I pick up the blouse.Put it down.
The thing about sleeping with your handyman on a kitchen table while your kidnapped boyfriend listens from the basement is that there’s no manual for what comes next.I’ve checked.There is no chapter in any self-help book titled “So You’ve Fucked the Contractor: A Guide to Post-Coital Hostage Management.”
I would write one but I don’t think the market is big enough.
I go downstairs.Luke is leaning against the counter with a glass of water.At 3 a.m.He looks at me.I look at him.The kitchen table is right there between us, still slightly askew from earlier, and neither of us looks at it.
Until we do.
“I should pack,” I say.
“You should.”
I don’t move.
“He’s secure,” he says.“For now.”
“Good.”
“Your flight’s at seven?”
“Eight.I need to leave by six.”
“Three hours.”
“Three hours.”
We’re doing math.Two adults standing in a kitchen at 3 a.m.doing arithmetic to avoid doing the thing they’re both thinking about.I have a graduate degree.He builds houses.Between us we have enough brain cells to land a rocket and we’re standing here counting hours like children.
“I made a list,” I say.“For Charles.Feeding schedule.Medication.Water.What to say if Mrs.Mather comes by.”
“You made a list.”
“I’m thorough.”
“I know.”
He sets the water down.I watch his hand leave the glass the way I’ve been watching his hands for weeks—the knuckles, the scars, the way they rest on surfaces like they’re measuring them.Hands that fixed my porch.Hands that installed my faucet.Hands that were in my hair a few hours ago pulling my head back on a table where a Baptist woman prayed over my dying husband who isn’t dying and isn’t my husband.
“Stop looking at my hands,” he says.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m looking at the counter.”
“Your eyes aren’t on the counter, Marin.”
The kitchen is very small at 3 a.m.Or maybe it’s the same size and we’re bigger.Or maybe the space between us is shrinking the way it always shrinks when we’re in this house and the lights are low and there’s a man in the basement and the whole world has narrowed to this room and this counter and this man who won’t stop being in my kitchen.
“This is a bad idea,” I say.
“Probably.”
“I have a flight in five hours.”
“You do.”
