The cinema clock was seven minutes slow. Delia noticed because she had checked the time on her phone just before coming in, and because Soren was looking at the clock with an expression that suggested seven minutes might matter.
“Have I come at a bad time?” she asked.
“No. I’m nearly done.”
He stood behind the counter with a sheet of paper in one hand. His assistant was beside him, pointing at a line. Delia moved out of the doorway while two people came in. She had known he needed an hour downstairs this afternoon. She had told him it was fine. There was no reason to feel disappointed that work looked like work when she arrived.
He finished the exchange and came around the counter to kiss her.
“Drive all right?”
“Better than last Sunday.”
“Good.”
He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers, a brief private gesture in the public room. Her irritation loosened. She could not have said what she was irritated about without sounding unfair, and she didn’t want to begin the day by trying.
Upstairs, he had cleared the table. She put her bag on a chair and took out the pages she had brought to work on while he was busy. He looked at them.
“Proposal?”
“Nearly finished.”
“Can I read it?”
She hesitated, then handed him the first page. He read while she opened the window. The room was warmer than last weekend. Below, someone was walking past with a radio playing from a bag, the tune rising briefly before the traffic swallowed it.
“I’d understand what I was coming to,” he said.
“That’s the aim.”
“This bit sounds less like you.” He pointed to a sentence halfway down.
She read it. “That’s the bit I thought sounded professional.”
“It does.”
“Not a compliment, then.”
“I didn’t say that.”
She took the page back and drew a line through three words. He watched, apparently alarmed that his opinion had resulted in an immediate change.
“The sentence still needs an end,” she said.
“I was hoping that wasn’t my part.”
“No. You’ve done enough damage.”
He laughed and leaned over to kiss the top of her head. She caught his hand before he could move away. For a few seconds she stayed with her cheek against his fingers, the unfinished page beneath her other hand. Then a car horn sounded in the street and she let him go, reaching for the pen again.
“You don’t have to—”
“I know. They’re bad words.”
He smiled. They went out for lunch before he had to return downstairs. She had chosen not to bring a weekend bag, because she could not stay tonight; a museum booking needed her early tomorrow. The absence of the bag seemed to make the hours run faster. She kept noticing the time, then resenting herself for noticing.
At lunch he told her about a problem with a film booking that had taken several calls to solve. She listened, then asked a question he had already answered. He stopped.
“Am I boring you?”
“No. Sorry. I’m thinking about something else.”
“Work?”
“Sort of.”
She should tell him now, she thought. She had saved the job listing a week ago, looked at it twice since, and told herself both times that looking was not a decision. That was true. It was also becoming a way to keep the thought somewhere she didn’t have to hear another person’s response to it.
Before she could speak, a server came to clear their plates. Soren checked the time and said he needed to be downstairs soon. She told him she would explain later. The delay was small enough to feel reasonable.
During his hour of work, she tried to sit in the apartment with the proposal spread out in front of her. She changed the sentence he had disliked, then began listening for his steps. Every sound from the landing made her look up. After ten minutes she put the pages in her bag and went out, telling him at the counter that she would be back before he finished.
At a small public garden a few streets away, she found a bench with a view of neither the sea nor the cinema. She read the proposal there. Two women were tending a bed of plants, arguing in friendly voices about whether something would grow. One was certain it would. The other said it hadn’t last year. Delia listened until she realized she had reached the bottom of the page without reading any of it.
She tried again. This time she read aloud under her breath. The opening was better now, the invitation less stiff. She marked a place where she had repeated the same point and crossed out the weaker sentence. A gust of wind lifted the pages; she trapped them against her knees.
One of the women looked over. “Work?”
“Trying to be.”
“On a Sunday. That’s a shame.”
Delia smiled without agreeing. She liked working on this. That was the problem with the afternoon: she had brought something she wanted to do and could not settle to it because she kept counting how little time remained for something else she wanted.
When the women left, she stayed another few minutes. Then she walked back by a different street and saw a notice for a room to rent in an upstairs window. She slowed, read the small print, and immediately felt foolish. A room with a shared kitchen was not a future. It was a room with a shared kitchen. She kept walking.
Back at the apartment, she opened the job listing again. The salary remained exactly as unhelpful as before. The duties were reasonable, the work familiar, the location convenient. None of it made her want the job itself.
She closed the listing and opened a map instead, looking at the distance between the visitor center and the cinema. It was much shorter than the distance she had driven this morning. That was the entire appeal, laid out in a blue line.
When Soren came back, she was standing at the window.
“Done,” he said. “All yours until you go.”
She turned. He looked pleased, a little flushed from the stairs. The words made her want to abandon the conversation and spend the afternoon touching him. But she had begun to feel secretive about something she hadn’t even done.
“I’ve been looking at a job,” she said.
He put his hand on the chair back, his fingers closing around the worn wood. “Here?”
“Near here. At the visitor center.”
“Have you applied?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
She could not tell whether the sound was relief. She wished she hadn’t started with the job title, as if she were announcing a plan that had already passed its difficult stages.
“I was tired after the drive last week,” she said. “And it came up when I was searching for something else. I looked.”
He sat. She stayed by the window until she realized she was making him look up at her, then took the chair opposite.
“Is it something you’d want?” he asked.
“Parts of it. I know how to do it.”
“That’s different.”
“Yes.”
She turned the phone so he could see the listing. He read it with the same concentration he had given the proposal, but his expression changed when he reached the salary.
“That’s less.”
“Quite a bit less.”
“And the evening program?”
“I know.”
He pushed the phone back toward her. “Delia, I don’t want you giving that up for me.”
“I haven’t given anything up.”
“I’m saying I wouldn’t ask you to.”
“You haven’t.”
They looked at each other. She had thought he might be pleased by the idea that she wanted to be nearer. Or worried in a way they could discuss. She hadn’t expected to feel as though she had brought him a dangerous object he wanted removed from the room.
“It’s a long drive,” she said.
“I know it is.”
“Six hours today. I like seeing you. I’d like to see you without spending half the day getting here and back.”
“So would I.”
“Then that’s what I’m trying to talk about.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “By taking a job you don’t want?”
“I didn’t say I was taking it.”
“You sound as though you’re considering it.”
“I am considering things. That’s allowed.”
The last sentence came out with a hard edge. She heard it and wished she could soften the tone without withdrawing the point. He sat back, his hands flat on his thighs.
“I won’t be the reason you abandon something you’ve worked for,” he said.
“You don’t get to decide what my reasons are.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then say what you mean.”
He looked toward the window. A group of people passed below, their voices briefly loud in the pause. Delia wished she had shut it. She wished they were outside, walking, where a silence might be allowed to move with them instead of sitting between the chairs.
“I’ve done the thing where my work comes first,” he said. “I know how it ends.”
“This isn’t your old marriage.”
“I know that.”
“I’m not asking you to approve a resignation. I wanted to tell you I was looking. And that the drive is harder than it sounds when we’re making plans.”
He nodded once, but she could see that he was still caught on the first part. She picked up the phone and locked the screen.
“Maybe it was a stupid idea,” she said.
“I didn’t say stupid.”
“No. You said abandon.”
That landed. He looked at her, and she could see him reconsidering the word. She was glad, then immediately tired of being glad about winning a point in a conversation she had hoped would bring them closer.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was too much.”
She nodded. “It was.”
He reached toward her hand on the table, stopped, then let his own hand rest beside it. She moved her fingers away to push the phone into her bag. The action looked like a refusal. It hadn’t begun as one, but she did not reach back.
They went out after that. She suggested it because the room had become unbearable, and he agreed too quickly. They walked along a street away from the water, passing houses with small gardens and windows open to the afternoon. Soren pointed out a place where the pavement dipped. Delia stepped around it. They had become exquisitely considerate about obstacles in the path.
At a crossing, he said, “I am coming next Saturday.”
“I know.”
“I don’t expect you to do all the traveling.”
“Good.”
He glanced at her. “That sounded worse than I meant.”
“It sounded like something I’m glad to hear.”
She meant it, though her voice was still flat. They waited for a car to pass, then crossed. On the other side, he took her hand. She let him. The contact did not resolve the conversation, but she had missed it through the last few blocks.
They reached a quiet street with a row of low shops. One window was covered with announcements for local groups. Delia stopped to look at a flyer for an evening event, mostly because she had been thinking so hard about her own invitation. It was badly printed, with the time almost hidden at the bottom.
“They’ll get nobody,” she said.
Soren followed her gaze. “They usually get a few.”
“How do people find out when to come?”
“They ask each other.”
“That doesn’t help someone new.”
He looked at the flyer again. “No. It doesn’t.”
She moved on. At the next corner he asked whether she would have to work every weekend if she took the visitor center job. The question was reasonable, but she was tired of having the listing examined as though it had been the only thing she brought to him.
“Some. I haven’t asked. Because I haven’t applied.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He stopped walking. She turned back after another step.
“I’m trying to understand what you’re imagining,” he said.
For a moment she could answer him without being angry. “Not having to leave before I’ve properly arrived.”
He looked down the street, then back at her. “I want that too.”
“Then don’t make me feel foolish for wanting it.”
“I don’t think you’re foolish.”
She nodded, accepting the statement because she believed it. Believing it did not tell her how to shorten the road or make the idea of a move less uneven. They began walking again, more slowly this time.
By the time they returned, she needed to leave. She collected the proposal pages from the table, checking that she had them all. Soren stood nearby, watching her put them in order.
“Finish that,” he said quietly.
She looked up. “I intend to.”
He shut his eyes briefly. “That came out wrong as well.”
“I know you mean well.”
He opened his eyes at that. She heard how little comfort the sentence offered and could not find a better one in time.
Downstairs, he walked her to the car. She put her bag on the passenger seat, then turned to him. He kissed her, and she kissed him back, still wanting him. That made the unsettled feeling harder to place. It would have been easier if one bad conversation had extinguished everything else.
“Call me when you get home?” he asked.
“I’ll text. I’ll be tired.”
“Of course.”
She touched his arm before getting in. On the drive, she thought about his face when he said abandon. She thought about the phone screen, the lower salary, the room full of maps she wanted to make possible. Then she thought about his own calendar, his apartment over the cinema, the way she had opened a map to see how she might fit closer to all of it.
At the next safe place to stop, she put the phone in the glove compartment. There were still two hours of road ahead, and no useful answer she could reach by staring at it.