VI. THE LOVERS

He always arrived before her — as he always had, back when he hadn't yet learned to count the days that didn't require him to be first; as he had that winter when they first entered this restaurant and she asked to move tables because people were walking behind her; as he had all the years that followed, even after she stopped asking to move and simply sat where he led her. By then he already knew that she didn't like cilantro, that on airplanes she pretended not to be afraid of takeoff, that before an important conversation she would begin rearranging things that were already in order. He knew everything about her that could be known without asking a single question — and it was this ignorance, disguised as familiarity, that remained the one thing he could never name.

Tonight he arrived at quarter to seven. Outside, a fine drizzle fell — not quite rain, but the air already smelled of wet stone and that particular dampness that seeps through a coat before you have time to raise your collar. At the entrance, people shook invisible water from their shoulders, as if brushing off the evening itself.

The maître d' recognized him immediately — that particular movement of the lips that says you are remembered. "Your table is free." "Good." And then the maître d' looked at him a moment longer than usual, and that look was no longer recognition but warning. "Unfortunately, tonight..." He didn't understand at first. And when he did, he saw: a woman sat by the window, her elbow resting on the edge of his table — as if it had never been his. Her bag occupied the neighboring chair, and beside it sat a glass of water, almost untouched, as if she had just arrived and hadn't yet decided whether to stay.

He looked at her. At a stranger in his place. And for the first time in twenty-three years, he understood that the spot he had chosen for her could be occupied by someone else, and the world would not collapse. The world stood as it had always stood, and even the maître d' did not look concerned.

He said: "It's fine." And he was surprised at how easily the word came out. Not because he was forgiving someone's oversight, but because he suddenly realized that this "it's fine" was the truth.

He sat at the neighboring table — with his back to the room, where she always sat so she wouldn't have to see who was walking behind her. And as he sat down, he caught himself doing something for the first time: he wasn't choosing a place for her. He was choosing a place for himself. And it was uncomfortable, because the light fell directly into his eyes, and from there he couldn't see the door, but he stayed.

She entered a few minutes later. He recognized her footsteps before he saw her face — those same footsteps that over twenty-three years had become as familiar as his own heartbeat. And in that recognition there was no joy, only the precision with which memory reproduces a learned movement, even when the soul has long stopped participating in the dance.

She crossed the room, and he looked up. Drops of rain glistened in her hair — the very drops he had meant to notice but hadn't, because his hand was already reaching for her coat to hang it on the back of her chair, and he did this automatically, as he had done thousands of times, without ever considering whether she wanted him to.

"Have you been waiting long?" she asked.

"No," he said, and it was a lie, because he had always been waiting for her, and she knew it, and he knew she knew it, and still they both pretended that waiting wasn't required.

She looked at the woman by the window. "Is it taken?"

"I see that."

"I could have asked them to move."

"Why?"

"It's our table."

She looked at him with that long, studying smile he had learned to decode as "you said something wrong, but I won't discuss it." "It was our table," she said.

He smiled back, and the smile was empty, like an envelope with no letter inside.

She sat down. The maître d' approached, and he said, "Still water, please," as he always did, but she interrupted: "I'll order for myself. Sparkling, please." It was so unexpected that for a moment he lost the thread of the conversation and simply watched her hands, which rested on the menu — and which, he suddenly noticed, were without a ring.

"You took off your ring," he said.

She looked down at her hands. "Oh, that. I was just thinking."

She picked up the ring from the table, turned it in her fingers, put it back on. But the pause had been too long, and in that pause he heard what she hadn't said.

"I know what you're going to order," he said, trying to return to the familiar rhythm. "The soup."

"Not tonight," she replied, and for the first time he had no answer.

"What then?"

"I don't know," she said. And that "I don't know" was the first honest word of the evening.

The maître d' brought the water. Set the bottle beside her. Glanced at the clock above the bar and said, "It's seven-fifteen now; I'll bring your order when you're ready." And hearing this, he instinctively touched the pocket of his vest, where his old pocket watch lay — the one that hadn't run for eleven years, since that winter when she had wanted to visit a friend and he had said "later," and she hadn't gone, and they had made up, and he had forgotten to wind it, and then decided he would never wind it again. And the hands stood at 7:15 — as they had all those years, as if time in their relationship had stopped that very evening, but neither of them had ever dared to admit it.

"They still don't run?" she asked.

He looked up. "You remember?"

"You've carried them for eleven years."

"I didn't think you noticed."

"I notice more than you think," she said, and in her voice there was that faint bitterness that appears when a person speaks a truth you don't want to hear.

He closed the watch and put it back in his pocket. Outside the window, on the stone sill, sat a red bird — too bright for this gray, wet evening, as if someone had accidentally splashed a drop of paint across the glass. He noticed it only because the woman at the neighboring table raised her hand and traced her finger along the glass, and the bird did not move, did not fly away, simply looked into the room, as one looks who expects no answer.

"Look," he said, nodding toward the window.

She turned. Saw the bird. And said nothing.

The studio smelled of clay and wet wood — that particular scent she had not loved at first, but only after it had seeped into her skin, her hair, her clothes, and ceased to be merely a smell and became an extension of herself. Four figures stood on the large table: three already finished, without faces, but with hands she had shaped with particular care, because hands remember more than faces; faces can be changed, but hands betray habit, tremor, weariness. The fourth figure remained headless — she had long been unable to decide whether a head was needed at all, or whether this emptiness was the true face of the one she had been shaping all these years.

She ran her palm across the clay, and a gray trace remained on her skin — the very trace she always washed off with difficulty, because clay seeps into pores the way habits do, and even after a shower there remains the sensation of holding something still unborn in your hands.

Her phone lay on the windowsill. He had called an hour ago, but she hadn't answered. Then a message came: "Will you be there tonight?" — a question that over twenty-three years had become as ritualized as "how was your day" or "what should we order." She read it and didn't reply, because the answer was both too simple and too complex.

On a chair hung a dress — the one she planned to wear to her first solo exhibition in three weeks. She had named the exhibition "Faceless" — the title had come on its own, as things come that you carry inside for a long time before daring to speak them aloud. On the poster was only her name. Without her husband's surname, without his title, without the word "wife" in parentheses. Just a name she had opened on her computer several times and closed again, because each time it seemed too large, too loud, as if she were shouting in an empty room.

She walked to the mirror, which stood against the wall, leaning against boxes. The glass was covered with a thin layer of clay dust — the same dust that lay on everything in the studio, like ash settling on objects after long silence. She wiped a spot with her palm, and in the reflection her hand appeared first, then her shoulder, then her face — and suddenly, for an instant, his face appeared beside hers. She pulled her hand away, and the reflection was empty again — only her, only the empty room, only the dust settling back onto the glass.

"Honestly," she said softly, and laughed — a nervous, dry laugh that wasn't a laugh at all, only an attempt to release tension, as one shakes off numbness after a long sleep.

A bird struck the glass. She started and turned. On the windowsill sat a red bird — the same one she had seen in the restaurant? Or another? She walked to the window, opened it, and cold air rushed into the studio, but the bird didn't fly away. It watched her with the same fixed attention with which the woman at the restaurant window had watched the evening city.

"Well, stay then," she said, and closed the window.

Her phone vibrated again. She looked: he had written, "I'll come to you after seven." She typed "Don't," erased it, typed "I'll be late tonight," erased it, typed "My exhibition is in three weeks," erased the period, erased the whole message, and put the phone face down.

Twenty-three years, and she couldn't tell the man with whom she had lived more than half her adult life that her exhibition was in three weeks. Because she knew what would follow: "Why didn't you tell me?" — "Are you sure?" — "Do you really need this?" — and if she answered correctly, he would say, "I'm just worried." And he would indeed be worried. That was the problem. He was neither cruel nor indifferent. He was always there. He brought medicine when she was ill, remembered her friends' birthdays, picked her up from the studio when she worked late, and always knew where the spare key was. He was so close that she had stopped seeing the distance between them.

She returned to the table and picked up the fourth figure. Added a neck, shoulders, the line of a jaw. And suddenly, without noticing how it happened, she began to shape a face. The forehead, the nose, the cheekbones, that small furrow between the brows that appeared when he read. She stopped when the face before her was his — without eyes. She took her tool, added eyes, and immediately erased them. What remained was an empty face. She placed the figure beside the other three — all four looking in different directions, and none of them looking at her.

The bird was no longer on the windowsill.

She arrived at the old apartment to find him already there. He was taking books from the top shelf, and two boxes stood on the floor.

"You could have told me," she said.

"I did tell you," he replied without turning.

"You wrote."

"That still counts."

She took off her coat. "For you, perhaps."

He turned and looked at her. "You're wearing that shirt today."

She looked down. "Yes."

"I thought you'd thrown it away."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "You haven't worn it in a long time."

She said nothing. He picked up a book, then put it back. "How's the exhibition?"

She stopped. "What?"

"Your exhibition. At the studio."

She looked at him with the attention of someone seeing him for the first time. "You know about it?"

"I know you've been preparing something."

"How?"

"There was a mockup on your phone. You left it open."

She remembered: three weeks ago, she had shown him a photo of her new work, and he had said "Interesting." That was all. She had thought the conversation was over.

"The exhibition is in three weeks," she said.

He nodded. "I know."

"No," she said. "You don't know."

He put down the book and turned to face her. "What should I know?"

She looked at him. Almost said it. Almost. But instead she asked: "Do you like my work?"

He paused. "Of course."

"Why are you silent?"

"I'm thinking what to say."

She turned away. "Exactly."

"I don't want to cancel the exhibition," she said.

"I didn't ask you to."

"Not yet."

He looked up. She was surprised she had said it. "I could help," he said.

She smiled. "Of course."

"What?"

"Nothing."

He watched her. "You're saying that again."

"What?"

"Nothing."

She walked to the window and looked at his reflection in the glass — at the man she knew so well she didn't need to turn around. She knew how he stood, how he tilted his head when he didn't understand, how he held his hands when he wanted to appear calm. And suddenly she turned and said:

"Have you ever asked me what I want?"

He frowned. "Of course."

"What, specifically?"

He was silent. She waited.

"Where to go," he said.

"No."

"What to order."

"No."

"What to buy."

"No."

He stopped. She stopped too.

"Then what?" he asked.

She looked at him for a long moment. "I don't know."

And that "I don't know" was the first honest word in a very long time.

In the entryway hung a mirror, large and heavy-framed, with black spots spreading along its lower edge where time had eaten the silver. She had covered it with a sheet years ago, and he had never asked why. Now he asked: "Why is it covered?"

"I don't know," she said.

"Did you hang it yourself?"

"Probably."

"When?"

"I don't remember."

He took the edge of the fabric and pulled it away. Dust rose into the air and settled on their shoulders. They both stepped back, and then they looked — first at themselves, then at each other. And in the mirror they stood side by side, but these were no longer the people who had come here twenty-three years ago. These were tired, familiar, almost strange faces, and if he had seen them for the first time, he would not have said they were married; he would not have said that the man knew which pills the woman took; he would not have said that the woman could tell from the sound of a key in the lock what kind of mood he was in.

"We were good together," she said.

He looked at her. "Were?"

"I don't know."

He smiled. "Again."

She smiled too. "Yes."

He sat on the edge of the old sofa. "I really did choose you. Every day."

"I know," she said, staying by the mirror.

"Then what's wrong?"

She looked at him through the reflection. "I don't know if I chose."

He said nothing. "I agreed," she continued. "That's not the same thing."

"Why didn't you say something?"

She turned to him. "Did you ask?"

He wanted to answer, but couldn't.

She walked to the table, where keys lay scattered, an old photograph, a receipt, two coins, and a small box. He picked it up, opened it — inside lay a silver ring, the one he had given her at the very beginning. "You kept it," he said. "Why?"

She looked at the ring, and for a moment her face lost its expression, as if she were trying to remember why she had kept it all these years. "I don't know," she said.

He closed the box. "You have a lot of 'I don't knows.'" "Today — yes."

He stood and walked to the dresser where his old pocket watch lay. "It's been here all this time?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"You left it."

"Eleven years ago."

"Then eleven years."

He opened the lid. 7:15. "You never wound it?" he asked.

"No."

"Why?"

She looked at him with that same long, searching gaze. "It's your watch."

He held it in his palm. "I thought you'd thrown it away."

"I thought you'd come back for it."

They both laughed — not loudly, not happily, but with that dry laugh that arises when twenty-three years can be contained in one absurd thing: each waiting for the other to do what either could have done at any moment. The laughter faded, and silence remained.

She sat down across from him. "I can cancel the exhibition," she said calmly. "If you want."

"I don't want that," he said.

"You don't yet know what it means."

"Yes, I do."

"No," she said. "I can cancel. We can leave everything as it was. Really. Everything can still be as it was."

He looked at her, and suddenly he saw how simple it would be: no need to tear down walls, pack suitcases, call anyone; just cancel the exhibition, return to the studio, come on Thursdays with flowers, sit with his back to the room, pretend nothing had changed. And one day they would die without having done anything wrong.

It was more frightening than he had expected.

He looked at her face, her hands, her ring, at the person he had called closest for twenty-three years. And for the first time it occurred to him that closeness is not the right to know everything. Sometimes closeness is the ability not to know.

"No," he said. "Don't cancel it."

She looked away. "All right."

He stood by the dresser, the watch in his hand. He opened the lid, placed his thumb on the winding stem. She watched him. "What are you doing?"

"I don't know," he said, and in this "I don't know" there was not uncertainty, but precisely that freedom he had denied himself for eleven years.

He turned the stem. The mechanism inside resisted dryly — one turn, two, three. And then — a click. Then another. He brought the watch to his ear: tick, pause, tick. The second hand began to move.

"It's running," she said.

"Yes," he said, and there was no joy in his voice, only surprise that things we consider dead can come to life if we stop fearing them.

He put the watch in his pocket. Something moved outside the window. They both went to the glass and saw the red bird — the same one that had sat on the sill at the restaurant, the same one that had struck the glass in the studio. He looked at her. "Have you seen it before?" he asked.

"In the studio."

"Today?"

"Yes."

"I saw it in the restaurant," he said.

She said nothing. The bird turned its head, and they stood side by side — for the first time all evening, side by side rather than across from each other. "Red?" he asked.

"Red," she answered.

The bird flew away — not far, simply disappeared beyond the edge of the building, as if it had fulfilled its role and was no longer needed as a witness.

He picked up the box of books. "I should go."

She nodded. He reached the door and stopped.

"Will you come to the exhibition?" she asked.

He turned. "If you invite me."

She looked at him. "I thought you'd come anyway."

He smiled. "I used to think so too."

She opened the door. He left. After a few seconds she heard his footsteps on the stairs, but she didn't count which floor he would stop on, as she used to do. She returned to the room and looked at herself in the mirror. Then she took off her ring and placed it on the dresser. She thought about it. And put it back on — not because she had changed her mind, but because she hadn't yet decided.

In the studio, a red bird remained on the windowsill — or perhaps another one. The digital clock read 7:16.

He walked through the city. In his pocket, the watch ticked. Several times he caught himself wanting to take it out and check the time, but he didn't. At the traffic light, green appeared, and he walked forward into the city that had hardly changed in twenty-three years. And suddenly he thought that was probably a good thing. Then he realized that for the first time in a long while, he could be wrong. And he didn't fix it.

Next in the cycle

VII. THE CHARIOT
— the seventh novella in "The Fool's Journey" cycle, currently in development.