Then she said, “Oh, this is obscene.”
Damien looked at me. “I assume that’s approval?”
“That is Sophie experiencing sincerity against her will,” I said.
Sophie pointed at him.
“Do not be charming. I’m still assessing.”
He returned to the stove. “Of course.”
Forty minutes later, she was drinking Burgundy at the island, watching Damien plate something for us, and leaning toward me with a narrowed gaze.
“Okay,” Sophie said.
I looked at her. “Okay what?”
“Yes,” she said. “I see it.”
“Do not.”
“He looks at you like you are the only credible source in the room.”
Damien, without turning around, said, “She often is.”
Sophie put one hand against her chest and looked personally offended by the efficiency of that answer.
“That was unfairly good.”
I didn’t argue. There are some things I no longer waste energy denying.
At the present, Damien sets my fresh coffee beside the plate and takes the empty seat across from me. The spring light comes through the windows and lays itself across the island, across his hands, across the ring of condensation from the old coffee I abandoned while trying to save a sentence. The city below us has brightened fully now. Boats move along the river. Cars slide over the bridge. Paris is awake and already behaving as if beauty is a reasonable thing to require before noon.
I take another bite.
He watches me.
“You’re waiting for me to revise the score,” I say.
“Yes.”
“I respect the consistency,” I say.
“I respect accuracy,” he says.
“I gave you accuracy,” I say.
“You gave me provocation,”
“Those often overlap,” I quip.
That makes him smile as he stands and reaches for the towel near the stove. I notice the shift because I notice everything. The towel remains untouched. His hand stops before reaching it. Then he sets down the small knife he has been using to trim herbs, places it carefully beside the board, and looks at me in a way that changes the air.
My fork lowers to the plate.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
