Malcolm was looking up when Annelise found him outside the covered market.
She followed his gaze, expecting a broken sign or some architectural danger, and saw a row of small blue windows beneath the roof.
“What is it?” she asked.
“The second one.”
“What about it?”
“It’s open.”
She looked again. One narrow pane tilted outward, catching the sunlight differently from the others.
“Is that unusual?”
“No.”
He lowered his gaze to her, and smiled at the expression on her face.
“I’m taking a picture.”
“Oh.”
“With my phone. Not my mind.” He held it up.
“I can see that now.”
She had arrived expecting a moment of delicate recognition, some agreement about how Monday had left them. Instead he was interested in a window. It was unexpectedly helpful.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello.”
He took the picture, put the phone away, and asked whether she wanted to go through the market first.
“Don’t we usually—” She stopped.
“What?”
“Nothing. I was going to say we usually went around the back first.”
“We did.”
“Because of the record stall.”
“It’s gone.”
“Of course it is.”
He glanced toward the side street. “There’s a shop selling expensive dog collars there now.”
“That’s quite a change of mood.”
“I don’t know. Some of the records were expensive.”
They went in through the front.
Inside, the market was cool and busy. Light came through the high glass roof in pale squares. There were familiar smells—flowers, bread, coffee—and unfamiliar stalls where she remembered other things. Annelise slowed to look at a display of handmade bowls, then nearly walked into a woman carrying a long bunch of branches.
Malcolm moved aside. “Still thinking about the record stall?”
“I bought a terrible album there because you said the cover was interesting.”
“I said the cover was interesting. You decided the music would follow.”
“It didn’t.”
“No.”
“You let me play it twice.”
“I was young.”
She laughed. It felt good to remember something small, something that did not require either of them to establish who had been hurt most by its ending.
At a produce stall he stopped to examine a basket of chilies. The handwritten sign promised heat with three exclamation marks.
“You cook with those?” she asked.
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes enough to buy twelve?”
“They’re insurance against my gardening.”
“You garden?”
“I put plants outside and hope they interpret the gesture correctly.”
She picked up a small red chili. “What went wrong?”
“This year? Aphids, mostly. Last year I overwatered them. The year before I bought something that turned out to be decorative.”
“Did you eat it?”
“No. I can read eventually.”
He bought four chilies, accepting the stallholder’s warning with a seriousness that made Annelise suspicious.
“You’re going to use too many.”
“Probably.”
“On purpose?”
“Only the first time.”
He put the paper bag into the pocket of his jacket. She liked discovering this about him: a modest, repeated failure he had neither corrected nor converted into a charming story about determination. He simply kept trying to grow chilies because he wanted to.
They moved on. At a stand selling small tools, Malcolm paused to examine a clamp. Annelise leaned against the neighboring table and watched his hands test the movement. He did not touch things delicately exactly, but with attention. The tiny nick on his knuckle had healed to a pale line.
“Work?” she asked.
“Possibly. Tobin says I buy clamps because I don’t collect stamps.”
“Tobin is your partner?”
“Yes. Quaye. We’ve worked together for years.”
“Does he collect anything?”
“Quiet. He’s very disappointed in the supply.”
“Do you make the same things?”
“We both do the work. He likes the planning end more than I do. I like the difficult fitting jobs more than he does. We overlap enough to annoy each other productively.”
“Sounds like a partnership.”
“It is. Half each. No mysterious senior man behind a desk.”
He put the clamp down.
“Not buying it?”
“I have six.”
“That seems a reasonable argument.”
“Seven, if I find the one I lost.”
They passed a stall of old maps, and he stopped so abruptly that she took two more steps before noticing.
“Oh, no,” he said.
“What?”
“That’s wrong.”
She looked at the framed map he was studying. “The map?”
“The label.”
The label identified a large lake incorrectly. Annelise would not have known, and said so.
“I would,” he said.
“You sound offended.”
“Only because I got that wrong in a quiz once and now the knowledge occupies space I could use for something else.”
“What sort of quiz?”
“A pub quiz. Mostly geography that should never be necessary in daily life.”
“Do you win?”
“Not as often as I deserve.”
“That’s a useful measure.”
He grinned at her, and she felt an answering warmth low in her stomach. He had always been attractive to her. The realization that he was attractive now, in new ways and with this older face, came with none of the safety of remembering.
At the next stall, a handwritten sign offered three puzzle attempts for a dollar. Several small wooden shapes lay in shallow trays. The task, according to the sign, was to make a square without leaving a gap.
Malcolm stopped.
“You’re interested?” Annelise asked.
“It’s simple.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
He looked at her, then put a dollar in the tin. The stallholder, occupied with another customer, waved them toward the trays.
Malcolm chose a puzzle and began moving the pieces. Annelise watched for half a minute before recognizing the dangerous confidence she had heard beside the map.
“That one won’t fit there,” she said.
“It will if I turn this.”
He turned it. A small triangular gap remained.
“Interesting,” she said.
“Give me a minute.”
She folded her arms, enjoying herself. He tried another arrangement, then another. The pieces clicked softly against the tray.
“Your professional reputation is safe,” she said. “I won’t tell Tobin.”
“He’d solve it in ten seconds and be unbearable.”
“Would he?”
“No. He’d refuse to play and still be unbearable.”
Annelise leaned closer. “May I?”
He moved his hand aside. She turned one piece, shifted another, and immediately created two gaps instead of one.
“Excellent,” he said.
“I’m exploring.”
“Take your time.”
They stood shoulder to shoulder over the tray. She could feel the warmth of his arm through her sleeve. Their shared failure became more enjoyable than solving it would have been, though neither was ready to concede that aloud.
At last the stallholder returned, glanced down, and lifted two pieces. He exchanged their places, then turned the smaller one.
The square appeared.
Annelise stared. Malcolm let out a short, offended laugh.
“That little piece goes the other way,” the stallholder said.
“That seems unfair,” Annelise said.
“It’s written on the sign. Pieces may be turned.”
They looked. It was.
Outside the stall, Malcolm shook his head. “A dollar well spent.”
“On humility?”
“I wasn’t going to call it that.”
She laughed, and he caught her eye with the pleased expression of someone who had decided losing could be entertaining in the right company. She had not been useful. Neither had he. They had both stayed until they wanted to leave.
They bought drinks from a stand near the far entrance and carried them into the courtyard. A few metal tables stood beneath an awning. Malcolm chose one in the shade, then asked if she preferred the sun.
“Shade’s good.”
He sat. She set her bag beneath her chair and stretched her legs carefully into the space beside his.
“Did you have a good week?” he asked.
“I went dress shopping with Cecily.”
“Successful?”
“The dress was successful. My behavior required adjustment.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“I made a list.”
“That sounds like you.”
“Apparently it sounded like me more than was needed.”
“What did she want?”
“Somebody to look at her in the dress.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. Eventually.”
She stirred her drink with the wooden stick, then stopped because there was nothing in it to dissolve.
“She looks happy,” she said. “I like Hugo. He doesn’t seem to be trying to win every disagreement by pretending they aren’t having one.”
“That would be hard with Cecily.”
“Very.”
He leaned back. Sunlight reached the edge of the awning and lit one shoulder. She noticed a faint crease beside his mouth that had not been there when they were young. It made his face more his own somehow, less available to the version she carried.
“What’s the photography?” she asked. “The window.”
“A hobby.”
“Since when?”
“A few years. I bought a secondhand camera after getting tired of trying to make my phone do things it didn’t want to do.”
“Like what?”
“Make a boring wall look as interesting as it does to me.”
“Does the camera help?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s just a boring wall.”
“Can I see?”
He took out his phone and opened a small selection of pictures. There was a painted doorway with light falling across the step, a row of rain-dark parking meters, the shadow of a fire escape crossing a brick wall. Nothing spectacular had happened in any of them. She found herself looking longer than she expected.
“This one,” she said.
“The chairs?”
Three plastic chairs stood behind a closed restaurant, each a different color, all facing the same blank wall.
“They look as though they’re waiting for an announcement.”
He laughed. “I thought that too.”
“What was the announcement?”
“Probably that the wall was still there.”
She handed the phone back. “I like them.”
“Thank you.”
He did not dismiss the compliment or explain the faults. She liked that too.
Beyond the courtyard, a narrow alley opened between two buildings. They followed it when they finished their drinks. The bricks were old, the ground uneven. Annelise stepped around a puddle left by somebody washing down a stall and brushed his arm with hers.
Neither moved away immediately.
At the end of the alley they emerged onto a quieter street. Malcolm stopped to look back at a faded painted sign high on the wall. Annelise took out her phone.
“May I take your picture?”
He turned. “Why?”
“Because I’d like to.”
She nearly added that he did not have to, that it was silly, that she was only interested in the light. But she had asked a simple question, and he was entitled to answer it without receiving an escape route disguised as an explanation.
“All right,” he said.
“Do you mind standing there?”
“Where I am?”
“Yes.”
“I can manage that.”
She lifted the phone. He looked at the lens for a moment, then at her above it. That was the expression she caught: a little amused, a little guarded, wholly present.
Her hand was not quite steady.
“Do I get to inspect it?” he asked.
“Of course.”
She showed him. His shoulder was slightly crooked in the frame, and a strip of bright sky cut across the upper corner. It was not a particularly good photograph in technical terms. It was a photograph of him on a Saturday when he had chosen to spend the morning with her.
“I look suspicious,” he said.
“You asked why.”
“That was curiosity.”
“Your curiosity has a suspicious face.”
He looked from the screen to her. “Keep it.”
“I was hoping to.”
She put the phone away.
They walked toward the main road. At the crossing, a crowd gathered around them, and someone shifted between her and the curb. Malcolm’s hand touched hers, briefly, as he moved closer to make room. She turned her fingers enough that their knuckles rested together.
The light changed.
For three steps, perhaps four, their hands remained in contact. Then the sidewalk widened and they separated without comment. Her palm felt absurdly awake.
“Are you free next Friday?” he asked.
“The twenty-first?”
“Yes. Quiz night. Imani usually comes, and Tobin if he hasn’t promised to be somewhere else.”
“Imani?”
“My cousin. She knows everything about medicines and nothing about mountains, which we keep trying to persuade her is a correctable problem.”
“Does she want it corrected?”
“No.”
“Wise woman.”
“You could join us.”
Annelise looked at him. “Would that be all right?”
“I just asked.”
“I mean with your friends.”
“They’re capable of meeting another person.”
“I know.”
His expression softened a little. “It isn’t an examination.”
“I wasn’t thinking that.”
He waited.
“I was thinking it slightly.”
“They’ll want answers to questions. Preferably correct ones. That’s the main requirement.”
She smiled. “I can be wrong with conviction.”
“Then you’ll fit in.”
At the corner where they had met, he gave her the place and time. She put them into her calendar, Friday at seven, and checked that she had the right name of the pub. The act made the invitation feel real in a way that thinking about it could not.
“Thank you for today,” she said.
“I enjoyed it.”
“So did I.”
For a moment neither moved. She could see the pulse at the base of his throat above his collar. The desire to touch him was so plain it almost made her laugh. She had spent much of adulthood believing uncertainty complicated desire; apparently it could also make it wonderfully specific.
He glanced toward the market. “I should get these home before I convince myself I need more.”
“The chilies?”
“Yes.”
“Try fewer than four.”
“No promises.”
She laughed then, and he smiled back, and they parted without a kiss. As she walked toward her car, she found she was not disappointed so much as interested in the exact shape of Friday: a room, a table, the people who knew him now, and a chair he had asked her to occupy.