventually.

“Ah.”

“Don’t be wise.”

“I wasn’t going to be. I was remembering Wednesday.”

She sat on the floor beside the desk. The sheets looked less accusatory from there.

“I wish you were here,” she said.

“I could come.”

“No. I need to finish the correction. I just wanted you to know.”

“I’d like to be there.”

That was better than an arrival she would have had to manage. She closed her eyes, hearing the ordinary sounds of his kitchen behind his voice.

“Tell me something,” she said. “Something with no connection to me.”

He told her about the sparrow that had spent the morning pulling material from a hanging basket despite his repeated objections. She laughed. Then he described, at her request, the increasingly elaborate positions he’d taken to photograph it without frightening it away.

“Did you get the picture?”

“No. I got the basket.”

“Send it.”

The photograph arrived while they were still talking. Half a basket, part of his thumb, no bird. She saved it. Later, when the corrected file was sent and the desk restored to order, she looked at the photograph again and felt the day stop being entirely a record of what she’d done wrong.

She had called. He had answered without taking over. It was a small rehearsal for something neither could yet see the whole shape of.

On Saturday they walked inland instead of towards the water. Orson took her along a narrow lane edged with hedges, past a field where a gate hung at an angle and a sign asked walkers to close it properly. Anouk struggled with the latch, succeeded, and made a small triumphant gesture that he pretended not to enjoy.

“You’re getting attached to mechanisms,” he said. “First the hook.”

“Don’t diminish my range.”

They sat on a fallen trunk to eat the sandwiches she’d made. No fruit liable to surrender was involved. She had brought apples, and he accepted his with appropriate solemnity.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For the apple?”

“For Wednesday.”

“You said that.”

“I wanted to say it in person.”

She looked at him. He had a little scratch near his thumb, probably from the garden, and the collar of his shirt had folded under on one side. She straightened it without thinking.

“I liked that you asked.”

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t like asking?”

“No.” He smiled faintly. “I liked what happened afterwards.”

“Then perhaps you’ll do it again.”

He took a bite of his apple and considered. “Perhaps.”

She leaned back against the trunk, careful of a rough branch. There was a particular happiness in being outside with him when nothing had gone wrong. It wasn’t relief. It didn’t need to earn its place by following sorrow. She watched an insect move across the grass and let the afternoon be good.

After a while he asked, “What do you do when you have a bad day away?”

“Walk. Call Meriel. Eat something unambitious. Sometimes complain to a wall.”

“Does it help?”

“The wall’s very consistent.”

He smiled, then looked down at his hands.

“You can call me as well.”

“I know.”

“Not instead. As well.”

That distinction mattered. She rested her head against his shoulder.

“I’d like to.”

They walked home slowly. At his door she asked to come in, and he answered by drawing her close enough that her bag bumped against his hip. She laughed, put it down, and kissed him properly.

Inside, he held her against the hallway wall with her willing hands at his shoulders, not pinning, simply close. The warmth of him was immediate and familiar enough to make her more hungry rather than less. She could feel the smile in his kiss when she made an impatient sound.

“Tea?” he murmured.

“Orson.”

“Later, then.”

Upstairs she watched him let himself be wanted. It still moved her, the moment he stopped making sure and began to trust her desire. She told him when she liked something; he listened. He told her too, quietly, sometimes with a shyness that made her want to kiss the words from his mouth and sometimes so plainly that she had to close her eyes for a moment.

Afterwards they lay with the window open and the afternoon sounds drifting in. She drew a lazy line along his arm. He caught her hand, kissed it, and set it against his chest.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing. I like it there.”

She left it there.

When she went downstairs for water, she saw her bag on the floor beside the empty hook in his hall. He had not hung it up. She could have felt that as a lack, but she remembered the way he had asked to sit close, the way he’d kept his evening with Zadie, the way he had offered himself as one person she could call rather than the only one.

She picked up the bag and hung it on the hook herself.

It was not a promise to leave it there forever. It was a bag, in a house where she was spending the afternoon. She was allowed that much presence.

When she returned to the bedroom, Orson had shifted to make room without waking fully. She put the water down and slid in beside him.

For once she did not look at the time.