Episodul 209 · Before Tomorrow

The kitchen clock had passed nine when Krista came back on Friday. She had answered After work. when Soles asked to see her. Maxim was out sorting his deliveries. Soles had eaten standing at the counter and left her a plate beneath another plate, which was how his mother had kept things warm when she expected him to be late.

He wanted to get through an apology without asking her for anything afterward. He had rehearsed it while washing up. Each version had acquired a reason before he reached the end.

Krista stopped in the doorway with her work bag against her hip. Lucky brought her his bowl.

— He’s eaten, Soles said.

— He says otherwise.

— He watched me eat as well. He may be reporting that.

She took the bowl from Lucky and put it beside the stove. For a moment her mouth softened. Soles pulled out the chair nearest the kettle.

— There’s food.

— I ate at work.

— Tea, then?

She set her bag beside the chair. He filled the kettle with his left hand, setting it down carefully for her to switch on.

— Sit down. You’re holding your breath again.

He sat. She stayed by the counter, watching the kettle’s little glass window.

— What I said this morning, he began. I wanted it to hurt. I knew where to put it, and I put it there.

Krista turned from the kettle.

— You knew because you looked.

— Yes.

— Say that bit too.

He pressed his hand flat against his thigh.

— I looked at you to find something I could use. I’m sorry.

She drew the other chair away from the table and sat with her coat still on. He could hear the clock and the kettle and Lucky licking the empty bowl behind her.

— When you do it, she asked, can you stop?

— I could have stopped this morning.

— Before you said it?

— Before I looked.

She pushed her sleeves back. There was pencil dust along the side of one finger.

— I kept trying to remember whether you’d done it before. Things you’ve said to me. Things I thought you’d noticed because you knew me.

He wanted to tell her which things had been his. The little ones came first: how she held a cup when it was too hot, the corner of a photograph she always straightened. He could have made a list. He had made enough lists for one day.

— I don’t know how to prove it to you, he said.

— You can’t tonight.

The kettle clicked off. She got up for the cups. He almost stood to help her, then stayed where he was.

She put his cup within reach of his left hand.

— Milk?

— Just a little.

She knew. He let her pour it anyway.

They drank for a while. Her work bag had slumped against the chair leg, and a corner of folded paper showed beneath its flap. He could ask her to stay. Tomorrow he would have to pack, and Maxim would come, and there would be a train. Tonight there was still room for her coat on the hook.

— Did you get the captions finished?

— This afternoon.

— All of them?

— Enough for them to stop asking me.

She rubbed at the pencil mark with her thumb. It spread across the knuckle.

— You said you’d come after work, Soles said.

Her thumb stopped.

— I did come.

— I meant, was there something else to do?

— I went for a walk.

He glanced at the clock before he could stop himself. She put her cup down.

— Don’t.

— I’m asking where you’ve been.

— Yes. I heard you.

The bottom of her coat was wet, and there was pale grit worked into the hem, the fine sandy mortar that came off the brickwork under the bridge. He had seen it when she came in. He knew exactly where it came from. He had knelt in it.

She went down there. On her own. Then she came here and called it a walk.

He knew that sentence. He had said it himself a few days ago, with Dorin’s name in it.

— You’ve been late before, he said. You say work, and sometimes you call, and sometimes you don’t.

— This morning wasn’t about a telephone.

— I know that.

— Then why are we talking about mine?

He could have told her. I know where you were. It’s on your coat. It would have been true, and it would have been the thing he had done to her that morning: looking, and then using what he saw.

The chair caught against a table leg as he pushed it back. Krista reached to steady it, but he had already pulled it clear, leaving her hand suspended between them.

— I don’t know what you do when you’re not here, he said.

— You never used to need an account of it.

— I never used to be going away for three months.

She lowered her hand.

— You could have said you wanted me here, she said.

— I do.

— Instead you want to know where I was.

He could still ask her properly. Or he could say what he had seen, and make her account for the passage the way she had made him account for the river. He did neither. He did not like either of the men he could be in the next minute.

— Was it work?

She took hold of the bag’s strap.

— I told you. I went for a walk.

— And I have to leave it there.

— Yes.

He looked down at his tea. There was room for his hand around the cup. He kept it flat on the table.

— I can’t make you tell me.

She waited until he looked up.

— Then leave it there because I’ve asked you to.

For a moment he wanted to say he had. That he was sitting down, that he hadn’t looked, that the door was clear. She picked up her bag before he could turn any of those things into a defense.

— Krista. You don’t have to go.

— I can’t stay here tonight.

He followed her as far as the hall. She was having trouble with a button, the strap caught across it. He knew how to lift it free. She moved the bag herself and opened the door.

Lucky went after her. Soles caught his collar before he reached the step.

— Come on. Inside.

The dog came reluctantly. By the time Soles had shut the door, he had found the question he should have asked: whether she had somewhere to go, whether she wanted him to walk with her.

He typed it. Have you got somewhere to go? Then he read it the way she would, and saw the other question folded inside it, the one about where she had been.

He deleted it.

Her cup was still on the table, still warm when he touched the handle. He left it where it was.

Upstairs, he put the phone beside the lamp and lay down with the light off. Tomorrow there would be clothes to pack, the dogs to leave with Maxim, a train. He tried putting the jobs in order. Halfway through the list Krista was standing by the kitchen table again, asking him to leave it there.

He had known what she wanted. That was the part he could not get past.

On the landing outside the guard’s apartment, he had wanted her to look at him, and she had gone in to sit beside the guard instead. Four. He could still hear the relief in the old man’s voice, and his own small shame at having resented the thing he had helped to make.

Three months, renewable. He had read every clause before he signed and asked what each one meant. At home he had asked only where she had been.

She asked you to leave it there. Do that much.

He turned the phone face down. It was the only thing in the room he could still put where it belonged.

Sleep came late. When it did, his hand was open on the blanket, as if something might still be put into it.