Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Night She Calls Him
Callum
Mira called at one fourteen in the morning three weeks after the archive meeting.
In those weeks, we spoke twice and canceled once.
The first call ended when Mother appeared outside my apartment. I told Mira what happened.
“Do you want to let her in?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then why are you asking me?”
I denied it while both of us knew I wanted Mira to authorize the refusal so Mother's loneliness would belong partly to her.
“I will call you next week,” she said.
I sent Mother away and sat with the fact that the correct boundary had still become my wife's labor.
The second call was easier. Mira described an archive fundraiser where the caterer delivered twelve trays of olives and no bread. We spoke past the limit and agreed to continue.
Our third call was canceled by Mira an hour before it began. She offered no reason. I typed three replies before sending: Understood. Next Sunday remains available if you want it.
The night she called at one fourteen, I knew the sound was neither scheduled nor casual.
I answered before the second ring. “Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
I sat up in bed. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened.” Her breath came unevenly. “I had a dream.”
“Do you want to tell me?”
“No.”
“All right.”
The bakery mixers vibrated beneath the floor. I turned on the bedside lamp.
“Talk,” she said.
“About what?”
“Anything that is not the investigation.”
My mind emptied. I had addressed boards without notes and now could not produce a harmless fact.
“The printer jammed again,” I said.
Silence. Then a soft laugh.
“Did you pull the blue tab?”
“I asked first.”
“Growth.”
“My supervisor remains skeptical.”
I told her about a cooperative grocery whose members argued for two hours over refrigerator financing. She told me Celia had replaced the bucket diagrams with bathtubs because “people understand drains.” We spoke quietly while the city slept.
To keep talking, I described the shelves I built badly. One tilted because I measured from the ceiling in a building where the floor had settled.
“You own a level,” Mira said.
“I owned a man who owned a level.”
“That sentence contains the whole problem.”
“I bought one afterward. The shelf remains philosophical.”
She told me about her green bowls and the chip in one rim after Naomi dropped it.
“Did you mind?”
“For thirty seconds. Then it looked used.”
She asked whether I kept wedding photographs. I said yes, boxed rather than displayed.
“Why not?”
“I did not want visitors assuming the marriage continued unchanged.”
“What visitors?”
“Dorian. My supervisor. Mrs. Alvarez, usually without knocking.”
“No women?”
“No dates. No one I wanted that way.”
Mira exhaled. “Good.”
Relief came with an embarrassing flicker of reward.
At one forty, Mira said, “The dream was about the press room.”
I waited.
“I tried to speak, but every microphone had your voice. You kept saying I could survive. Nobody could hear me.”
My stomach folded inward. “I'm sorry.”
“I know.”
“Do you want me to say something else?”
“I don't know.”
I looked at the dark window. “You told me to remove the line. I heard you. I chose the cameras. You survived because you protected yourself, not because I knew what you could bear.”
Her breathing steadied.
“Again,” she said.
I repeated it.
“Again.”
The third time, my voice broke.
Mira began crying. I stayed on the line. I did not tell her to breathe or promise she was safe. When she said my name, I answered.
At two ten, she asked, “Do you still live above the bakery?”
“Yes.”
“What does it smell like?”
“Bread at four. Sugar by six. Burnt cheese on Wednesdays.”
“Is there an elevator?”
“No.”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to picture where you are.”
I held the phone tighter. “One bedroom. Brick wall outside the window. Green kitchen cabinets. The table is too large, but Dorian carried it up three flights and I cannot tell him.”
“He knows.”
“Almost certainly.”
“Do you have anyone there?”
The question could mean several things.
“No,” I said. “I have not dated or slept with anyone.”
“I didn't ask that.”
“I know. I wanted you to know.”
She went quiet.
“Have you?” I asked, then regretted it. “You don't have to answer.”
“No.”
Heat and relief moved through me, neither honorable.
“This is dangerous,” she whispered.
“The call?”
“Wanting to see your kitchen.”
“You can see it without promising anything.”
“You say that now.”
“I will say it there.”
“And if I kiss you?”
My body went hard beneath the sheet. I closed my eyes.
“Then I will ask what you want next.”
“You make that sound easy.”
“It will not be easy.”
“Good.”
At two thirty, she said she could sleep.
“May I call tomorrow?” I asked.
“No. Let me decide.”
“All right.”
“Callum?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for answering.”
After the line went dead, I remained sitting in bed until dawn. Hope moved through me like fever. Every instinct wanted to prepare the apartment, buy her coffee, fix the loose cabinet, make the room persuasive.
I did none of it that night.
In the morning, I washed the sheets because it was Saturday and they needed washing. I bought groceries I would eat alone. I went to work.
Then I made a list for her possible visit and tore it up.
Coffee. Tea. Wine. Her soap. A toothbrush. Condoms.
Every item could be hospitality or persuasion. I called Ezra.
“She may come to the apartment.”
“How do you feel?”
“Ask a more efficient question.”
“No.”
“Hopeful. Afraid. Aroused. Ashamed of being aroused.”
“Your arousal is your body, not her obligation.”
“What do I prepare?”
“What would you prepare for a friend?”
“Clean sheets sound presumptuous.”
“Clean sheets are adulthood.”
I bought coffee and tea because I used both. I bought condoms because I intended to be responsible whether or not Mira saw the box. I did not buy flowers or the wine from our wedding.
I fixed the loose cabinet because it annoyed me. It fell off the hinge. I rehung it worse and left the warning in my message.
Mira did not contact me for four days.
On the fifth, she sent an address request through our private channel.
I would like to see the apartment Sunday at seven. I may leave at any time. Do not arrange dinner unless I ask.
I replied:
Yes. I will send the entry instructions. The green cabinet near the sink sticks. This is a warning, not a repair request.
Her answer was a single laughing face, the first we had exchanged since she left.
On Sunday morning, Mother called before Mira's visit.
“Nathaniel's lawyer wants you to support bail.”
“No.”
“You have not read the proposal.”
“My counsel has. Foreign passports and concealed funds make release inappropriate unless the court finds conditions.”
“He would live with me.”
“That does not remove flight risk.”
“Do not discuss your brother like a loan.”
“Then do not ask me to underwrite him.”
Mother cried. I stayed on the line for five minutes, then said I had another commitment.
“Mira?” she asked.
“Private.”
“Is she coming there?”
“Do not ask about her location.”
The call ended badly. I sat at the table with guilt crawling across my skin. In the past, I would have repaired Mother before Mira arrived, bringing family distress into the room as an invisible third person.
I wrote the guilt in my notebook and called Ezra's voicemail, not Mira.
At noon, I went for a walk. Mrs. Alvarez saw me leaving and asked whether I had a date.
“A visitor.”
“Then buy better soap.”
“I own soap.”
She looked unconvinced.
I returned at five, showered, and put on three shirts before choosing the first. I did not cook. I did not light candles. At six fifty, every nerve in my body listened to the stairwell.
When the buzzer sounded, I waited one breath before answering so I would not frighten her with how completely I had been waiting.
I stared at it until my supervisor asked whether I intended to contribute to the meeting.
That afternoon, the cooperative voted on a client linked to a Wycliffe supplier. I disclosed the relationship and left the room. Ten minutes later, my supervisor asked me back.
“We declined,” she said.
“Because of me?”
“Because their worker-ownership plan was cosmetic. Your conflict was manageable.”
I had assumed every decision in my absence concerned me. The habit survived loss of power.
At five, Dorian called to confirm he would be available if Mira wanted a safety contact during the visit.
“Did she ask you?”
“No. Verity told me not to offer unless asked.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because I am nervous for you and pretending logistics justify the call.”
We both laughed.
“What if she leaves after five minutes?” I asked.
“You let her.”
“What if she wants sex?”
“I am not your older brother.”
“You gave me condoms once.”
“I was twenty-three. Never mention it again.”
His embarrassment loosened my fear.
Before going home, I bought groceries for the week rather than for Mira's visit. Chicken, spinach, eggs, bread. No anchovies, because buying ingredients from our proposal dinner would be staging.
Mrs. Alvarez caught me checking the stairwell camera at six thirty.
“She will come or not come,” she said.
“That is very philosophical for a baker.”
“Dough teaches waiting. Touch it every minute and you ruin it.”
I went upstairs. I checked the clock instead of the camera.
At six fifty-eight, the buzzer sounded.
My hand shook when I pressed the button. I did not hide that from my own empty room.
“Sorry,” I said, and put the phone away.
Mira stood at the threshold in a gray coat I had never seen. She looked past me before stepping inside, noting the stairs, windows, and second exit. I had sent the building plan through counsel, but a diagram was not the same as standing in a room.
“The door locks from the inside without a key,” I said. “The bathroom window opens onto the fire escape. Dorian knows the code downstairs.”
“Stop proving.”
I shut my mouth.
She removed her coat and kept her shoes on. The green sweater beneath it made my hands ache to touch her waist.
“Bread?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Mrs. Alvarez had supplied a plain loaf and a note threatening both of us if it became a metaphor. Mira read the note and laughed.
“She likes you,” I said.
“She pities your kitchen.”
We ate standing at the counter because the table felt too formal. Mira asked about the cabinets, the cooperative, and the scratch in the floor. I told her the scratch came from moving the table alone after refusing Dorian's help for no good reason.
“Pride?”
“Self-punishment disguised as independence.”
“That sounds like therapy language.”
“Pride,” I corrected.
“Better.”
She walked through the sitting room. No photographs of our wedding stood in view. I had placed them in a drawer months earlier, then worried hiding them would look strategic.
“Where are the pictures?” she asked.
“Which pictures?”
“Do not make me say wedding.”
“In the desk.”
“Why?”
“Looking at them hurt. Displaying them also felt like preparing the room for you.”
She opened the drawer after asking. The photograph from the courthouse lay beside the burn-mark print and a school picture of Nathaniel and me.
“You kept the table mark.”
“Yes.”
Her finger touched the edge of the photograph. I watched instead of stepping closer.
“I hated you for selling the table,” she said.
“You said you did not want it.”
“I did not. I still hated that it could go.”
“I nearly kept it because the lawyer said it was mine.”
“That would have been worse.”
We looked at each other and began laughing. The contradiction had no solution.
The laughter left us closer than before. Mira's pupils widened. She put one hand on the desk between us.
“I want to kiss you,” I said.
“I know.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Not yet.”
The answer hurt. I nodded and moved toward the kitchen.
“Callum.”
I turned.
“You can stand here. I did not ask you to leave the room.”
I returned to the distance she had left. We stood there breathing, close enough to feel heat and not close enough to touch.
“This is awful,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I am glad you came.”
“Me too.”
At eight fifty, Mira put on her coat. I did not offer a car. At the door, she touched two fingers to my wrist, directly over my pulse.
“Next time, dinner,” she said.
“Here?”
“My apartment.”
The door closed before my face could frighten her with hope.
I remained in the hallway until Mrs. Alvarez shouted from downstairs that waiting by a closed door was still waiting by a closed door.
I went inside and washed two bread plates.