Chapter 25 Before Service #2
"I haven't booked a return ticket," I said. "In eleven weeks. I've had my phone in my hand many times and I have not once opened the flight search and the reason I've not opened it is that I don't want to find a flight, and the reason I don't want to find a flight—"
He kissed me.
It was not dramatic. It was not the way these things happen in the versions you rehearse, or in films, or in any narrative I'd constructed about how this might one day unfold.
It was quiet and deliberate and exactly right, the way everything Lex Stavros does is quiet and deliberate and exactly right, and it lasted approximately long enough for me to think: yes, that is what I was trying to say, that is the exact thing, and then I stopped thinking anything in particular and just — was there, in the kitchen, at half seven on a Friday morning with tomatoes and the smell of herbs and the early light doing something to the stone walls, and it was enough. It was more than enough.
The kitchen was quiet in the particular way it was before the cicadas started — the tomatoes on the counter, the stone wall with the early light sitting on it at an angle that had nothing to prove, the smell of herbs from wherever Lex had been working before I arrived.
None of it had rearranged itself. The tomatoes were still tomatoes.
The light was still doing what light does.
Something had happened in this kitchen and the kitchen was entirely unbothered by it, which seemed, on reflection, exactly right.
This was not the kind of thing that needed marking.
It had simply occurred, in the right place, at the right time, and the kitchen's complete indifference to its own significance was, I thought, the most reassuring thing I'd encountered in eleven weeks.
When we stopped, I said: "I was in the middle of a sentence."
"You'd made the point," he said.
(Very characteristic of him. I would like the record to reflect that the man is genuinely insufferable in the best possible way.)
I should note, for completeness, that the kitchen continued to be a kitchen.
The tomatoes were still there. The morning light continued to come in at its unhurried angle.
Nothing around us had changed or rearranged to mark the occasion, which I found oddly reassuring — I have been in moments that felt significant and later turned out not to be, and this felt significant in the grounded, factual way of things that actually are.
The tomatoes being tomatoes helped, somehow.
"I still haven't finished the sentence," I said.
"You don't need to."
"I want to." I looked at him. "The reason I haven't opened the flight search is that I'm already home. That is the sentence." I paused. "There. Now it's finished."
He looked at me for a moment. Then: "Yes," he said. "All right."
A moment passed. "The other reasons," he said. "That I came back." He looked at me steadily. "You understand now."
I understood now.
This was, characteristically, not a lot of words. It was, characteristically, exactly the right words.
Outside, from the direction of the dining room, came the sound of Theria, who had evidently arrived at some point during the preceding several minutes and was now walking deliberately in the opposite direction.
"I'm going to start service," she called, through the wall. "Take your time." A pause. "I'm not rushing you. I just want it noted that there are seven tables to set and some of them have quite specific linen requirements."
"It's half seven," I said. To Lex, not to the wall, because the wall didn't need the information.
"She sets them early on Fridays," he said.
"That's suspicious."
"Yes," he said.
"She knew I was coming."
"She mentioned you might." He had the expression that on anyone else would be something larger and on Lex Stavros is a smile. "She suggested I make sure I was in the kitchen early."
I looked at him.
"Theria organised this," I said.
"Theria observed a pattern," he said. "She has strong feelings about patterns that are not resolving."
"She is going to be absolutely insufferable about this."
"Yes," he said. He was not, I noted, sounding troubled by it.
Theria's voice, from outside, in the manner of someone committed to a bit: "I am going to set all seven tables. I have committed. I am not listening."
I laughed — properly, unexpectedly, the kind that catches you before you can regulate it. Lex made a sound I had been trying to classify for eleven weeks. It was, I now confirmed, laughter. Not a lot of it. Exactly the right amount.
"Service?" I said.
"Service," he said.
We went.
The seven tables were, in fact, perfectly well set. Theria had done all of them, linen squares exact, glasses aligned with the focus of someone who wanted it known that she had absolutely not been listening. She looked up when we came through from the kitchen.
"I have notes," she said, "about the linen folding on table four."
"There is nothing wrong with the linen on table four," I said.
"I have notes," she repeated, and produced a small notebook from her apron pocket, which she had clearly prepared in advance, which meant she had known this morning was going to go the way it went, which meant she had been planning this since at least last night, which I was going to think about more later and at length and with considerable feeling.
"She is going to be insufferable," I said, to Lex.
"Yes," he said.
"You're enjoying this."
He looked at the linen on table four. Then at me. He had the expression.
"Thoroughly," he said.