The Delacroix-Chen Dinner

Marguerite found the good tablecloth folded in the linen closet behind a stack of beach towels, smelling faintly of cedar. She shook it out over the dining table while Wen argued with the oven, which had been running twenty degrees cold since March.

"I'm compensating," he said. "Four twenty-five instead of four hundred. It's fine."

"It's never fine. Remember the birthday chicken."

"That was a different oven."

"That was this oven, in a different mood."

He laughed and went back to the potatoes, slicing them thin the way his mother had, layering them with cream and thyme from the pot on the windowsill that had somehow survived the winter. Marguerite counted out forks. Six of them, though only Priya and Dave and Sam were coming, plus the two of them—she'd miscounted, put one back.

At six-fifteen she changed her shirt twice and settled on the green one. Wen was still in his work clothes, sleeves rolled, a smear of cream on his forearm.

"You're not changing?"

"They've seen me worse."

She wiped the cream off with her thumb anyway.

Priya arrived first with a bottle of wine and an apology for Dave, who was parking. Sam came ten minutes late with a store-bought pie and no apology at all, which was very Sam. They ate in the kitchen because the dining room was cold, elbows close, passing the potatoes twice around.

Dave told a long story about his neighbor's fence. Marguerite laughed too hard at the wrong part and Wen looked at her across the table, amused, and she looked back.

At eleven they stood at the door waving into the dark street. Then Wen ran the water hot and Marguerite dried, and neither of them said much, and the plates went back into the cupboard where they lived.


Marcus was arranging chairs when Priya came in from the garage carrying two folding stools they'd bought years ago and used maybe four times.

"We only need six seats," he said.

"Seven. Dana's bringing her sister."

He stopped. "Since when?"

"Since this morning. I texted you."

He checked his phone, found the message beneath three others he'd never opened, and set up the extra stool without comment. Priya went back to the kitchen, where the rice was doing something suspicious. She lifted the lid, decided it was fine, and turned down the heat anyway.

The chicken had been marinating since noon. Marcus took over the grill because the grill was the one appliance he considered his, and stood outside in the September cold in a fleece, turning thighs with tongs and checking the time on his phone. Inside, Priya cut cucumbers into rounds and put out the good olives, the ones in the jar they'd been saving for an occasion that never arrived. This counted.

"Do we have wine glasses for seven?" she called.

"We have wine glasses for four and juice glasses for everyone else."

"That's fine."

Dana arrived first, twelve minutes early, with her sister Kate and a bottle of something Australian. Then the Okonkwos, then Ravi alone because Simone had a work thing. The kitchen filled up in the way kitchens do, everyone standing where the food was despite an entire empty living room.

Marcus brought in the chicken and someone clapped, which embarrassed him. They ate at the table with the extra stool and no one minded. Kate turned out to be a hydrologist and talked about aquifer depletion for eleven minutes, and it was more interesting than anyone expected.

At eleven-thirty the last of them left. Priya loaded the dishwasher. Marcus dried the platter by hand because it didn't fit.

"That went well," he said.

"Kate was good."

"Kate was great."


Marisol found the good tablecloth at the back of the linen closet, folded around a sachet that had lost its smell years ago. She shook it out over the dining table while Dev counted chairs in the next room, then dragged the desk chair in from the office to make six.

"It doesn't match," he said.

"Nobody looks at chairs."

He put a cushion on it anyway.

The chicken had been in the oven since five. Dev basted it twice, more than necessary, because the smell reminded him of his mother's kitchen in Sacramento and he liked standing there with the door open. Marisol chopped parsley and told him to close it, he was letting the heat out.

The Kaminskis arrived at 6:40, early, holding a bottle of wine and apologizing for the traffic that hadn't happened. Then Ruth came alone; her husband had a cold. Then Peter, who never brought anything and everyone had stopped expecting to.

They ate around 7:15. The chicken was slightly dry at the breast and perfect at the thighs, and Dev apologized for it twice before Marisol nudged his foot under the table. Ruth talked about her daughter's college applications. Peter argued gently with Tom Kaminski about a highway expansion, and Julie Kaminski laughed at something her husband said in a way that suggested she'd heard it before and still found it funny.

Marisol brought out the pie she'd bought at the grocery store and did not pretend otherwise. Dev made coffee, forgetting who took decaf, so he made both.

They left at 9:45, standing on the porch too long saying goodbye, the way people do.

Afterward, Marisol rinsed and Dev loaded, and they discussed whether Ruth had seemed tired. The dishwasher ran. Dev turned off the porch light. Upstairs, Marisol was already reading, and he got in beside her and asked how it went, and she said it went fine.


The Deshpandes had been arguing about the chairs since four o'clock.

"We have six," Anjali said, counting again with her finger in the air. "Six chairs, five people. It's fine."

"The wobbly one goes to me," Peter said. He was standing at the stove, adjusting the flame under a pot of rice that had already boiled over once, leaving a white crust on the burner. "I've made my peace with it."

She wiped the counter around him, moving his elbow like a piece of furniture. The kitchen smelled like cumin and the lemon cleaner she'd sprayed on the table an hour ago, which had not fully aired out. Outside, the November dark had come early, and the window over the sink showed them back to themselves — her in the sweater with the stretched cuffs, him barefoot, his hair still damp.

The Kaminskis arrived at seven with a bottle of red and a story about the parking. Renée came ten minutes later, apologizing, holding a bakery box she'd clearly bought at the grocery store.

They ate at the table with the wobbly chair, which Peter took, as promised, rocking slightly every time he reached for the salad. Dave Kaminski told a long story about his brother's boat. Anjali refilled water glasses without being asked. Somebody knocked over the pepper grinder and everyone said *oh* at the same time and then laughed at having said it.

Around nine, Peter brought out the bakery cake and four spoons because he'd forgotten forks, and no one minded. Renée talked about her mother's move to Tucson. The candles Anjali had lit at six thirty burned down into little pools.

When the door closed at eleven, the two of them stood in the hallway a moment, listening to the car pull away.

"That was nice," Anjali said.

"It was." Peter picked up a glass. "You take the dishwasher, I'll take the counters."


Marguerite found the good tablecloth folded at the back of the linen closet, still smelling faintly of the cedar block Douglas had bought two winters ago and forgotten about. She shook it out over the dining table while he stood at the stove, prodding chicken thighs that had been marinating since morning.

"They're coming at seven," she said.

"It's six-forty."

"I know what time it is." She smoothed a wrinkle with the flat of her hand. "I'm saying it out loud so it feels real."

Douglas turned the heat down and came to help with the plates. They had eight matching dinner plates and needed six, which felt like a small triumph. He counted out forks while she folded napkins into rectangles, having abandoned any ambition toward shapes years ago.

The doorbell rang at seven-ten. Priya and Marcus brought a bottle of wine and a bakery box, and behind them came Terrence, alone, apologizing for Josie's cold. Everyone stood in the kitchen for the first twenty minutes, the way people always did, while Douglas plated the chicken and Marguerite explained that the salad had shallots in it, in case anyone minded.

At the table, Marcus told a long story about a coworker who had accidentally emailed a resignation letter to the entire company. Priya corrected two details. Terrence laughed hard enough to set down his fork.

Marguerite noticed Douglas had forgotten the bread, warming in the oven, and got up without saying anything about it. He caught her eye when she came back with the basket and made a small face of apology. She shrugged.

They ate the bakery cake standing up, because the table had gotten crowded with empty glasses. By ten-thirty everyone was in the entryway putting on coats, promising to do this more often.

Afterward, Marguerite washed and Douglas dried, and neither of them said much, and it was fine.


The rain started around four, which meant Denise had to move the folding table in from the patio. She wiped it down twice, once for the dust and once for the water spots, while Marcus stood at the stove pushing onions around a pan with a wooden spoon.

"Did you tell Ray seven or seven-thirty?" she asked.

"Seven. But he'll come at seven-forty like always."

Denise found the good placemats in the buffet drawer, underneath a tangle of phone chargers neither of them had used in years. Six settings. Ray and Priya, the Tolbergs, and the two of them. She counted the forks and came up one short, then remembered the one that had gone missing in the disposal in March.

Marcus tasted the sauce and made a face. "Too much vinegar."

"Add sugar."

"That's not how it works."

"It's exactly how it works." She came over and took the spoon from him, tasted it, and shrugged. "It's fine. Nobody's grading you."

He put in a pinch of sugar anyway.

The Tolbergs arrived first, shaking off umbrellas in the entryway, Jim holding a bottle of wine with the price sticker still on it. Denise pretended not to see. Marcus took coats and hung them over the banister because the closet was full of Christmas decorations they'd never put away.

Ray and Priya came at seven-forty-two. Marcus caught Denise's eye across the room and she looked at the ceiling.

Dinner ran long. Priya told a story about her mother's cat that made Jim laugh until he coughed. Marcus refilled glasses. Denise got up twice, once for more bread and once because she'd forgotten the salad entirely, still sitting in the fridge under plastic wrap. She brought it out anyway and everyone took some.

By eleven the house was quiet. Marcus washed, Denise dried.

"It went well," he said.

"You put too much vinegar in."

He flicked water at her.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, smelling faintly of cedar. She shook it out over the dining table while Theo stood at the stove, turning chicken thighs in a cast iron pan that had belonged to his grandmother.

"They're going to be late," he said. "Danny's always late."

"Twenty minutes isn't late. It's Danny time."

She counted out four plates, then five, remembering that Priya was bringing her sister. Theo swore softly as oil spat onto his forearm. Marisol crossed the kitchen, ran his wrist under the cold tap for a few seconds without asking, and went back to the table.

The doorbell rang at 7:15. Danny had brought a bottle of wine still cold from the store and an apology about traffic on the parkway. Priya's sister, Anjali, was visiting from Ohio and shook everyone's hand too formally until Theo handed her a glass and she laughed at something Danny said about airport parking.

Dinner was chicken, rice with too much saffron, and a salad Marisol had assembled from whatever the crisper drawer had surrendered. Someone spilled water. Theo got up twice for more bread. They talked about a coworker's divorce, a neighborhood dog that had gotten loose, whether it was worth driving three hours to see the leaves change.

Anjali asked how they'd met, and Marisol let Theo tell it, because he told it better, though he always got the year wrong. She corrected him. He shrugged and kept going.

By eleven the house was quiet again. Theo washed; Marisol dried and put away, standing on her toes for the high shelf. There was a wine ring on the tablecloth that would need soaking.

"That was nice," Theo said, wringing out the sponge.

"It was." She hung the towel on the oven handle. "Anjali's funny."

He turned off the kitchen light behind them.


The chicken had been in the oven forty minutes when Dana realized she'd forgotten to buy bread.

"I can go," Marcus said, already reaching for his keys off the hook by the door. He was still in his work clothes, sleeves rolled to the elbow, a coffee stain shaped like Ohio near his cuff.

"The good stuff, not the sandwich loaves. And ice, we're low."

He kissed the top of her head on his way out, which she barely registered because she was counting forks. Four, six, eight — enough, but two of them were the ones with the bent tines from the disposal incident. She set those at her own place and Marcus's.

By the time he came back, she'd changed her shirt twice and settled on the green one. He held up a paper bag. "They had the seeded rye. And they were out of the little bags of ice so I got the twenty-pounder."

"We don't have room."

"I'll break it up with the hammer."

"Do not use the hammer on the ice."

He used the hammer, wrapped in a dish towel, over the sink, and it worked fine.

The Nguyens arrived first with a bottle of wine and their five-year-old, who had been promised a movie in the back bedroom. Then Paul, alone, because Erica was on call. Everyone stood in the kitchen the way people always did, ignoring the living room entirely, leaning against counters while Dana pulled the chicken and Marcus refilled glasses.

The talk went the usual way: work, a neighbor's ill-advised fence, whether anyone was actually going to the reunion. Paul laughed too hard at something and knocked over his water, and three people grabbed for the same towel.

At eleven, Marcus loaded the dishwasher while Dana wiped the table. Neither of them said much. The house ticked and settled around them, warm from the oven.


Nadia found the good tablecloth folded at the back of the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it, which had been Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the dining table while Theo argued with the oven about whether four hundred degrees actually meant four hundred degrees.

"It runs cold," he said. "I'm setting it to four-twenty."

"You say that every time."

"And every time I'm right."

She set out four plates, then remembered Priya was bringing her sister, and found a fifth. The wine glasses had water spots. She ran them under hot water and dried them with a dish towel that smelled faintly of last night's onions, then decided that was worse and switched to a paper towel.

Theo had made a chicken thing with lemons and too much garlic, which was how he made everything. The kitchen smelled good. He was working on the potatoes, standing at the counter in the shirt she liked, sleeves rolled, and she reached past him for the corkscrew and he leaned into her a little without looking up.

"Did you sweep?" she asked.

"I did the visible parts."

"That's not sweeping."

"It's a philosophy of sweeping."

The guests came at seven-fifteen, which in their circle counted as on time. Priya's sister turned out to be allergic to garlic. Theo went pale and then made her a plate of plain potatoes and bread and apologized so many times that she finally told him to stop or she'd leave.

They ate. Someone spilled wine and nobody cared much. Theo told the story about the rental car in Vermont, and Nadia corrected two details, and he let her.

At eleven the last car pulled away. Nadia started rinsing plates. Theo picked up the dish towel.

"That went fine," he said.

"It went fine," she agreed, and handed him a wet glass.


Marguerite had the table set by five, which meant she had time to change out of the shirt she'd worn to grade papers in. Devin was still at the stove, tasting the sauce with the same wooden spoon he'd used since graduate school, the one with the burn mark on the handle.

"Too much oregano?" he asked.

She took the spoon from him and tried it. "It's fine. It's good, actually."

"You said 'fine' first."

"I said 'fine' and then I corrected myself. Don't add anything."

He didn't. He wiped his hands on the dish towel hanging from the oven handle and went to find a decent bottle of wine in the hall closet, where they kept the wine because the kitchen got too warm in August. Marguerite folded the napkins the way her mother had taught her, which was not fancy, just neat.

The Okonkwos arrived at six-thirty with a store-bought pie and apologies for the store-bought pie. Ada had come straight from a shift and still had the hospital badge clipped to her waistband. Behind her, Femi carried a bag of ice they hadn't asked for but did, it turned out, need.

They ate in the dining room because Devin had insisted, though everyone ended up back in the kitchen afterward, leaning against counters. Someone dropped a fork. The conversation went from a school board meeting to a colonoscopy to whether anyone remembered the name of the diner that used to be on Fourth Street.

"Kelso's," Marguerite said.

"That wasn't it," said Devin.

"It was absolutely Kelso's."

Ada looked it up on her phone and it was, in fact, Kelso's, and Devin conceded with good grace and served the pie.

They left a little after ten. Devin washed, Marguerite dried, and neither of them said much, which was its own kind of talking.


Marcus found the good tablecloth folded in the linen closet behind a stack of towels, still creased from the last time they'd used it, sometime around Thanksgiving. He shook it out over the dining table while Elena stood at the stove, prodding at the chicken thighs in the cast iron pan.

"They're going to stick," she said.

"They always stick. That's how you know they're getting a crust."

"That's not a real principle. You made that up."

He came over and looked into the pan, then went back to the table without offering an opinion. The iron on the tablecloth would take too long. He decided the creases gave it character.

The Ramirezes arrived first, twenty minutes early, with a bottle of red and a bag of clementines from their tree in the backyard. Dev came at seven-fifteen, apologizing about traffic on the interstate, though everyone knew he was always fifteen minutes late and always blamed the interstate.

Elena's chicken did stick, and she scraped up the brown bits with white wine and called it a pan sauce, and it was better than it had any right to be. Marcus opened the second bottle before anyone finished the first. Someone knocked over a glass of water and Priya blotted it with her napkin and insisted it was fine, it was just water.

They talked about Dev's sister's wedding, about whether the new grocery store on Fifth was actually cheaper, about a documentary two of them had seen and the rest hadn't. Marcus told a story about their dishwasher that Elena had heard four times, and she let him tell it.

By eleven the clementine peels sat in a pile in the middle of the table. After everyone left, Elena filled the sink and Marcus dried, and neither of them said much, and the kitchen light hummed above them, and it was fine.


Marcus found the good tablecloth at the back of the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it, which had been Thanksgiving.

"It's wrinkled," he said, holding it up in the kitchen doorway.

Priya didn't look up from the cutting board. "Nobody's going to inspect the tablecloth. Can you do the shallots? My hands smell like garlic."

He took over the shallots. She moved to the stove and started the rice, then went upstairs to change out of the shirt she'd worn to work. When she came back down, Marcus had put on a record and was arranging the folding chairs from the garage around the table, wiping each seat with a paper towel.

"There's a spider web on this one."

"Then don't give that one to Dana. She'll scream."

The Hendersons arrived first, ten minutes early, holding a bottle of wine and a bag of clementines from their tree, which they mentioned twice. Dana and Rob came at seven-thirty, apologizing about traffic on the interstate that everyone agreed was getting worse.

Dinner was chicken with the shallots, rice, a salad Priya had thrown together in the last five minutes, and bread Marcus had forgotten to warm. Someone spilled water. Rob told a long story about his brother-in-law's boat that Marcus had heard before and laughed at anyway. Priya kept getting up—for more napkins, for the pepper grinder, for the ice cream she'd hidden behind the frozen peas so Marcus wouldn't eat it during the week.

They lingered until almost eleven. After the last car pulled out, Marcus and Priya stood in the kitchen looking at the counters.

"I'll wash," she said.

"I'll dry."

They got through most of it before she said she was too tired, and they left the roasting pan to soak, and turned off the light, and went up.


Rosa was cutting the stems off green beans when Tomás came in from the garage with the folding chairs, one under each arm.

"Only two?" she said.

"There's a third, but the leg's bent. I'll sit on the piano bench."

"You'll be too low."

"I'll be fine."

He set the chairs at the table and went back for the tablecloth, the good one with the faded wine stain near one corner that Rosa always positioned under the salad bowl. He got it right without being told, which she noticed and did not mention.

The Delgados were bringing bread. Priya was bringing her husband, Ken, who had recently taken up brewing and would want to talk about it. Rosa had made a chicken with lemons in the cavity, and it had been resting on the counter for twenty minutes now, filling the kitchen with a smell that made Tomás open the oven door twice just to look.

"Stop that. You're letting the heat out."

"There's nothing in it."

"Still."

At six-forty he changed his shirt. At six-fifty he came back down and lit the two candles, then blew one out because it was smoking. Rosa was arranging the beans on a platter and asked him to taste them for salt. He took one, said "more," and she added a pinch and made him taste again.

The doorbell rang at seven-ten. The Delgados had brought bread and also a bottle of something from a trip they'd taken. Ken talked about hops for ten minutes and then, unexpectedly, about his mother's surgery, and the table got quiet in a way that wasn't uncomfortable.

At eleven, Rosa washed and Tomás dried, both of them slower than they'd been at seven.

"It went well," he said.

"The beans were fine."

"They were good."

She handed him a plate.


Maya found the good tablecloth folded in the linen closet behind a stack of beach towels, which meant it smelled faintly of chlorine. She shook it out over the dining table anyway and smoothed the creases with her palm.

"They're going to be late," Devon called from the kitchen. "Priya texted. Traffic on the parkway."

"That's fine. The chicken needs another twenty minutes."

He came out holding a bottle of wine and squinted at the label. "Is this the one your mom gave us?"

"That's the one she gave us for our anniversary, so don't open it."

"Right." He set it back on the counter and picked a cheaper bottle from the rack under the stairs. Maya heard him rummaging for the corkscrew, then heard the drawer close, then heard him rummaging again.

"Second drawer. Behind the takeout menus."

"We still have takeout menus?"

By seven-fifteen the house smelled like rosemary and roasted garlic, and Devon had lit two candles that Maya thought were too tall for the table but said nothing about. Priya and Ben arrived with a grocery-store pie and apologies. Ben took off his shoes without being asked, which Maya always liked about him.

They ate slowly. Priya told a long story about her sister's wedding that involved a rented tent collapsing. Devon spilled a little wine on the tablecloth and Maya caught his eye across the table and made a face that meant *it's fine, it's already ruined,* and he grinned.

Later, after the pie, the four of them sat in the living room while the dishwasher ran its noisy cycle. Ben fell asleep briefly in the armchair and woke up denying it.

When the door closed at eleven, Maya leaned against it. Devon started stacking plates.

"That went well," he said.

"Leave those. We'll do them tomorrow."

He left them.


Dana got home at five-fifteen and found Marcus already elbow-deep in a bowl of ground lamb, breadcrumbs sticking to his forearms.

"You started without me," she said, dropping her bag by the door.

"You said six-thirty. It's five-fifteen. The math wasn't in your favor."

She washed her hands and took over the meatballs while he moved to the stove, where a pot of tomato sauce had gone slightly too thick. He added water, tasted it, added salt, tasted it again, made a face, and handed her the spoon.

"More oregano," she said.

"That's what I thought."

They worked around each other in the narrow kitchen with the practiced choreography of eleven years. He reached past her for the colander; she stepped back without looking. At one point he put on a record, then took it off because she said it made the apartment feel like a restaurant that was trying too hard.

The Petersons arrived at six-forty with a bottle of wine and their four-year-old, Nell, who had been promised she could stay up. Ravi came at seven, apologizing, having gotten off at the wrong stop.

Dinner ran long. Nell fell asleep on the loveseat under Marcus's fleece jacket. The wine ran out and they opened the bottle Dana's coworker had given her for Christmas, which turned out to be better than either of them expected. Ravi told a story about his landlord that made Kate Peterson laugh so hard she had to put down her glass.

At eleven-thirty, coats. At eleven-forty, the door.

Dana started rinsing plates. Marcus came up behind her, took the plate out of her hands, and set it in the sink.

"Tomorrow," he said.

"It'll be crusty."

"It'll be crusty tomorrow too."

She turned off the water. They left the light on over the stove and went to bed.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, smelling faintly of cedar. She shook it out over the dining table while Dev stood at the stove, tasting the sauce off a wooden spoon and making a face.

"Too much vinegar?" she asked.

"Too much something." He added a pinch of sugar, stirred, tasted again. "Better. Don't tell Priya I doubted myself."

They had forty minutes. Marisol went through the apartment collecting evidence of ordinary life—Dev's reading glasses on the arm of the couch, a stack of unopened mail, her running shoes by the door. She hid the shoes in the coat closet and immediately forgot she'd done it.

Dev put on music, then turned it down, then turned it up again. He asked whether they had enough wine. They did. He asked whether the chicken looked dry. It didn't.

"You're spiraling," Marisol said, kissing his shoulder as she passed with a stack of plates.

"I'm hosting."

Priya and Tom arrived eleven minutes late with a bottle of red and a story about the parking situation on Ellis Street. The Watsons came right after, Jenny holding a foil-covered dish she insisted was "just something."

The table was too small for six, so they ate with elbows touching. Tom spilled a little wine and Dev waved it off, though Marisol saw him note the spot for later. Jenny's "just something" turned out to be excellent, some kind of potato thing with too much cheese, and everyone said so twice.

They talked about a neighbor's renovation, a movie half of them had seen, whether it was worth driving to the coast in October. Someone mentioned a coworker and the conversation went sideways for twenty minutes.

By eleven the candles had burned low. At the door, Priya hugged Marisol and said they should do this more often, and meant it.

Afterward, Dev washed and Marisol dried, not saying much.


Marcus found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, folded beneath a stack of towels neither of them used. He shook it out over the dining table while Elena stood at the counter, slicing a baguette on the diagonal because she'd read somewhere that it looked nicer.

"Did you take the roast out at four?" she asked.

"Three-forty-five." He smoothed a wrinkle with his palm. "It's been sitting."

She nodded without looking up. The oven ticked as it heated. Outside, a neighbor's dog was carrying on about something, and the November dark had come early, pressing against the kitchen window so the glass showed them back to themselves.

They had four coming: the Pattersons from down the street, and Elena's coworker Dev with his girlfriend, whose name Marcus kept losing. Priya. He wrote it on a Post-it and stuck it inside the cabinet where the wine glasses were, then peeled it off, embarrassed, and put it in his pocket.

Elena burned her thumb on the sheet pan of potatoes and swore quietly. Marcus ran cold water over it, holding her wrist, and she let him for about eight seconds before pulling away to check the roast.

"It's fine," she said. "It's a little dry."

"It's not dry."

"It's a little dry."

The Pattersons arrived first with a bottle of Malbec and an apology about the traffic on Route 9. Dev and Priya came twenty minutes later. Everyone stood in the kitchen even though the living room had chairs.

The roast was slightly dry. Nobody mentioned it. Bill Patterson told a long story about his brother's boat that ended with no real conclusion, and Elena laughed anyway, and Marcus caught her eye across the table.

At eleven-fifteen they closed the door and stood in the hallway among the coats that hadn't been coats a minute before.

"That was good," Elena said.

"Yeah." He started stacking plates.


The Halloran Dinner

Dana had the roast in by four, which meant Peter had until six to fix the wobbly leg on the dining table. He'd been saying he would since March.

"Matchbook," she said, passing behind him with a colander of green beans.

"I'm using a shim. A proper one." He held up a wedge of cedar he'd cut in the garage, still smelling of sawdust, and slid it under the table leg. He pressed down on the tabletop. It held.

"Look at that," Dana said. "Eight months and a miracle."

They set the table together, arguing mildly about whether to use the cloth napkins from the wedding or the everyday ones. The wedding napkins won because Marta was coming and Marta noticed things. Peter opened the wine to breathe and drank a small glass while pretending not to. Dana saw and said nothing, only handed him the corkscrew for the second bottle.

The Sandovals arrived at six-fifteen with a bakery pie and a story about a detour on Route 9. Marta hugged Dana in the doorway; Luis and Peter went straight to the back porch to look at the new gutters. By six-forty everyone was in the kitchen anyway, the way it always happened, standing around the island while the beans finished.

The roast was slightly overdone at the ends and perfect in the middle. Dana apologized for it twice; Luis had thirds. They talked about Marta's mother, about the school levy, about a neighbor who had painted his house an aggressive purple. Peter told the gutter story again, better the second time, and Dana let him.

At ten they walked their friends to the car and stood in the driveway a minute after the taillights turned the corner.

"That went well," Peter said.

"You have gravy on your shirt," said Dana, and they went in to do the dishes.


Marcus found the good tablecloth at the back of the linen closet, folded around a receipt from 2019. He shook it out over the dining table while Priya stood at the stove, prodding at a pot of dal with a wooden spoon.

"It's too thin," she said.

"It's supposed to be soup."

"It's supposed to be dal." She added a handful of red lentils and turned the heat down. "Did you get the wine?"

He had. Two bottles of something the guy at the store recommended, plus a sparkling cider because Danielle wasn't drinking. Marcus set them on the counter and went back to the table, where he discovered the tablecloth had a stain shaped like Ohio near one corner. He rotated it so the stain sat under the bread basket.

At six-forty they realized neither of them had swept the floor. Priya did the kitchen with the broom while Marcus ran the vacuum over the rug, both of them shouting over the noise about whether the Kellermans were bringing their daughter. They weren't. The Kellermans had gotten a sitter, which Priya took as a sign the evening might go long, which meant they should put out more of the cheese.

The doorbell rang at seven-oh-five. Danielle and Tom came first with a bag of clementines, then the Kellermans with flowers that had to be put in the pitcher because the vase was somewhere in the basement.

Dinner was fine. The dal thickened. Someone spilled a little wine on the tablecloth, near the stain, and everyone laughed about it. Tom told a long story about his brother's boat. By ten-thirty the candles had burned down unevenly and Danielle was yawning into her hand.

After the door closed, Marcus started rinsing plates and Priya leaned against the counter, still holding her glass.

"That was nice," she said.

"It was." He handed her a dish towel. "Your dal was good."

"It was thin."

"It was good."


Marcus found Elena in the kitchen at four-thirty, already elbow-deep in a bowl of ground lamb.

"You're doing the meatballs now?" he asked.

"They need to sit." She wiped her wrist across her forehead, leaving a smear of breadcrumb dust. "Did you get the wine?"

"Two reds, one white. And that seltzer Dana likes, the grapefruit one."

He started on the dishes stacked from lunch, working around her as she moved between the stove and the counter. Their kitchen was narrow, a galley they'd complained about for six years and never renovated. He'd learned to anticipate her turns.

"The bathroom," Elena said. "Did you—"

"Towels are out. I scrubbed the sink."

"You're a saint."

"I know."

At six they argued briefly about whether to use the good plates. Marcus thought the good plates felt like showing off for people who'd seen them eat cereal for dinner. Elena said her mother had given them the plates in 1998 and they were going to die in a cabinet unused. They used the good plates.

The Kims arrived first, then Dana with a bakery box and a story about her landlord. Everyone stood in the kitchen because everyone always stood in the kitchen, and Marcus poured wine while Elena pulled the meatballs from the oven and burned two fingers on the pan handle. She swore quietly and ran cold water over her hand while Dana held the door of the freezer open for ice.

Dinner ran long. Someone spilled a glass of the red on the tablecloth and Marcus said not to worry about it, it was from Target. Elena caught his eye across the table and made the small face she made when she was enjoying herself.

They finished the cake standing up. After the last car pulled away, Marcus started rinsing plates and Elena leaned against the counter beside him, still barefoot, not helping yet.


The chicken had been in the oven for forty minutes when Dana realized she'd forgotten to buy bread.

"I can run out," Marcus offered, already reaching for his keys on the hook by the door. He was still in his work shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow, a faint smudge of flour on the cuff from helping with the biscuits an hour earlier.

"The good bakery closes at six."

"Then I'll get the grocery store kind and we'll toast it with butter and nobody will know the difference."

She kissed him on the shoulder as he passed, which was as high as she could reach without standing on her toes, and turned back to the salad. Outside, the November dark had come down early. She could hear the Kowalskis' dog barking two houses over.

By the time Marcus returned, Dana had set the table with the plates they'd gotten as a wedding present eleven years ago—white with a thin blue rim, one of them chipped from a move. She'd lit two candles and then blown one out because it looked like they were trying too hard.

The Hendersons arrived at seven with a bottle of wine and their six-year-old, who'd been promised a movie in the den. Marcus took coats. Dana took the wine and pretended she knew something about it.

Dinner ran long. Someone spilled water. Marcus told the story about the raccoon in the crawl space and Dana corrected him twice on the details, and he let her. Around ten, Beth Henderson yawned into her hand and apologized, and everyone agreed it was late.

Afterward, Dana washed and Marcus dried, both of them moving in the small kitchen without needing to speak much. The extra bread sat unopened on the counter.

"That went well," Marcus said.

"It did," Dana said, and handed him the chipped plate.


Marcus found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, still folded around the plastic sleeve from the dry cleaner's. He shook it out over the dining table while Priya stood at the stove, tasting the soup off a wooden spoon.

"More salt?" she asked.

He came over, tried it, made a face. "It's fine. It's good. You always do this."

"I do this because last time you said the chicken was bland and I had to hear about it for a week."

"I said it once."

"You said it in the car, and then again while we were brushing our teeth."

He laughed and went to find the wine glasses, which lived on the high shelf and only came down four or five times a year. Two of them had dust rings. He rinsed them in the sink while Priya scrolled through a playlist on her phone, propped against the sugar canister.

The Hendersons arrived first, eleven minutes early, holding a bottle of something and apologizing. Priya took their coats upstairs. Marcus poured drinks and talked about the construction on Route 9. Dana and Sam came twenty minutes later, having gotten turned around near the water tower.

They ate the soup, and then chicken thighs with lemon, and a salad Priya had assembled at the last minute out of whatever the crisper held. Sam had two helpings. Somebody brought up a movie nobody had actually seen. Dana talked about her mother's hip. At one point Marcus knocked over a glass of water and Priya was up with a dish towel before he'd finished saying anything.

By ten-thirty the house was quiet again. Priya loaded the dishwasher; Marcus washed the pot by hand because it never fit.

"That went well," she said.

"Sam ate a lot."

"Sam always eats a lot."

He set the pot upside down on the drying rack and turned off the kitchen light behind them.


David hears the front door before he sees her, the particular rattle of Priya's key in the lock that means her arms are full. He wipes his hands on a dish towel and meets her in the entryway, taking the grocery bags while she toes off her shoes.

"They didn't have the good bread," she says. "I got the sourdough from the bakery case instead. It's fine. It's probably better."

"It's better," he agrees.

In the kitchen, the chicken has been in the oven forty minutes and smells like rosemary and burnt lemon. He'd cut the lemon slices too thin. Priya opens the oven, considers it, and closes it again without comment, which he appreciates.

They move around each other efficiently. She washes lettuce; he sets the table, then reconsiders and moves the candlesticks to the sideboard because Marcus is tall and gestures when he talks. The good napkins are wrinkled. Priya says nobody looks at napkins. David irons two of them anyway while she laughs at him from the sink.

At 6:40 they have twenty minutes and nothing left to do. Priya changes her shirt twice. David eats a piece of the sourdough standing at the counter and she takes it out of his hand and finishes it herself.

Marcus and Jenna arrive at seven with a bottle of wine and their eight-month-old, who falls asleep on the couch within ten minutes and stays there. Dinner runs long. The chicken is dry at the edges; nobody mentions it. Jenna tells a story about her brother's wedding that Priya has heard before but laughs at anyway.

They leave a little after ten. David loads the dishwasher while Priya wipes down the table, and neither of them says much, and the kitchen light is too bright, and it's fine.


Marcus found the good tablecloth in the bottom drawer of the hutch, the one they'd gotten from his mother, still creased into perfect quarters. He shook it out over the dining table while Priya stood on a kitchen chair, reaching for the wine glasses they never used.

"How many are we?" she asked.

"Six. Unless Dev brings someone."

"Dev always brings someone." She handed down the glasses two at a time. There was a water spot on one, and she breathed on it and rubbed it with the hem of her shirt.

The chicken had been in since four-thirty. Marcus checked it twice, opening the oven door and letting the heat roll over his face, and Priya told him he was making it take longer. She was chopping cilantro with the dull knife because the sharp one was in the dishwasher, which was running, which meant they had no forks either.

"We have the picnic forks," Marcus said.

"We are not serving Anita picnic forks."

They found the real forks eventually, still warm, and dried them with a dish towel. At six-fifteen Marcus put on a record, took it off, put on a different one. Priya changed out of her work blouse into a sweater and then asked if the sweater was too much.

"It's a sweater," he said.

"That's not an answer."

The Kapoors arrived first with a bottle of red and a bag of clementines from their tree, which grew in a pot on their balcony and produced maybe nine clementines a year. Everyone made a fuss over them. Dev came alone, after all, and apologized for it like a confession.

They ate. The chicken was slightly dry; nobody mentioned it. Anita told a long story about a raccoon in her garage that made Priya laugh until she had to set down her glass. Afterward Marcus washed and Priya dried, and through the window they could hear car doors closing, one after another, down the dark street.


Marcus found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, smelling faintly of cedar. He shook it out over the dining table while Elena stood at the counter, halving cherry tomatoes with a serrated knife she'd been meaning to replace for three years.

"Did you text Priya about the shellfish thing?" she asked.

"I did. It's fine, she just can't do scallops." He smoothed a wrinkle with his palm. "Where do you want the wine glasses?"

"Wherever. Actually—the good ones are on the top shelf, behind the crockpot."

He retrieved them, rinsing off a summer's worth of dust while she slid the chicken into the oven. It was six-fifteen. Their friends were due at seven, which meant seven-twenty for Dan and Priya, who had a toddler and a babysitter who was always late.

Elena changed into a green sweater and came back to find Marcus vacuuming under the couch, a task she had privately decided was unnecessary. She didn't say so. He'd had a hard week at the office, and there was something about him pushing the vacuum around in his socks that she found unexpectedly tender.

They arrived at seven-twenty-five, as predicted, Dan holding a bottle of something Spanish, Priya holding a bakery box she insisted was nothing. Everyone stood in the kitchen for the first forty minutes, as everyone always does, and Marcus refilled glasses while Elena checked the chicken twice, then a third time.

Dinner ran long. The conversation moved from a neighbor's fence dispute to a movie nobody had liked to whether Dan should quit his job. The chicken was slightly dry; nobody mentioned it.

At eleven, after the door closed, Elena leaned against it. Marcus was already collecting plates.

"That was good," she said.

"It was." He handed her a stack. "You wash, I'll dry?"


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt sugar. Dana had scorched the first batch of glazed carrots and started over, scraping the pan into the trash while Marcus laughed from the doorway.

"You're not helping," she said.

"I'm supervising."

"Supervise the wine, then. The Kaplans are bringing that terrible Malbec again and I refuse to drink it."

He went to the closet where they kept the good bottles, which meant the twelve-dollar ones instead of the eight. On the way back he detoured to the living room and moved the laundry basket into their bedroom, then shut the door on it. Dana had asked him to do that three days ago.

The Kaplans arrived at seven with the terrible Malbec and a store-bought pie they apologized for twice. Nina Ortiz came fifteen minutes later, alone, because Rob was on call again, and she said it in a way that made everyone decide not to ask about it.

They ate at the table with the wobbly leg, propped up on a folded magazine. The chicken was fine. The carrots were better than fine, and Dana accepted the compliments without mentioning the first batch, though Marcus caught her eye and she kicked him under the table.

Talk went where it always went: someone's cousin's divorce, whether the new grocery store was worth the extra drive, a long argument about whether it was ever acceptable to leave a movie theater early. Nina said yes. Ben Kaplan was scandalized.

By ten-thirty they were standing in the hallway, coats on, still talking. Dana pressed the pie plate back into Amy Kaplan's hands with half the pie still in it.

Afterward Marcus washed and Dana dried, and they didn't say much. She hung the towel on the oven handle. He turned off the kitchen light.

"That was good," she said.

"Yeah," he said. "It was."


Marcus found the good tablecloth at the back of the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it, sometime around Thanksgiving. He shook it out over the dining table while Dana called from the kitchen that the oven was preheating and had he remembered to text Priya about the shellfish thing.

"She's allergic to shrimp, not scallops," he said.

"That seems like a distinction she should have to defend, not us."

He went in and stood behind her while she trimmed green beans, resting his chin briefly on her shoulder before she elbowed him away for crowding the counter. The kitchen was too small for both of them, which they'd known when they signed the lease four years ago and had continued to know every day since.

They divided the work the way they always did: Dana cooked, Marcus cleaned as she went, wiping the counters, running the sink, carrying the recycling down to the bin behind the building. He put on a record because Dana said the apartment felt too quiet, then turned it down because she said she couldn't hear the timer.

At six-forty he changed his shirt. Dana asked if the blue one was clean and he said it was, and she said it didn't look clean, and he sniffed the collar and agreed and put on the gray one instead.

The Ochoas arrived first with a bottle of wine and a story about parking. Priya came twenty minutes later, apologetic, holding a bakery box. Everyone stood in the kitchen anyway, the way people do, while Dana pulled the chicken out and Marcus poured drinks and asked about somebody's mother's surgery.

Later, after the plates were cleared and the wine was gone and the last of them had gathered coats in the entryway, Dana leaned against the doorframe and said, "That was nice." Marcus started the dishwasher and said it was.


Marisol found the good tablecloth wadded in the linen closet behind the beach towels, which meant it needed ironing, which meant she was already behind.

"Do we have candles?" she called.

"Define candles," Dev said from the kitchen. He was cubing potatoes badly, the pieces uneven, some of them practically wedges. He'd been at it twenty minutes.

"Wax. Wick. Fire."

"There's a birthday one shaped like a four."

She came in and took the knife from him without comment, and he let her, wiping his hands on his jeans and moving to the sink to rinse the rosemary. They'd lived in the house eleven years. The kitchen was small enough that they had a whole choreography for it, a series of turns and side-steps neither of them thought about anymore.

The Whitmans arrived first, at six-forty, with a bottle of wine and their nine-year-old, who had a stomach bug rumor attached to him that Angela immediately dispelled. "He's fine. He ate an entire bagel in the car." Then Priya, alone, because Sam was on call. She brought a lemon tart from the bakery on Ninth and apologized for it three times.

The chicken came out later than planned. Dev told the story about the rental car in Denver, and Marisol let him tell it wrong—the hotel was in Boulder, not Denver—because he was enjoying himself and the correction would take four minutes they didn't have. She caught his eye across the table anyway. He grinned.

The nine-year-old fell asleep on the couch around nine. Angela carried him out over her shoulder like a duffel bag.

Afterward Marisol scraped plates while Dev loaded, and neither of them said much. He handed her the roasting pan to soak.

"That was nice," she said.

"It was," he said. "We should do it more."

They both knew they wouldn't, for a while.


The Osborne kitchen smelled like garlic and burnt sugar by six.

"You caramelized it too long," Ravi said, poking at the pan with a wooden spoon.

"It's called depth of flavor," Kelly said. She was wiping down the counter for the third time, chasing crumbs that had already surrendered. "Also, you said you'd vacuum."

"I did vacuum."

"You vacuumed the living room. The hallway looks like a golden retriever exploded."

Ravi went to get the vacuum. Kelly heard it start, then stop, then start again in the wrong room, and decided not to say anything.

They had four coming: Dana and Marcus from Kelly's office, and the Petrilos from down the street, who always brought wine that was better than anything the Osbornes owned. Ravi had made a curry his mother taught him over the phone, badly, two winters ago, and it had gotten steadily better since. Kelly had made a salad, which she felt was underselling her contributions, and a pie she'd bought at the store and transferred to their own dish, a crime Ravi had agreed to conceal.

The doorbell went at seven-ten. Dana had cut her hair. Marcus had opinions about the Broncos. Sandra Petrilo asked where the bathroom was, though she'd been in the house a dozen times, and Kelly walked her there anyway.

Dinner ran long. Ravi refilled glasses without asking. Someone knocked over the water pitcher and everyone laughed too hard, mopping it with paper napkins. Kelly's pie was declared excellent. She looked at Ravi across the table and he looked back with his eyebrows up, and neither of them said anything.

By eleven the house was quiet. Ravi rinsed plates; Kelly dried.

"You were right about the onions," she said.

"I know."

"Don't."

He grinned and handed her another plate, still warm from the water.


Marcus found the good tablecloth folded in the linen closet, still smelling faintly of the cedar block his mother had given them years ago. He shook it out over the dining table while Nadia stood at the stove, prodding a pan of caramelizing onions with a wooden spoon.

"They're browning too fast," she said.

"Turn it down."

"I did turn it down."

He came over and looked, mostly because she wanted him to. "They look fine. They look great."

"You're not even looking."

"I'm looking so hard."

She swatted him with the spoon, leaving a small streak of butter on his sleeve. He went back to the table and set out the mismatched wine glasses—four from their wedding registry, two from a gas station in Amarillo during the year they drove out west, when they were broke and hadn't yet learned to be careful with each other.

The doorbell rang at seven-ten. Priya and Dev arrived with a bottle of Malbec and an apology about the traffic on I-35. Dev immediately noticed the record player.

"Is that the Thorens? Did you finally get it fixed?"

"Belt was shot," Marcus said. "Thirty dollars and a YouTube video."

They ate in the kitchen instead of the dining room, because that's what always happened, the good tablecloth going unused for another season. Nadia's onion tart came out slightly overdone at the edges and nobody minded. Priya told a story about her mother visiting for three weeks. Dev spilled a little wine and blotted it with a napkin, embarrassed, and Marcus said the table had survived worse.

Around eleven, the guests left. Nadia stacked plates while Marcus ran the water hot. He washed, she dried. Outside, a car door shut somewhere down the block.

"That was nice," she said.

"It was."

She hung the towel on the oven handle and turned off the light.


Marcus found Dana in the kitchen at four-thirty, wrestling a chicken into a roasting pan.

"You bought the wrong thyme," she said, not looking up. "This is dried. I wrote fresh."

"You wrote thyme."

"I wrote fresh thyme, in parentheses, underlined."

He came around behind her and peered at the crumpled list on the counter. She had, in fact, underlined it twice. He said nothing and reached for his keys.

"Don't. It's fine. Dried is fine." She wiped her hands on a dish towel and considered the bird. "Can you do something about the living room? Julian sheds like a dying animal."

Julian, an orange cat of considerable mass, watched from the windowsill as Marcus went at the couch cushions with a lint roller. He got through half of one before the sheet clogged. He peeled it off, balled it up, and kept going.

By six the house smelled like garlic and lemon. Dana had changed into a green sweater and put on the earrings her sister had given her, and Marcus told her she looked nice, and she said, "You're just saying that because of the thyme," but she was pleased.

The Ostrowskis arrived at six-fifteen with a bottle of wine and a story about the traffic on Route 9. Priya came at six-forty with her new boyfriend, whose name was Kev or Kevin depending on who was asking. Everyone stood in the kitchen because everyone always stood in the kitchen.

The chicken was slightly dry. Nobody mentioned it. Kev turned out to be a decent storyteller, and there was an argument about a mayoral candidate that stayed friendly, and at ten Julian walked across the table and knocked over a water glass, and Dana laughed harder than the moment deserved.

Later, elbow-deep in the sink, Marcus said, "That went well."

"It did," Dana said, and handed him another plate.


Marcus found Elena in the kitchen at four-thirty, standing over a cutting board with a look of profound betrayal.

"The recipe said one bunch of parsley," she said. "This is a bunch. Who decided what a bunch is?"

"Add half. We can always add more." He set the grocery bags on the counter and started unloading. Wine, the good crackers, a lemon they didn't need but he'd bought anyway.

"Did you get the ice?"

He had not gotten the ice.

She didn't say anything, which was worse, so he took the car keys back off the hook and drove to the gas station on Fulton, where the ice machine was empty and he had to go to the Kroger instead. By the time he got back, the chicken was in the oven and Elena had changed into the green sweater and was vacuuming the living room rug where the dog had shed all week.

They set the table together. She folded napkins into triangles; he moved the mail off the sideboard and into a drawer. At six-fifteen, she asked if the table looked too formal, and he said no, and she moved one candle anyway.

The Nakamuras came at seven with a bottle of something Portuguese, and Priya came ten minutes later, apologizing for the traffic on I-40. Everyone stood in the kitchen even though there was nowhere to stand. The chicken was slightly overdone at the edges. Nobody mentioned it. Dev asked about the bathroom renovation and got a fuller answer than he wanted.

Around ten, Elena caught Marcus's eye across the table while Priya was telling a long story about her sister, and he raised his eyebrows a quarter inch, and she pressed her lips together, and that was the whole conversation.

They did the dishes at eleven-thirty. He washed. She dried and put away, because he never remembered where anything went.


Marcus found Dana in the kitchen at four, already elbow-deep in a bowl of ground lamb, breadcrumbs clinging to her wrists.

"You started without me," he said.

"You were at the hardware store for ninety minutes."

"They only had the wrong size hinge." He washed his hands and took over the meatballs while she moved to the stove, tasting the sauce, adding salt, tasting again. The kitchen radio was tuned to a station neither of them liked much but neither bothered to change.

By five-thirty the table was set with the good plates, which meant the ones without chips. Dana ran a candle stub under hot water to loosen it from the holder while Marcus swept the floor around her feet, complaining that she never picked up her socks.

"They're your socks."

"They're gray."

"So are yours."

The Ahmeds arrived at six with a bottle of wine and their eight-year-old, Nadia, who immediately asked to see the cat. Dana took her upstairs to find him under the bed. Marcus poured wine and listened to Rashid describe a dispute with a contractor over a bathroom vent, nodding at intervals, refilling glasses.

Dinner ran long. The meatballs were good; the bread was a little burnt on the bottom and everyone ate it anyway. Nadia fell asleep on the couch around eight-thirty with the cat finally within reach, ignoring her. Leila told a story about her mother's driving that made Dana laugh so hard she had to set down her fork.

They left at ten, Rashid carrying Nadia over his shoulder like a duffel bag.

Marcus and Dana stood in the doorway waving until the car turned the corner, then went back in. She washed, he dried. Neither suggested leaving it until morning.

"That was nice," she said.

"The bread was burnt."

"Nobody cared."

He put the last plate away and turned off the light.


Marcus was still wrestling with the tablecloth when Dana came in from the garage carrying two bags of ice.

"They're going to be here in twenty minutes," she said, elbowing the freezer door open. "Did you call about the bread?"

"They didn't have the rosemary loaf. I got a sourdough."

Dana made a face but let it go. She'd spent the afternoon on a braise that had filled the house with the smell of red wine and thyme, and the bread was, she decided, not the hill. She washed her hands and started slicing.

Marcus had gotten the tablecloth flat but the creases from the packaging still showed in four hard rectangles. He tried smoothing them with his palm, then gave up and set the plates down over the worst of it.

"Where do you want the candles?"

"Middle. Not the tall ones, they block people's faces."

He swapped them out. In the kitchen Dana was tasting the braise, adding salt, tasting again. She held the spoon out to him and he came over and took it.

"More salt," he said.

"That's what I thought."

The Ferrells arrived first, six minutes early, with a bottle of wine and their eight-year-old who had a stomach bug and had to lie on the couch under Dana's grandmother's afghan. Then Ruth came, alone, because Peter was traveling again, and everyone pretended that was fine.

They ate. The sourdough got compliments. Ruth told a long story about a woman at her office who kept stealing yogurts, and Marcus laughed so hard he had to set down his fork. Dana refilled glasses. Around ten the Ferrells carried their daughter out to the car, still asleep.

Afterward, Marcus washed and Dana dried, and neither of them said much, and it was a good silence.


Marcus found the good tablecloth folded in the linen closet behind a stack of beach towels they hadn't used since August. He shook it out over the dining table while Nadia stood at the stove, prodding a pot of curry with a wooden spoon.

"It's too thin," she said.

"Add more coconut milk."

"That's the last can."

He came over and tasted it from the spoon she offered, blowing on it first. "It's fine. Let it reduce."

She checked the clock: 6:40. The Ramirezes would arrive at seven, which meant seven-fifteen, and Tom always came straight from the gym, apologizing about his hair.

Marcus set out four plates, then remembered Priya was bringing her sister and got a fifth. He counted forks twice. In the living room he moved the laundry basket into their bedroom and shut the door, then went back and straightened the couch cushions with two firm karate chops.

"Do we have candles?" Nadia called.

"The ones from your mother."

"Those smell like a church."

"Then no."

She turned the burner down and came out to survey the room, hands on her hips, still wearing the apron with the faded lobster on it. "It looks good."

"It looks like we live here."

"That's what I said."

The doorbell rang at 7:12. Tom and Priya came in with a bottle of wine and a bakery box, and Priya's sister Anjali followed, holding a bouquet of grocery-store carnations that Nadia immediately put in a water glass because they had no vase.

They ate at the table with the good tablecloth. The curry was thicker than Nadia expected. Tom had thirds. Anjali told a long story about a coworker who kept stealing her yogurt, and Marcus laughed so hard he had to put down his glass.

Later, after everyone left, Nadia washed and Marcus dried, and neither of them said much, and the kitchen light stayed on until almost midnight.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, buried under beach towels they hadn't used since August. She shook it out over the dining table while Dev stood at the stove, poking at the chicken thighs with tongs.

"Is that supposed to be that color?" she asked.

"It's browning. That's what browning looks like."

"It looks like it's giving up."

He turned the heat down anyway. The kitchen smelled like garlic and something faintly burnt from the sheet pan of vegetables he'd forgotten about twenty minutes ago. Marisol had scraped the worst of them into the trash and rearranged the survivors so the tray looked full.

They had ninety minutes. Dev wiped down the counters while she vacuumed the living room rug, then they switched, because she was better at counters and he never got the corners with the vacuum. At 6:40 she changed her shirt twice. At 6:45 he found a water ring on the coffee table and set a coaster over it.

The Nguyens arrived first with a bottle of wine and a bag of clementines nobody had asked for. Then Paul came, alone, because Renee had a work thing. He apologized three times about it until Dev handed him a beer and told him to stop.

Dinner ran long. The chicken was fine—better than fine, actually, and Marisol said so twice, loudly, which Dev pretended to ignore. Somebody spilled wine on the tablecloth and Linh blotted it with club soda while everyone gave conflicting advice. Paul told a story about his neighbor's chickens getting loose that went on too long and was funny anyway.

They left a little after eleven. Marisol carried plates to the sink. Dev started filling it with hot water.

"That was good," she said.

"The chicken was good."

"The chicken was okay."

He flicked water at her, and she took the dish towel off his shoulder and got him back.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, folded beneath a stack of towels she'd been meaning to donate since spring. She shook it out over the dining table while Dev stood at the stove, tasting the sauce and making a face.

"Too much vinegar?" she asked.

"Too much something." He handed her the spoon. She tasted, considered, and reached past him for the sugar.

They had forty minutes. Dev had come home late from the clinic, still smelling faintly of hand sanitizer, and Marisol had spent the afternoon convincing herself that four people did not require the deep cleaning of a house she had already cleaned on Sunday. She vacuumed the living room anyway. Dev put on the record they always put on, the one nobody ever commented on, and set out the mismatched wine glasses because the matching set had lost two members over the years.

"Did you text Priya about the shellfish?"

"She said she's fine with shrimp, it's crab that's the problem."

"That's not what she said in April."

"April was a different crustacean."

The Rosenbergs arrived first, seven minutes early, with a bottle of something too expensive and an apology for the traffic that hadn't been bad. Priya and Chetan came at seven thirty, and by then the kitchen was warm and loud, and Dev was slicing bread with the serrated knife that needed sharpening.

Dinner ran long. Somebody spilled water. Marisol got up twice for more napkins and once to turn the record over, and Dev told the story about the parking garage in Baltimore that she had heard maybe two hundred times, and she laughed anyway, at the part where he always laughed first.

They were gone by eleven. Dev washed, Marisol dried. Neither of them said it had gone well, because it obviously had, and saying so would have been like commenting on the record.


Nadia found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it, which had been Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the dining table while Theo argued with the oven.

"It's preheating," he said. "It says preheating. It's been saying preheating for eleven minutes."

"Did you hit start?"

He didn't answer, which was answer enough. Nadia smoothed the creases with her palm and decided they'd fade under the plates.

By six the kitchen smelled like garlic and rosemary. Theo had taken over the chicken because he always took over the chicken, and Nadia let him because she'd rather do the vegetables anyway, standing at the counter with a glass of wine and the radio on low. They'd invited the Okonkwos and Ben from Theo's office, who was recently divorced and had that hollowed-out look people get.

"Do we have enough chairs?"

"Five chairs, five people," Theo said. "Unless someone brings a date."

"Ben's not bringing a date."

"I know Ben's not bringing a date."

The doorbell went at six-forty. Grace Okonkwo brought a bottle of red and a tin of shortbread her mother had sent from Lagos; Daniel brought pictures of their new dog on his phone, which he showed everyone twice. Ben came at seven with a six-pack and apologized for being late, though nobody had noticed.

The chicken was slightly dry. Theo said so before anyone else could, and Grace insisted it wasn't, and then everyone talked about a road closure on Route 9 for a surprisingly long time.

Afterward, Nadia washed and Theo dried, working through the stack without saying much. He put a plate in the wrong cabinet. She moved it back and didn't mention it.

"That went okay," he said.

"It went fine," she said, and pulled the drain.


Marcus found the good tablecloth folded in the linen closet behind a stack of beach towels they hadn't used since August. He shook it out over the dining table while Priya stood at the stove, arguing with a pot of rice.

"It's clumping," she said.

"It always clumps. Nobody's ever complained."

"Deepa complained. In 2019."

He came over and looked into the pot, which was doing exactly what rice does, then went back to smoothing the tablecloth. The wine glasses needed rinsing—dusty from sitting in the cabinet—so he ran them under warm water one at a time and set them upside down on a dish towel.

They had forty minutes. Priya put him on salad duty, which meant tearing lettuce and slicing a cucumber badly. She reached past him twice for the olive oil and the second time kissed the back of his neck without really stopping what she was doing.

"Did you take out the recycling?"

"Doing it now."

Outside the air had that first-week-of-October sharpness. He rolled the bin to the curb and stood a moment looking at the house, the kitchen window yellow and busy. When he came back in, Priya had changed her shirt and was lighting a candle that smelled aggressively like fig.

The Kellers arrived first with a bottle of wine and a story about the roundabout construction on Winslow. Then Deepa and Tom, ten minutes late, apologizing. Somebody put on music nobody chose deliberately. The rice, clumped, disappeared anyway.

By nine-thirty they were all still at the table, plates pushed back, Tom describing a bad haircut he'd gotten in Denver. Priya laughed hard enough to put her hand on Marcus's arm, and left it there.

After everyone left, they stood in the kitchen surveying the damage.

"Tomorrow," Marcus said.

"Tomorrow," she agreed, and blew out the fig candle.


Marisol found the good tablecloth at the bottom of the linen closet, creased in three places from being folded since Christmas. She shook it out over the dining table while Theo argued with the oven, which had been running twenty degrees cold since spring.

"I'm compensating," he said. "Four twenty-five instead of four hundred."

"You said that last time and the chicken was pink."

"Last time the chicken was frozen in the middle. Different problem."

She set out four plates, then went back for the good glasses, the ones from his grandmother that they used maybe twice a year. One had a chip on the rim. She turned it so the chip faced the wall and gave that place to herself.

The Ahmeds arrived at seven with a bottle of Malbec and a story about the traffic on Route 9. Priya kicked off her shoes at the door without being asked, the way she'd been doing for eleven years. Dev handed Theo the wine and immediately went to look at the half-finished bookshelf in the hallway.

"You've been on this since August."

"I've been busy."

"You've been watching baseball."

Dinner was chicken thighs with lemon and olives, rice that stuck slightly to the bottom of the pot, and a salad Marisol had made from whatever was in the crisper drawer. Nobody mentioned the rice. Priya had thirds.

They talked about Priya's mother's hip, about whether the school district was going to pass the levy, about a movie none of them had actually finished. Theo refilled glasses without being asked. Marisol laughed at something Dev said and knocked her fork onto the floor, and Theo got up for a clean one before she could.

At eleven, standing in the driveway, they made vague plans for next month. Inside, Marisol ran water in the sink while Theo scraped plates, and neither of them said anything for a while, which was fine.


Marcus found the good tablecloth wadded in the bottom of the linen closet, creased into a grid.

"It'll fall out," Renée said from the kitchen. "Just hang it over a chair."

"It looks like a map."

"Nobody's measuring."

He draped it anyway, then went back to the counter where she was slicing fennel too thin, the way she always did when she was nervous, though she'd deny being nervous. The Hollands had been over a dozen times. Still, she'd bought a bottle of wine that cost more than she'd admit to and hidden the receipt in her coat pocket.

"Did you get bread?" she asked.

He held up the bag. She nodded without looking.

At six-forty he vacuumed the living room, mostly the visible parts, and she called him back to get under the coffee table. He got under the coffee table. The dog, a shepherd mix named Pilot, followed the vacuum from a safe distance, barking once, professionally.

The chicken went in at six-fifty. Renée burned her wrist on the rack and swore, and Marcus ran cold water over it while she stood there with her arm in the sink, telling him she was fine, she was fine, and he held her wrist under the faucet another twenty seconds anyway.

The Hollands arrived at seven-fifteen with a bakery pie and apologies about traffic on 35. Dana admired the tablecloth. Marcus said nothing.

They ate. Someone spilled a little wine, and Renée said don't worry about it and meant it. Pete told a long story about his brother's boat that went nowhere and was funny anyway. The fennel salad went untouched except by Marcus, who had two helpings out of loyalty.

By eleven the dishes were stacked and the Hollands were gone. Renée sat on the counter with her feet on a drawer handle. Marcus handed her the last of the wine.

"That was nice," she said.

"It was."


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded in the linen closet behind a stack of towels, smelling faintly of cedar. She shook it out over the dining table while Dev stood at the stove, pressing garlic into a pan of oil that had already started to smoke.

"Too hot," she said, passing behind him.

"It's fine." He turned the burner down anyway.

They had four coming — the Ferrises from down the street, and Dev's coworker Priya and her husband, who nobody had met yet. Marisol had spent an hour that afternoon deciding whether to make a salad or buy one, and had ended up buying one and putting it in her own bowl.

"Do we have candles?" she called.

"The birthday ones."

"That's not what I meant."

He came in wiping his hands on a dish towel, looked at the table, and moved the fruit bowl two inches to the left, which somehow fixed it. She let him have that.

The Ferrises arrived early with a bottle of wine and a story about their neighbor's dog. Priya and her husband, Tom, came twenty minutes late and apologized about parking. Tom turned out to be a talker, which was a relief, because Dev never was, not with new people. He stayed near the kitchen doorway, refilling glasses.

The chicken came out slightly dry. Nobody said so. Marisol caught Dev's eye across the table when Bill Ferris asked for seconds, and she pressed her lips together to keep from laughing.

By eleven the house was quiet again. Dev scraped plates while Marisol ran the water hot.

"Tom's a lot," he said.

"Tom's fine."

"I didn't say he wasn't fine."

She handed him a wet glass. Outside, a car door closed somewhere down the block, and they finished the dishes without saying much else.


The Vasquez-Lindqvist Dinner

Marisol wiped the counter for the third time while Erik argued with the oven, which had decided that 375 degrees was more of a suggestion than a commitment.

"It's running cold again," he said. "I'm giving the chicken another fifteen."

"Then the potatoes will be mush."

"The potatoes will be *tender*." He said it with the confidence of a man who had burned two batches of rice that month.

She let it go and went to deal with the table. They owned six matching plates and had invited four people, which meant the arithmetic worked for once. She folded the cloth napkins into rough triangles, then unfolded them, then folded them again the same way. Erik came behind her with the water glasses, setting them down slightly off-center from where she'd have put them, and she moved two of them a half inch without saying anything. He noticed and didn't say anything either. Twelve years had taught them which battles came with a return on investment.

The Ahmeds arrived first, early, with a bottle of wine still cold from their fridge and their eight-year-old's apology for not coming — a sleepover, a better offer. Then Deb, alone, since Tom's flight got moved. Six became five. Marisol quietly took a plate off the table and Erik carried the extra chair back to the office.

The chicken came out fine. The potatoes were mush.

"These are perfect," Deb said, and Marisol looked at Erik across the table and he raised his eyebrows a quarter inch, victorious, and she pressed her lips together and looked back down at her plate.

They talked about a neighbor's fence, about Deb's mother's hip, about whether the school was really going to close. Nobody wanted dessert until they did, at ten, standing in the kitchen eating supermarket cheesecake off the small plates.

Everyone was gone by eleven. Erik washed; Marisol dried.


Marisol got home first and started the sauce, because Dev always oversalted. She had the windows cracked even though it was February, letting out the smell of onions browning in butter. From the living room came the sound of the vacuum, then silence, then the vacuum again.

"You missed under the couch," she called.

"Nobody's crawling under the couch."

"Tessa's kid might."

Dev appeared in the kitchen doorway holding the vacuum hose like a trophy. "Priya's coming, not Tessa. Tessa's in Denver until Thursday."

Marisol paused with the wooden spoon halfway to her mouth. "Then who did I text about the bread?"

They sorted it out over the next ten minutes—she had texted the group chat, four people were coming instead of three, and there was not enough chicken. Dev drove to the store for two more thighs and came back with a bag of clementines nobody had asked for. Marisol had already set the table with the cloth napkins her mother had given them, the ones with the small burn mark folded underneath.

Priya arrived early with wine and immediately started drying dishes without being asked. The Kaminskis came at seven with their four-year-old, who fell asleep on the loveseat before the salad. Dev put a blanket over him and turned the lamp away from his face.

The chicken came out well. Somebody spilled a little wine on the tablecloth and Marisol said not to worry about it, and meant it. The conversation went from a broken water heater to somebody's brother-in-law to whether the diner on Route 9 had actually closed. Dev laughed too loud at his own joke and Marisol touched his knee under the table, not to stop him, just to touch it.

By eleven the house was quiet again. They stood at the sink together, Marisol washing, Dev drying, the clementines still in their bag on the counter.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, smelling faintly of cedar. She shook it out over the dining table while Dev, still in his work socks, stood at the counter slicing shallots with the concentration of a man defusing something.

"Too thin?" he asked, holding up a translucent sliver.

"They'll melt. That's the point."

He nodded and kept going. The kitchen smelled like butter and thyme. Outside, an April rain had started, tapping the window over the sink, and Marisol paused to watch it before remembering the candles were still in the junk drawer under a tangle of phone chargers.

They had invited four people: Dev's coworker Ellen and her husband, and Marisol's old roommate Priya, who was bringing someone new. Six was the most their table could hold without the leaf, and neither of them could remember where the leaf had gone after the move.

"Do we have enough chairs?" Dev called.

"If someone takes the desk chair."

"I'll take the desk chair."

At six forty, Marisol changed her shirt twice and settled on the first one. Dev put on a record neither of them would notice again for the rest of the night. The doorbell rang at 7:04, and then again at 7:06, and the apartment filled with the particular noise of wet coats and apologies about parking.

Priya's new person was named Tomás, and he turned out to know a great deal about mushrooms, which occupied twenty minutes. Ellen spilled a little wine and Dev waved it off and got a towel. The chicken was slightly overdone; nobody said so, and Marisol only mentioned it to Dev much later, at the sink, both of them barefoot on the cold tile with the leftovers going into containers.

"It was fine," he said, handing her a plate.

"It was fine," she agreed, and turned off the light.


The Second Coat of Polish

Dana found the good tablecloth wadded in the back of the linen closet, smelling faintly of the cedar block she'd bought last spring and forgotten about.

"It's wrinkled," she said, holding it up.

Marcus looked over from the sink, where he was scrubbing the roasting pan they'd used at Thanksgiving and never quite finished cleaning. "Steam it in the bathroom. That's what my mother used to do."

"Your mother had a steamer."

"My mother had a shower." He shook water off his hands. "Where'd you put the wine glasses? The ones with the stems that don't wobble."

They worked around each other in the kitchen the way they had for eleven years, Dana chopping shallots at the counter while Marcus reached past her for the olive oil, both of them saying "behind you" out of habit rather than necessity. The chicken went in at five-thirty. At six, Dana noticed a water spot on one of the forks and rewashed the whole set by hand.

"They're not going to inspect the cutlery," Marcus said.

"Priya inspects everything."

"Priya has three kids under six. Priya will be thrilled to eat food she didn't make."

The Rangarajans arrived at six-forty with a bottle of Malbec and a paper bag of clementines from a roadside stand. Ben Halloran came at seven, alone, apologizing twice for it, and Dana squeezed his shoulder and took his coat and said nothing about the divorce.

The chicken was slightly dry. Nobody mentioned it. Marcus kept refilling glasses, and at some point the conversation turned to a documentary about competitive dog grooming, and Priya laughed so hard she had to put her head down on the table.

They left a little after eleven. Dana rinsed plates while Marcus loaded them, wrong, the way he always did.

"That was good," she said.

"Yeah," he said. "It was."


Marcus found the good tablecloth folded in the linen closet behind a stack of beach towels they hadn't used since August. He shook it out over the dining table while Nadia stood at the stove, pressing garlic into a pan of olive oil that had gotten hotter than she wanted.

"It's smoking," he said.

"I see it smoking." She lifted the pan off the burner, tilted it, set it back down. "Did you get the wine glasses from the basement?"

"I got four. We need six?"

"Ellen and Ray, Priya, Tom. Us. Six."

He went back down the stairs. The basement smelled like drying laundry and the cardboard boxes they kept meaning to sort through. He found two more glasses in a box marked KITCHEN — MISC in his own handwriting from a move three years ago, and rinsed the dust off them upstairs while Nadia crowded him at the sink to drain the pasta water.

The doorbell rang at seven-ten, which was Ellen and Ray, and then at seven-twenty-five, which was Tom, apologizing about the parking. Priya texted that she was ten minutes out and arrived forty minutes later with a bakery box and no explanation. Nobody minded. Ray had already opened the second bottle.

They ate in the dining room with the good tablecloth, and Marcus knocked over the pepper grinder reaching for the bread, and Nadia told the story about her sister's wedding again, and Marcus let her, though he caught her eye and mouthed *again* and she kicked him under the table.

By eleven everyone had gone. Nadia scraped plates while Marcus loaded the dishwasher behind her, the two of them turning around each other in the narrow kitchen without needing to speak about it.

"That was nice," she said.

"Priya's always late."

"She is." Nadia handed him the last plate. "Leave the pans. I'll do them tomorrow."


By six, the kitchen smelled like garlic and browning butter. Dev stood at the stove, sleeves pushed to his elbows, nudging chicken thighs with tongs while Marisol wiped down the counter around him, collecting the debris of his cooking—an eggshell, a torn parsley stem, the crumpled paper from a stick of butter.

"You're going to move that pan or I'm going to burn my arm reaching past you," she said.

"Two inches. That's all I need." He shifted it two inches.

They had been married eleven years, long enough that this was affection.

The Reynoldses were bringing wine, which meant it would be too sweet, and Priya was bringing her son, who was eight and would want the television. Marisol had already found the remote and set out a bowl of pretzels on the coffee table as a kind of offering.

"Do we have candles?" Dev asked.

"You mean do I have candles."

She found two tapers in the sideboard drawer, uneven, from someone's birthday. They looked fine once lit.

The guests came at seven, all at once, the way people do. Coats piled on the bed in the guest room. Priya's son found the television within four minutes. Dan Reynolds opened the wine—too sweet, as predicted—and Marisol drank it anyway and said it was nice.

Dinner ran long. The chicken was good; Dev accepted the compliments with an expression of studied indifference that Marisol caught and enjoyed. Somebody spilled a little wine. Somebody told a story about a coworker that went nowhere and was funny anyway.

They left just after ten. Marisol stood in the doorway waving until the last car pulled off, then came back in and started stacking plates.

"Leave it," Dev said. "I'll do it in the morning."

"You won't."

"I might."

She handed him a plate. He took it.


The potatoes were taking longer than the recipe promised, which Dana had expected. She turned the oven light on and squatted to look, her knees complaining, while Marcus wiped down the counter behind her for the third time.

"They're still pale," she said.

"They've got twenty minutes." He checked the clock on the stove. "Sam's always late anyway."

Dana stood and pressed a hand to the small of her back. She'd been on her feet since four, when she got home from the clinic and decided, unwisely, that she wanted to roast a chicken. The bird sat resting under foil on the cutting board, and the kitchen smelled like lemon and thyme and the faint burnt edge of something she'd spilled on the oven floor.

Marcus opened the wine and poured two inches into a glass for her. "Taste this. I don't know if it's any good."

She tasted it. "It's fine. It's twelve dollars."

"That's what I thought."

He set the table while she made the salad — the good plates, which meant washing the dust off first, and cloth napkins that had been folded in the sideboard since Thanksgiving. Dana watched him line up the forks and felt a small, unremarkable fondness that she didn't say anything about.

The Levinsons arrived at seven-ten with a bottle of wine and a story about parking. Sam and Adrienne came at seven-thirty, apologizing. The potatoes were finally golden. Somebody dropped a fork. Adrienne cried a little, briefly, about her mother's diagnosis, and then laughed at herself, and Marcus refilled her glass without making it a thing.

By eleven the guests were gone. Dana loaded the dishwasher; Marcus washed the roasting pan by hand, badly.

"That was nice," he said.

"It was." She turned off the kitchen light. "Leave the pan. I'll do it tomorrow."

He left the pan.


Marcus found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, smelling faintly of cedar.

"It's wrinkled," he called toward the kitchen.

"Iron it, then." Priya didn't look up from the cutting board, where she was reducing an onion to translucent slivers. Her eyes stung. She'd been at it twenty minutes and the rice still needed starting.

He set up the ironing board in the dining room and worked the wrinkles out in slow passes, listening to her knife against the board. They'd invited the Hallorans and Dev, which meant five people at a table meant for four, which meant dragging the desk chair in from the spare room. Marcus had already decided not to mention that the desk chair had a wobbly caster.

"Did you get wine?" Priya asked.

"Two bottles. The one you like and the one Jim likes."

"Jim likes anything."

"Jim likes the twelve-dollar one, specifically."

By six-thirty the apartment smelled like cumin and browned butter. Priya changed into a sweater and found Marcus arranging forks with unusual precision.

"They're going to be late," she said. "They're always late."

They were. Dev arrived first, apologizing for nothing in particular, holding a grocery-store bouquet still in its plastic sleeve. Priya put the flowers in a pitcher because the vase was somewhere in the hall closet behind the winter coats.

The Hallorans came at ten past seven with a story about parking. Everyone stood in the kitchen while Marcus opened the wine, and Priya kept stirring and saying she wasn't ready, though she was.

The chicken was slightly dry. Nobody said so. Jim took thirds anyway, and Dev told a long story about his sister's wedding that made Priya laugh so hard she had to set down her glass.

At eleven they stood in the doorway waving. Marcus started the dishes. Priya dried, and they talked about nothing, and it took a long time.


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt rosemary, which Priya insisted was the correct smell for a Thursday.

"You turned the oven up," Daniel said, pulling the chicken out with a dish towel wrapped around his hand.

"I turned it up because you turned it down. It was never going to brown at 350."

He set the pan on the stove and looked at it. The skin was, admittedly, perfect. "Fine."

"Say it."

"You were right about the oven."

She kissed the side of his head on her way to the sink, where she began washing the arugula for the third time because Daniel had a thing about grit. Behind her, he opened a bottle of wine and poured a half-inch into a glass, tasted it, made a face, and poured it anyway.

At 7:10 the Kramers arrived with a bakery box and a story about parking. Mark held up the box like evidence. "Lemon tart. Sarah wanted to bring flowers but I said everyone brings flowers."

"We have no flowers," Priya said. "This is a flowerless home."

They ate at the small table with the leaf pulled out, elbows close. Sarah talked about her sister's divorce, then apologized for talking about it, then talked about it more. Daniel refilled glasses. Mark ate three helpings of the potatoes and asked how they were made, and Priya said butter, and Daniel said also cream, and they briefly disagreed about the ratio in front of everyone.

The tart was too sweet. Nobody said so.

By eleven the Kramers were gone, coats and half-hugs at the door, promises to do this again in a month. Daniel started the dishes. Priya dried and put away, and when she couldn't reach the top shelf she handed him the pot without comment and he took it without comment.

"That was nice," she said.

"Mark eats a lot of potatoes."

"He does," she agreed, and turned off the light.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, smelling faintly of cedar and the last time they'd used it, two Thanksgivings ago.

"It's wrinkled," she called.

Danny came out of the kitchen holding a wooden spoon like a scepter. "Iron it."

"You iron it. I'm doing the salad."

He took it from her and set up the board in the living room, watching the news with the sound off while steam hissed out of the iron. Marisol tore romaine into a bowl and thought about how the Petersons always arrived exactly eleven minutes late, and how she'd started planning around it without telling anyone.

The chicken came out at six-forty. Danny had made it with lemon and too much rosemary, the way his mother did, and Marisol tasted it off the spoon and said it was good, which was true, and didn't mention the rosemary.

"Should we light candles?" he asked.

"It's June."

"So?"

"So it'll be bright out until nine. It'll look weird."

He lit them anyway. She let him.

Rachel and Tom arrived at six-fifty-one with a bottle of wine and a story about their car battery. Everyone stood in the kitchen because that's what happens, even when the living room has been vacuumed. Danny opened the wine badly, pushing the cork half in, and Tom laughed and said he'd done the same thing Tuesday.

They ate. Rachel had thirds of the chicken and asked what was in it, and Danny said rosemary and looked at Marisol, and Marisol said, "It's his mother's recipe," and let him have it.

Afterward, there was ice cream from the carton because nobody had made dessert, and Tom fell asleep briefly in the armchair, and Rachel apologized for him.

At eleven, Marisol scraped plates while Danny loaded. The candles had burned down unevenly, one nearly gone, the other barely touched.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded in the linen closet behind the spare sheets, still creased from the last time they'd used it, which had been Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the dining table while Dev stood at the stove, pressing garlic into a pan of olive oil that had gotten a little too hot.

"It's smoking," she said.

"It's fine." He turned the burner down anyway.

They had invited four people: the Hendersons from two streets over, and Priya, who was bringing her new boyfriend, whose name neither of them could remember. Dev had written it on a sticky note and lost the sticky note.

Marisol set out the mismatched wine glasses, six of them, two survivors from a set they'd bought at Target in 2014. She wiped a water spot off one with the hem of her shirt. In the kitchen, Dev was chopping an onion badly, the way he always did, in uneven half-moons.

"Let me," she said.

"I've got it."

"You're going to lose a finger."

He handed her the knife without arguing and went to change his shirt.

The doorbell rang at 6:40, ten minutes early, and it was Priya, apologizing, holding a bottle of red and a store-bought pie. The boyfriend's name was Aaron. He shook Dev's hand and said the house smelled amazing, which was a kind thing to say, because mostly it smelled like burnt garlic.

The Hendersons came at seven. Everyone ate at the table, elbows close. Dev told the story about the raccoon in the garage and Marisol corrected two details, and he let her.

By eleven, the plates were stacked in the sink and the last of the wine was gone. Marisol turned off the porch light. Dev was already running the water.

"That went well," he said.

"It did," she said, and picked up a towel.


Marguerite had been chopping shallots for twenty minutes when Devin came in from the garage carrying two folding chairs and a stack of mismatched place mats.

"We have six chairs," he said. "Four match. Is that a problem?"

"It's Rosa and Tim. They've seen our bathroom."

He set the chairs at the far end of the table anyway, then stood there considering the arrangement the way he considered most things—slowly, with his hands on his hips. Marguerite scraped the shallots into the pan and the kitchen filled with that smell that meant something was actually happening.

"Did you get bread?"

"I got bread. I also got a lemon tart because I panicked in the bakery."

"You panicked."

"There was a line behind me."

She laughed and told him to open the wine to let it breathe, and he opened it and poured himself a small glass to test it, which was the same thing he did every time, and she said what she always said, which was that he was going to drink the whole bottle before anyone arrived. He filled a pitcher with water and put too much ice in it. She wiped down the counter twice.

At six-forty the doorbell rang and Rosa came in apologizing for being early, holding daffodils, and Tim came in behind her holding nothing and apologizing for that. Devin found a jar for the flowers because the vase had broken in September and never got replaced.

They ate late. The chicken was good; the potatoes were slightly underdone and everyone said they were fine. Tim told a long story about his brother's boat. Rosa asked about the leak in the ceiling, and Marguerite said they'd stopped noticing it.

Afterward, Devin washed and Marguerite dried, and neither of them said much, and it was easy.


The doorbell wasn't going to ring for another forty minutes, but Marcus had already changed his shirt twice.

"The blue one," Renata said, not looking up from the cutting board. She was slicing radishes so thin they were nearly translucent, a trick her mother had taught her and she'd never explained to him.

"You said the blue one made me look washed out."

"I said that about the blue-gray one. That one's fine." She scraped the radishes into a bowl. "Can you check the chicken? I think it's dry."

He opened the oven and a wall of rosemary-scented heat rolled over him. The thighs were browning unevenly, the way they always did because the oven ran hot on the left side. He rotated the pan and shut the door.

"It's fine. It's going to be fine."

"You said that about the lasagna."

"The lasagna was an outlier."

They'd invited the Hallorans and Priya, who was newly divorced and had been declining invitations for months until she suddenly didn't. Renata had spent two days worrying about whether to seat her next to Doug Halloran, who talked, or across from him, which meant she'd have to look at him.

The wine was open. Marcus poured two inches into a glass and handed it to his wife, who took a sip and handed it back.

"Napkins," she said.

"Cloth or paper?"

"It's Priya."

"Cloth, then."

He found them in the drawer beneath the good silverware, six of them, mismatched from two different sets. He folded them into rough triangles and set them out. Renata came behind him and refolded three.

At 6:52 they stood in the kitchen with nothing left to do. She leaned against the counter. He put his hand on the small of her back.

"It smells good," she admitted.

The doorbell rang.


The Vasquez-Chen house smelled like garlic by four o'clock.

Marisol had been marinating the pork since morning, and now she stood at the counter slicing plantains into thin ovals while Danny wrestled the leaf into the dining table. It had warped slightly over the years, and he had to lift and jiggle it before the halves clicked together.

"Did you text Priya about the shellfish?" he asked.

"She said she can have shrimp. It's crab she can't." Marisol wiped her hands on the dish towel hanging from the oven handle. "Can you find the blue tablecloth? I think it's in the hall closet, behind the extra sheets."

He found it wadded up on the shelf, wrinkled beyond hope, and brought it out apologetically. Marisol looked at it, shrugged, and said it would be fine once the plates were on it. Danny put on a record instead of asking again.

The Kowalczyks arrived first, eleven minutes early, with a bottle of wine and their four-year-old, Rosie, who immediately wanted to see the cat. Priya and Tom came twenty minutes late with a lemon cake in a bakery box. Danny took coats to the bedroom and lost track of whose was whose.

Dinner ran long. The pork was good — Marisol accepted the compliments with the small, pleased tilt of her head that Danny had loved for nine years — and someone knocked over a water glass, and Rosie fell asleep on the couch under Danny's jacket. They argued cheerfully about whether the new grocery store downtown was any good. Tom said the produce was overpriced. Priya said he only shopped there for the olive bar.

By eleven the house was quiet. Marisol washed, Danny dried, both of them slower than they'd been at seven.

"That was nice," she said.

"It was." He put the last pot away and turned off the kitchen light.