26. Andrei #2
“Never.” I said it into her hair and felt her go still, listening.
“I never get tired of you. Not of the cravings, not of the bakery lines, not of this little room. Tired is what I was for forty years before you, every single morning, lifting a life I did not want. This is the opposite of that. You could wake me at any black hour wanting anything from any corner of this city and I would thank you for the errand.”
“That is insane,” she said, somewhere between a sob and a laugh.
“Then I am insane. It changes nothing. Ask me again in fifty years. The answer will embarrass us both.”
One last shaking breath went through her, and a small laugh caught up with it, and both worked their way out of her while I held on. Holding on is the entire job. The rest is detail.
Priya was hovering when we came out, studiously busy with nothing. “I am sending everyone home,” I told her. “The lookbook will survive one night without supervision.”
“Yes, sir.” She gathered her things, paused at the door, and looked back at the two of us for a moment. Then she nodded once, to herself, and left, and I had the sense the universe had finally explained itself to her.
Evening settled over the river and lit the far bank window by window, and we drove home across the water with her hand resting over mine on the gearshift, her head tipped against the glass, half dreaming.
“Soup?” I asked, somewhere past the bridge.
“Surprise me,” she murmured without opening her eyes. “I do not care what it is. I only care that I get to watch.”
I cook at night now. No one who knew me before would believe it, and the men who suspect it have wisely never raised the subject.
I made the soft rice with ginger that her stomach trusts and set milk to warm beside it, low heat, patient, a slow ribbon of honey off the spoon, poured at the end into the chipped cup she refuses to let me replace.
She sat up on the counter with a blanket around her shoulders and watched every move I made. I could feel it between my shoulder blades, warm as a hand.
“You are staring again.”
“I am memorizing,” she said. “There is a difference. Now tell me something I do not know about you. While you stir.”
“Why must I perform while I cook?”
“Because dinner theater is the best theater. Something I do not know. Go.”
I looked at the small dented pot the milk was warming in, the one we keep although we own twelve better ones, and decided tonight was the night for it.
“This pot belonged to the woman who raised me. It crossed the water in a suitcase before I was born. It is the one thing I carried out of the old life.” I stirred once, slow.
“It only makes your milk now. I think she would have liked that ending.”
She was quiet for a long moment, her eyes very soft and very full. “The pot stays forever,” she said at last, in the voice she uses for passing laws.
When I set the cup in her palms, her eyes were already bright, and by the first sip the tears had simply arrived, sliding down without permission, and she laughed at herself even as they fell.
“Look at me. You made me milk and I am crying about it.”
“You also cried about the tarts.”
“The tarts deserved it. So does the milk.” Her hands curled tighter around the cup. “I am so lucky to have you. I keep waiting to get used to it and I never get used to it. I hope I never do.”
“Good,” I said, and kissed her forehead. “Stay unaccustomed. I plan to keep earning that face for a very long time.”
She ate slowly and victoriously, and this time her stomach kept the peace, and the evening folded itself around us like something that had been waiting all day for permission.
The film was her choice, the one with the wedding in it that she has seen four times and defends like a relative. By the opening titles her feet were in my lap, which in this house is not a request but a house rule, and I worked my thumbs slow along one arch and then the other, in no hurry at all.
“Mm. If the business ever collapses, you have a future in this.”
“You would have me rub the feet of strangers?”
“Absolutely not. The shop would fail in a week. The only customer is me.”
“A bold business model.”
“One extremely loyal customer with a lifetime contract. You signed it today, in that line, between two grandmothers.”
“I do not recall reading the terms.”
“There are no terms. There is only forever.”
“Then I have signed worse deals,” I said, and she laughed and pushed her foot back into my hands.
The movie murmured along without our help.
Her eyes grew heavy in the lamplight, and the empty cup sat on the table, and her hand had drifted, the way it always drifts now, to rest open over the small new curve of her stomach.
Then her voice came, low and almost shy, the way it only ever sounds when the words matter most.
“Andrei. I love you.”
I drew her up the couch and into me and closed both arms around her, tight, her cheek over my heart and my chin in her hair, and I took a moment before answering, because she deserves found words and not reflexes.
“I love you too, Zoe. You know what I am. I am not a sweet type. No one has ever once accused me of it. But you say those words to me and my heart skips so loud I cannot believe the neighbors have not complained.”
She laughed against my chest, then went very quiet, and I understood that she was listening for it.
“There,” she whispered. “Heard it.”
“It does that for you alone.”
“Keep it that way, oldie.”
“For as long as it beats, goddess.”
The film ended without our noticing and the screen put itself to sleep before she did.
I stayed where I was in the dark of our home, the whole soft weight of my world breathing against my chest, her heart keeping time with the loud one she had made of mine, and I thought about nothing at all.
For a man who has spent his life three moves ahead, there is no greater luxury. She gave me that too.