The Fifteenth

Marisol found the ticket stubs while cleaning out the junk drawer — two faded slips from a minor league game in Toledo, the night before their wedding. She brought them to the kitchen table where Dev was rinsing rice.

"Remember these?"

He dried his hands and squinted at the smeared ink. "Rain delay. You ate three hot dogs."

"Two and a half. You finished the last one."

Their fifteenth was coming up on a Thursday. Dev had floated the idea of Chicago — a hotel with robes, a tasting menu, the kind of weekend they'd promised themselves back when they were both adjuncts splitting a studio apartment. Marisol had done the math on the roof repair and gone quiet.

"We could do Toledo," she said now.

Dev laughed, then stopped, because she wasn't joking. "The stadium's still there. I checked once."

"You checked once?"

"During a boring meeting."

They looked at each other across the table, the rice hissing on the stove behind him.

So they went. Four hours in the Corolla with the AC that only worked on high. They got a room at a chain hotel near the highway, and the game was against Louisville, and it was seventy-two degrees and clear — no rain delay, which Dev said was a betrayal of the source material. Marisol ate one hot dog and half of his.

In the seventh inning, a kid two rows down caught a foul ball and screamed so loud that half the section applauded him. Dev put his arm along the back of Marisol's seat, not around her exactly, just there, the way he'd done at every ballpark, every movie theater, every folding-chair funeral for fifteen years.

"Twenty, we do Chicago," he said.

"Twenty, we do Toledo again," she said. "But better seats."

He considered it. "Better seats," he agreed.


Marcus found the calendar page already circled in Dana's handwriting: October 14th, ten years.

"I keep thinking we should do something enormous," he said, leaning against the kitchen doorway while she rinsed lettuce. "Charleston. Or that place in Vermont with the covered bridges."

Dana shut off the tap. "We could." She dried her hands on the dish towel that had been a wedding gift, faded now to a soft gray. "But I looked at the flights and I felt tired just reading them."

"So did I. I didn't want to say it first."

They ended up on the back porch with beers, hashing it out the way they hashed out most things—slowly, circling, interrupting each other. Dana wanted something they'd remember. Marcus pointed out that most of what he remembered from ten years wasn't the trips. It was the ordinary stuff. The night the furnace died and they slept in the living room under every blanket they owned. The summer she taught herself to make bread and he ate four bad loaves without complaining once.

"Okay," Dana said. "So what's the anniversary version of a bad loaf of bread?"

He laughed. Then he got quiet. "The house."

She looked at him.

"We keep saying we'll fix up the back room. Ten years of saying it."

So that was the plan. They spent the weekend of the fourteenth in paint-stained clothes, arguing amicably about whether the trim should be white or almost-white. Dana played her terrible nineties playlist. Marcus put on the second coat while she made grilled cheese at eleven at night, and they ate standing up, surrounded by drop cloths, the room finally the color they'd both wanted.

"Not enormous," she said.

"No." He touched paint-flecked fingers to her wrist. "But ours."

They slept in the finished room, on an air mattress, because it seemed like the thing to do.


The Fifteenth

Dana found the receipt while cleaning out the junk drawer—a faded slip from a hardware store in Toledo, dated the week they'd closed on the house. She held it up when Priya came in from the garage.

"Fifteen years next Saturday," Dana said. "In this house, I mean. Sixteen married."

Priya set down the paint cans she'd been carrying. "I was going to bring that up. I thought maybe we'd finally do the trip. Charleston, like we always say."

"We always say it and then the water heater breaks."

"The water heater is fine."

Dana laughed, but she was looking at the receipt again. "What if we didn't go anywhere?"

Priya sat down at the kitchen table, waiting. Fifteen years in this house had taught her that Dana's ideas took a minute to surface fully.

"The porch," Dana said. "We've been talking about screening it in since the Obama administration. What if we did that? Spent the weekend on it, made a mess, ordered too much Thai food. And then in the fall we'd actually have somewhere to sit."

Priya considered it. Part of her wanted the hotel with the good bathrobes. But she thought about the summer evenings they'd abandoned to mosquitoes, the two of them retreating inside by eight.

"On one condition," she said. "We hire someone for the electrical. I'm not spending our anniversary in an emergency room."

"Deal."

They spent that Saturday measuring, arguing mildly about the placement of the door, driving to the lumberyard twice. Dana's back gave out around three, so Priya finished the framing while Dana held things and offered commentary. They ate pad thai on the unfinished floor, sawdust in everything.

"Charleston next year," Priya said.

"Sure," Dana said, and neither of them believed it, and neither of them minded. The frame stood around them, open to the yard, waiting for its screens.


The Twentieth

Marisol found the reservation confirmation still open on Dev's laptop, three weeks out from their anniversary. Le Bernardin. Two seats, 7:30, the kind of place where the waiter refolds your napkin when you go to the restroom.

"You saw," Dev said from the doorway, not really a question.

"I saw." She turned in the desk chair. "It's beautiful. It's also nine hundred dollars."

"It's twenty years."

"I know what it is." She'd been the one to count, back in February, when it first occurred to her that they were approaching a number that sounded like someone else's marriage. "I keep thinking about the drive."

He knew which drive. Toledo to Asheville, 1998, in the Corolla with the broken air conditioning, sixteen hours because they kept stopping at every historical marker Marisol spotted. They'd had four hundred dollars between them and had eaten gas station sandwiches in a Waffle House parking lot because the Waffle House had a wait.

"You want to eat gas station sandwiches," Dev said.

"I want to go back. Not to be young. Just to see it." She pulled her feet up onto the chair the way she'd done at twenty-four, twenty-nine, forty. "The Corolla's gone. We can take the Honda. Stop at every marker."

Dev sat down on the edge of the bed and thought about it, which was one of the things she loved—he actually thought, he didn't just agree.

"The Blue Ridge Parkway in October," he said slowly. "Leaves'll be turning."

"Cabin with a kitchen. I'll make the puttanesca."

"I'll cancel the reservation." He looked up. "But we're getting one nice dinner. Somewhere in Asheville. I'm not eating out of a cooler for six days."

"One nice dinner," she agreed.

He cancelled it that night. She started a list of historical markers, and by the end of the week it was forty-one entries long, and he told her they'd never make it, and she said that was fine, that was the whole point.


Marcus found the calendar app open on Deborah's laptop when he came in from the garage, the date circled in digital red: April 12th. Twenty-five years.

"You're plotting," he said.

"I'm considering." She didn't look up. "Renée thinks we should do Charleston. She and Tom did Charleston for their twenty-fifth and she still talks about it, which honestly is a strike against Charleston."

He laughed and sat down across from her at the kitchen table, the one they'd bought secondhand in 2003 and refinished badly. "What do you actually want?"

Deborah closed the laptop. That was the thing about Marcus—he asked, and then he waited, which after twenty-five years she still found slightly unnerving.

"I want to go back to the Blue Ridge," she said. "The cabin with the terrible mattress."

"The mattress was criminal."

"I know. But I remember lying awake in it, listening to you breathe, thinking: this is the person. Not in a dramatic way. Just—oh. Him."

Marcus rubbed his thumb along the table's scarred edge. They'd been twenty-four and broke and the cabin had cost forty dollars a night because the owner's nephew ran it out of a shed.

"It's probably a Marriott now," he said.

"Probably." She shrugged. "So we find a different bad mattress."

"Or," he said, "we find a good mattress and take the money we save on romance and spend it on food. There's a place in Asheville Danny told me about—"

"Danny's recommendations gave you food poisoning in Baltimore."

"That was oysters. Oysters are a gamble anywhere."

They sat with it a minute. Outside, the neighbor's dog started up.

"Four days?" Deborah said.

"Five. I'll ask Priya to cover the Thursday clinic."

Deborah opened the laptop again and typed *cabins near Boone*. Marcus moved his chair closer to see the screen, and she tilted it toward him without being asked.


The kitchen still smelled like Saturday morning coffee when Priya slid the shoebox across the table.

"Twelve years," she said. "What do you want to do?"

Marcus lifted the lid. Inside: ticket stubs from a minor league game in Durham, a folded diner receipt, a keychain shaped like a lobster from the trip to Maine where the car had broken down twice.

"We could do the restaurant thing," he said, but he was already smiling in the way that meant he had another idea and was waiting to be asked.

"Or?"

"Or we go back to Pete's." He turned the receipt over. Faded ink, October 2013. "Pancakes at eleven at night. You ordered them with a side of pickles, which I've never forgiven you for."

Priya laughed. "It's a two-hour drive."

"It's a two-hour drive," he agreed.

She thought about the alternative: the tasting menu she'd been eyeing, the cloth napkins, the reservation she'd have to make three weeks out. Nice. Correct. The kind of thing you posted a photo of.

"Pete's is probably closed," she said.

"Pete's is not closed. I looked."

"You already looked."

"I looked in March."

She got up and refilled both mugs, standing behind his chair for a moment with her hand on his shoulder. Through the window the neighbor's dog was barking at nothing, the way it did every morning at nine.

"Okay," she said. "But we take my car, and we stop at that farm stand on 41 if it's still there."

"For the terrible cider donuts."

"For the excellent cider donuts."

Marcus put the receipt back in the box and closed the lid. Twelve years, and the thing he liked best was still this — the negotiating, the small revisions, the way a plan became theirs somewhere in the middle of being argued about.

"Eleven p.m.," he said. "Pickles optional."

"Pickles mandatory," said Priya, and went to find her keys.


The forecast promised rain, which Adaora considered a good omen. Rain had fallen on their wedding day too, twelve years ago, soaking the borrowed tent in her aunt's backyard in Bridgeport.

"We could just do dinner," Marcus said from the kitchen table, where he was paying the water bill. "Somewhere with cloth napkins."

"We did cloth napkins for ten. And eleven." She was sorting through a shoebox of photographs, the kind nobody printed anymore. "Twelve should be different."

He set down the pen. "Different how?"

She held up a picture: the two of them on the steps of the courthouse in New Haven, before the backyard ceremony, before her mother had come around. Marcus was wearing a tie he'd bought that morning at a drugstore because he'd forgotten his. Adaora was laughing at something outside the frame.

"I want to go back there," she said. "To the steps. Take another one."

Marcus took the photo from her and studied it. "I look like a child."

"You were twenty-six."

"A child." He handed it back. "The courthouse, then dinner? Or the courthouse and we drive out to that place on the water, the one with the lobster rolls that was closed last time."

"It's April. It'll be open."

"And if it's raining?"

"Then we eat in the car," Adaora said, "like animals."

He laughed, that particular laugh that came out mostly through his nose, and she felt the same small satisfaction she'd felt the first time she'd caused it, in a parking lot outside a wedding neither of them had wanted to attend.

They left on Saturday morning. The rain held off until they reached the courthouse, where a stranger took their photograph on the steps — Adaora's hair shorter now, gray coming in at Marcus's temples, both of them squinting into the same gray light. Then the sky opened. They ate lobster rolls in the car, windows fogging, and did not complain.


The kitchen table had a water ring on it that neither of them ever bothered to sand out, and Marcus set his coffee down right in the middle of it, the way he always did.

"Twenty years," Elena said. She had the calendar app open on her phone, thumb hovering. "Do you want to do the thing where we pretend we're going to fly somewhere?"

"We could actually fly somewhere."

"We could. And then we'd be in an airport on a Friday in October." She set the phone face-down. "I keep thinking about the apartment on Delaney Street."

Marcus laughed. "The one with the radiator that sounded like a man being murdered."

"That one." She pulled her sweater sleeves over her hands. "I'd like to drive past it. Is that stupid? And then get the sandwiches from that place, if it's still there, and eat them in the car like we used to when we couldn't afford chairs."

"We had chairs."

"We had one chair and a milk crate."

He was quiet for a moment, turning his mug in a slow circle. Elena watched him do it and thought, as she often did, that she could have predicted the exact number of degrees.

"I want to add something," he said finally. "After the sandwiches. There's that overlook off Route 9, past the reservoir. I've been driving out there sometimes when I need to think, and I keep meaning to bring you."

"You've been going there alone?"

"Not secretly. Just — quietly."

Elena considered him. Twenty years, and there was still a small unlit room in him she hadn't been in yet. It struck her as an unreasonably good thing.

"Delaney Street, sandwiches, overlook," she said. "And I'm not wearing real shoes."

"Nobody's asking you to wear real shoes."

She picked up her phone and typed it into the fourteenth, and Marcus lifted his coffee, leaving the ring exactly where it had always been.


Marcus found the calendar page already circled in Dee's handwriting: April 12, with a small star beside it. Twelve years.

"You're not supposed to see that," she said from the kitchen doorway, holding two mugs. "I was going to be mysterious."

"You've never been mysterious in your life."

She handed him coffee and sat on the arm of his chair. "Okay. So what do we do? Rita keeps telling me we should go to Charleston. Get a hotel with a claw-foot tub."

Marcus made a face. "Six hours of driving so we can sit in a tub."

"That's what I said." She laughed. "But I want it to be something. Not just takeout and falling asleep during a movie."

He thought about it. Twelve years ago they'd gotten married at the courthouse in Dayton because her mother was sick and there wasn't time to plan anything, and afterward they'd eaten at a diner on Third Street that had since become a vape shop. Dee had worn a blue dress she still kept in the closet, too small now, unwilling to be thrown out.

"What if we cooked?" he said. "Not takeout. Actually cooked. The thing your mom used to make with the chicken and the paprika."

Dee went quiet. She set her mug on the side table.

"I don't have the recipe."

"You have her handwriting on the back of that envelope. In the box. I've seen it."

She pressed the heel of her hand against her eye, briefly, and then nodded. "We'd need a heavier pot."

"We'll get a pot."

So on April 12 they spent four hours in the kitchen, arguing about how much sour cream, burning the first batch of onions, opening the windows because the smoke alarm kept going off. It came out uneven. They ate it at the table with the good plates, and Dee said her mother would have thought it was too salty, and Marcus agreed, and neither of them minded.


The Fifteenth

The argument, if you could call it that, started over pancakes.

"A cruise," Danielle said, tapping the brochure she'd printed at the library. "Seven nights. Cozumel."

Marcus turned the pages of the newspaper without reading them. "Fifteen years and you want to spend it on a boat with three thousand strangers."

"You said you wanted something memorable."

"I said something *ours*." He set down the paper. "Remember the apartment on Delancey? The one with the radiator that screamed?"

"I remember you promising to fix it for two years."

"I remember we ate on the floor because we couldn't afford a table, and you said it was the best restaurant in Baltimore."

Danielle looked at the brochure a while longer, then folded it in half. The house was quiet. Their daughter had left for college in August, and they were still adjusting to the volume of their own voices.

"There's a place," Marcus said. "Little cabin near Cunningham Falls. My cousin rents it out. No cell service. Wood stove."

"You want to go camping."

"I want to go somewhere I can hear you think."

She got up to refill the coffee, and he watched her cross the kitchen the way he had ten thousand times, and it still did something to him he couldn't name.

"Two nights," she said, her back to him. "And you carry the cooler."

"Deal."

They went in early October, when the ridgelines turned rust-colored. The cabin was smaller than the pictures. The stove smoked. Danielle burned the first batch of cornbread and they ate the second batch out of the skillet with a single fork, passing it back and forth on the porch steps while the light went orange over the trees.

"Better than Cozumel?" Marcus asked.

"Don't push it," she said, and leaned her head against his shoulder, and neither of them said anything else for a long while, which was, in the end, exactly the point.


Marguerite found the receipt in a shoebox of old tax documents: April 14, 2009, a diner in Bakersfield, two coffees and one slice of lemon pie. Fifteen dollars, including the tip Dev had overcalculated because he'd been nervous.

"We should go back," she said, holding it up in the doorway of the garage where he was rewiring a lamp.

Dev squinted at the faded paper. "That diner closed. I looked it up two years ago."

"I know it closed."

He set down the screwdriver. Twenty years next month. They had talked about Lisbon, half-seriously, the way people talk about things they know they won't do while the roof needs work and their daughter's tuition invoice sits unpaid on the kitchen counter.

"What if we made the pie," he said.

Marguerite laughed, then stopped laughing, because he wasn't joking. He was already pulling out his phone to search for lemon meringue recipes, the way he approached everything—head down, immediate, methodical.

They spent the anniversary in the kitchen. Dev, who had never made a crust in his life, overworked the dough until Marguerite took it away from him and told him to zest instead. He zested four lemons and part of his thumb. She burned the first batch of meringue under the broiler because they were arguing about whether the diner had been on Union Avenue or Chester.

"Chester," she insisted. "There was a mattress store next door."

"That was the place in Fresno."

The second meringue came out golden and slightly weeping. They ate it standing at the counter at nine at night, no plates, two forks, the kitchen still smelling of scorched sugar.

"Better than the original," Dev said.

"It's not," said Marguerite. "It's not even close."

But she kept the receipt, and later she taped it inside the cabinet door where they kept the mixing bowls, so that it would be there the next time.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a container of rice she couldn't remember making.

By the time Marcus came in, she had the beans in the colander and the oven preheating.

"Chicken again?" he said, not really complaining, setting his keys in the bowl by the door.

"Chicken and rice. Unless you want to go get something."

"No, I'm too tired to get something." He washed his hands at the kitchen sink, then reached around her for the cutting board. "You want me to do the beans?"

"With the garlic. Not too much this time."

"There's no such thing as too much."

"There was Tuesday."

He laughed and got out the good pan, the heavy one his mother had given them, and started smashing cloves with the flat of the knife. Dana pulled the chicken apart with her fingers, dropping the shreds into a baking dish, then poured the rice over it and added a splash of broth so it wouldn't dry out.

They didn't talk much while it cooked. The kitchen radio was tuned to the classical station, which neither of them particularly liked but neither bothered to change. Marcus checked his phone twice and put it face-down on the counter.

They ate at the table, which they did on purpose, because Dana's parents had always eaten in front of the television and she had decided years ago that they wouldn't. The beans were good. The chicken was fine.

"Your sister called me," Marcus said.

"About the thing in August?"

"About the thing in August."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow."

He nodded and reached for more beans. Outside it had already gotten dark.


The rain had started around four, so Dana came in the back door with wet shoulders and set the grocery bag on the counter. "They were out of the good sausage," she said. "I got the turkey kind."

Marcus was at the sink, rinsing a colander of green beans. "That's fine. Nobody will know."

"You'll know. You'll say something about it at the table."

He laughed and shook water off his hands. She unpacked the bag: sausage, a jar of pasta sauce, a bag of shredded parmesan that had a coupon sticker on it. The pot on the back burner was already going, lid rattling.

"Penne or the shells?" she asked, digging in the cabinet.

"Shells. The penne's from that box that's been open since Christmas."

"That's not a real problem."

"It's a little bit of a problem."

She used the shells. Marcus sliced the sausage on the diagonal and got it browning in the cast iron, and the kitchen filled up with that smell that always made him hungry faster than he expected. Dana turned on the small light over the stove and the big one off, which was her preference and something he'd stopped arguing about years ago.

They ate at the kitchen table because the dining table had a laptop and a stack of mail on it. Marcus ate a bite and nodded.

"It's fine," he said.

"You paused."

"I didn't pause. It's fine. It's a little sweeter."

"That's the sauce. That's not the sausage."

He conceded the point with a shrug and reached for the parmesan. Outside the rain got heavier, then let up. Dana told him about a coworker who was quitting, probably, and Marcus said he thought she'd been saying that for a year. They finished at almost the same time. He washed, she dried, and the beans nobody had eaten went into a container for tomorrow.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in the kitchen with her coat still on, looking into the refrigerator at half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, and a container of rice she couldn't remember making.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the door.

"Fine by me," Mark said. He came in unwinding his scarf, kissed the side of her head, and dropped his keys in the bowl on the counter, where they slid off and hit the floor. He picked them up and set them back more carefully.

She pulled the chicken apart with two forks while he ran water over the green beans and snapped the ends off, tossing them into the compost bin under the sink. The bin needed emptying. Neither of them mentioned it.

"There's that sesame oil," he said. "The good one."

"Use it on the beans."

He heated the skillet too hot and the garlic went dark fast, filling the kitchen with a smell that was almost but not quite burning. Dana opened the window over the sink two inches. Outside, someone's dog was barking at nothing.

They ate at the table because they had agreed, in January, to stop eating in front of the television. It had mostly held. Mark told her about a coworker who kept scheduling meetings at four-thirty on Fridays. Dana told him her mother had called twice and left no message either time.

"You should call her back."

"I will. Tomorrow."

The rice was drier than it should have been. Mark added soy sauce and passed her the bottle without her asking. The beans were good, blistered and salty.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and when the last pan was in the rack she leaned against him for a second, and then went to find her phone.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Dana came in through the garage door, still holding her badge lanyard in her teeth while she shrugged out of her jacket.

"There's chicken thawed," Marcus said. He was at the sink with the colander, running cold water over the broccoli. "Or there was chicken thawed. It's been on the counter since noon."

Dana leaned over and sniffed it, made a face that was mostly performance. "It's February. The house is fifty-eight degrees. It's fine."

"The house is sixty-six."

"It feels like fifty-eight." She got the cast iron down from the hook, then thought better of it and put it back, taking the nonstick instead. "I don't want to scrub anything tonight."

He didn't argue. He chopped the broccoli into pieces that were too big and she didn't mention it, the way he hadn't mentioned that she'd let the chicken sit out. She salted it hard, both sides, and got the pan smoking while he pulled the soy sauce and the sesame oil off the lazy Susan and lined them up by the stove like surgical instruments.

"Rachel called about Saturday," he said.

"Called or texted?"

"Called. Which is how I know she wants something."

"She wants us to watch the dog."

"She wants us to watch the dog."

The chicken hissed. Dana turned it once, too early, and it stuck, and she scraped it up with the spatula and said nothing. Marcus tossed the broccoli in beside it and put the lid on and they stood there together in the steam, not touching, his hip against the oven handle.

They ate at the kitchen table with the mail pushed to one end. It came out fine — a little dry, plenty of it. He got up halfway through for the sriracha and brought her the water pitcher without being asked.

"Saturday's fine," she said.

"I already told her yes."

"I know you did."


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator in her work clothes, holding the door with her hip, and took inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, three eggs, a lemon that had hardened into something like a wooden ornament.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the front door.

"We had that Monday," Peter said. He came into the kitchen still wearing his jacket and looked over her shoulder, as if a fourth option might reveal itself. "Fine. Chicken and rice."

He put on the rice while she trimmed the beans, snapping the ends off in a small pile she pushed toward the compost bin they'd started using in March and mostly remembered. The kitchen was narrow enough that they had to negotiate, and they did it without talking about it—she stepped back when he needed the drawer, he lifted his elbow when she reached past for the olive oil.

"Did you call about the dishwasher?" she asked.

"I left a message. They said Thursday, maybe."

"They said Thursday last week."

"I know." He shredded the chicken with two forks, standing at the cutting board. "There's still some of that mustard sauce."

They ate at the table because Dana liked to, even on a Wednesday, even when the news would have been fine in the background. Peter poured half a beer into a glass and drank the rest from the bottle without noticing he'd done it. The beans were slightly overdone, softer than either of them preferred, and neither said so.

"This is good," he said, and meant it.

She told him about a coworker's baby shower she didn't want to attend. He told her about a parking ticket. When they were done, he washed and she dried, because the dishwasher was still broken, and it took eleven minutes.


Marcus got home first, which meant he decided. He stood in front of the open refrigerator with his tie loosened, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, the heel of a block of cheddar.

"Chicken and rice?" he called out when he heard the front door.

"Is there enough chicken?" Dana came into the kitchen still holding her keys, peering over his shoulder. She reached past him and pulled the beans out. "These are on their way out."

"I saw."

"So use them tonight." She set them on the counter and went to hang up her coat.

He put the rice on—the good pot, the one with the tight lid—and started pulling meat off the carcass with his fingers while the water came up. Dana came back in wearing sweatpants and washed the beans, snapping the ends off and dropping them into a colander. They worked around each other in the narrow galley, a choreography they'd figured out over eleven years: she stepped back, he reached for the olive oil, she moved to the stove.

"Do we have soy sauce?"

"Behind the vinegar."

She fried the beans hard in a skillet with garlic, which was how her mother did it, and Marcus warmed the chicken in a little broth so it wouldn't dry out. They ate at the kitchen table because the dining room table had bills on it. Dana had the news on her phone, propped against the salt shaker, until Marcus said, "Please," and she turned it face down.

"Sorry."

"How was the thing with Kevin?"

"He's an idiot. But it's fine now." She pointed her fork at the beans. "These came out good."

"You always overcook them."

"I like them overcooked."

He did the dishes. She dried, badly, and put things in the wrong cabinets, and he moved them later without saying anything.


Dana got home first, which meant she chose the music—something with a lot of piano—and started the rice. The bag said twenty minutes but she'd learned it was closer to twenty-five in their apartment, something about the old stove running cool.

Marcus came in at six-fifteen, dropped his keys in the ceramic dish his sister had made, and looked in the fridge.

"There's chicken thighs," Dana said. "The ones from Sunday."

"Are they still good?"

"They're four days old."

He sniffed them anyway, then shrugged and set them on the counter. He was better at the actual cooking, so she moved aside and let him take the pan. She got out the sesame oil, the soy sauce, the honey that had crystallized around the lid.

"We should get new honey," she said.

"It's fine. Run it under hot water."

There was half a bag of green beans in the crisper drawer, going a little limp. Marcus trimmed them with the paring knife while Dana rinsed a colander of them, and they had the mild argument they always had about whether to blanch first. She won because she was standing at the sink.

The chicken sizzled. Marcus turned the fan on and it groaned. They ate at the small table by the window, the one that wobbled, with plates on their laps for balance—no, that was last apartment. This table was fine.

"How was the meeting?" she asked.

"They pushed it to Thursday."

"Of course they did."

He nodded, chewing. The rice was slightly wet. Neither of them mentioned it. Outside, someone was trying to parallel park and failing, and they both watched for a while without commenting, forks moving.

Afterward Marcus washed and Dana dried, because that was the arrangement, and then they put on the show they were halfway through and she fell asleep before the second episode.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to pick. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, looking at a package of chicken thighs and half a bag of green beans, doing the math on how tired she was.

By the time Marcus came in, she had the oven preheating and the thighs laid skin-side up on a sheet pan.

"It smells like nothing in here," he said, hanging his keys on the hook.

"Give it twenty minutes."

He washed his hands and took over the beans, snapping the ends off and dropping them into a colander. "Did you use the good olive oil?"

"I used the olive oil."

"That's a no."

"It's a Tuesday," she said. "The good oil is for company."

"We're company." He rinsed the beans and shook the colander over the sink. "Do we have lemons?"

There was one, a little soft on one end. He cut it in half and set it aside, then leaned against the counter while she seasoned the pan—salt, pepper, too much paprika, which was her habit and which he had stopped commenting on around year three.

They ate at the kitchen table because the coffee table was covered in mail neither of them had sorted. Marcus told her about a meeting that could have been an email. Dana said her sister called, wanting to know about Thanksgiving, and Marcus made a face, and Dana said, "I know," and that was the whole conversation about Thanksgiving.

The chicken was good. The beans were slightly underdone, and Dana ate around the tough ones.

"Next time, less paprika," he said, and she said, "Next time, cook it yourself," and he laughed with his mouth full.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they were done by seven forty, which felt like getting away with something.


Dana got home first, so she started the rice. The measuring cup had gone missing again, so she eyeballed it — a cup and a half, maybe, into the pot — and set the burner to medium while she pulled her hair back with a band from her wrist.

Marcus came in at ten after six, still in his work boots, and stopped just inside the door to unlace them.

"Chicken thighs are almost thawed," she said. "I put them in a bowl of water."

"Skin on?"

"Skin on."

He washed his hands at the kitchen sink, which she hated and had told him she hated, but she let it go tonight. He patted the thighs dry with paper towels while she found the sheet pan, the good one, the one that wasn't warped.

"Do we have any of that lemon pepper left?"

She checked. "No. There's the garlic stuff."

"Garlic's fine."

The oven wasn't preheated, so they stood there a minute with the seasoned chicken sitting on the pan between them, and Marcus told her about a guy at work who'd backed a forklift into a stack of pallets. She laughed in the wrong place, distracted, watching the rice, and he said, "You didn't hear a word of that."

"I heard forklift."

At 6:40 the chicken went in. She microwaved a bag of frozen green beans and stirred in butter and salt and too much pepper, and Marcus tasted them off the spoon and said they were good, actually, better than usual.

They ate at the table because Dana had asked for that a few months ago, no phones, and mostly they kept to it. The chicken skin was crisp in places and flabby in others. Marcus ate two thighs and half of hers.

"Same thing tomorrow?" he said.

"There's leftover rice."

"Rice and something."

He rinsed; she loaded. It took nine minutes.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to pick. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a lemon.

By the time Marcus came in, she had water heating and the beans dumped in the colander.

"It smells like nothing in here," he said, setting his keys in the bowl by the door.

"That's because nothing has happened yet." She handed him the lemon. "Zest that. Or don't, actually. Just cut it in half."

He rinsed the beans while she pulled chicken off the bone with her fingers, dropping the good pieces into a bowl and the skin onto a paper towel. The pasta water started to hiss over the edge of the pot and she lowered the burner without looking.

"There's that garlic bread in the freezer," he said.

"That's from March."

"Bread doesn't go bad in a freezer."

"Everything goes bad in a freezer." But she nodded at it anyway, and he set the oven to 400 and stood there while it preheated, scrolling on his phone, reading her a headline she didn't respond to.

They ate at the table because Dana liked to, though the television was audible from the other room where Marcus had left it on. She squeezed lemon over her beans. He salted everything twice.

"This is good," he said. "This is better than it should be."

"That's the lemon."

He told her about the meeting that got moved, and then moved again, and she told him her sister had called about Thanksgiving, and they agreed to think about it and not decide tonight. He got up for a second piece of garlic bread and brought her one too, without asking, which was correct.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and it took eleven minutes, and then the kitchen was quiet again.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, scanning: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a lemon.

By the time Marcus came in, shaking rain off his jacket, she had the beans in a colander and a pot of water heating.

"Pasta?" he asked, setting his keys in the bowl by the door.

"Chicken and beans. And rice, if you want to make it."

"I want to make it." He washed his hands at the kitchen sink instead of the bathroom, which annoyed her mildly and always had, for eleven years. He measured rice into the little pot they'd gotten at a yard sale in Ohio.

"Two cups of water?"

"One and a half. It says on the bag."

"The bag lies."

"The bag has never lied."

He used one and three-quarters, splitting the difference, and she let it go. She pulled the chicken apart with her fingers, laying the pieces in a pan with olive oil to warm through. The beans went in after, with salt and a squeeze of the lemon, and she covered them so they'd steam.

Marcus set the table. Two plates, forks, the water glasses. He asked about her afternoon and she told him about the printer, and the woman in accounting who kept calling her Diane.

"For how long?"

"Four years."

"You have to correct her."

"It's gone past correcting."

The rice came out fine. They ate at the kitchen table with the overhead light on because they'd never gotten around to buying a lamp for that corner. He said the beans were good. She said they were about to go bad. He said that was often when things were best.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they were done by seven-thirty.


Marcus got home first, which meant he decided. He stood in front of the open refrigerator until the cold reached his shins, then pulled out a package of chicken thighs and the half-bag of green beans they'd bought Sunday.

By the time Priya came in, shaking rain off her jacket, he had the oven at 425 and the beans on a sheet pan.

"That's it?" she said, not unkindly, peering over his shoulder.

"There's rice."

"Did you start it?"

He had not started it. She rinsed the rice in a mesh strainer while he salted the chicken, and they moved around each other in the narrow kitchen with the choreography of nine years, one stepping back when the other opened a drawer.

"Sanjay called," she said. "He wants to know if we're driving up for Diwali or flying."

"What did you tell him?"

"That I'd ask you. Flying's four hundred each."

"Driving's eight hours."

"Nine, with stops."

Marcus tipped olive oil over the beans and used his hands to toss them. "Let's drive. We can split it."

"You always say that and then you sleep through Pennsylvania."

He laughed. The oven beeped and he slid the pan in, then wiped his palms on the dish towel hanging off the stove handle, which she hated, because it was the drying towel.

They ate at the table instead of the couch, which happened maybe twice a week. Priya had opened a bottle of wine on Tuesday and there was a glass and a half left, so they split it. The chicken skin was good, crisp and salty; the beans were slightly burnt at the tips, which they both preferred.

"This is fine," she said. "This is a good dinner."

"It's chicken."

"I'm saying I like it."

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they were done by seven-forty.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to choose. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a lemon.

"Chicken again?" Marcus said from the doorway. He'd taken his shoes off in the hall, the way he always did, and his socks didn't match.

"Chicken again. Or we drive to the store."

"Chicken's fine." He came around behind her and reached past her shoulder for a beer, then didn't open it, just set it on the counter and rolled up his sleeves. "I'll do the beans."

She pulled the chicken apart with her hands while he snapped the ends off the green beans, dropping them into the compost bin under the sink. The kitchen radio was on the classical station because neither of them had bothered to change it in weeks. He salted the water before it boiled, which she'd told him didn't matter, and she let it go.

"There's rice from Tuesday," she said.

"Is it still good?"

"It's four days old."

"That's still good."

She microwaved it in the plastic container with a wet paper towel over the top, the way his mother had shown her years ago. The green beans came out a little squeaky. They ate at the kitchen table, not the dining room, with the mail pushed to one side.

"Melissa's asking about the Fourth," Dana said.

"Do we have to decide tonight?"

"No."

He squeezed lemon over his beans, then over hers without asking, because he knew. They talked about the leak under the bathroom sink, whether it was worth calling someone. Marcus washed; Dana dried. There were two plates, two forks, the pot, and the cutting board, and it took nine minutes.


Dana got home first, so she started the rice. The measuring cup had gone missing sometime in October, so she used the chipped coffee mug and eyeballed the water.

Owen came in at ten past six, dropped his bag by the shoe rack, and stood in front of the open fridge the way he always did, as if waiting for it to make a suggestion.

"There's the chicken thighs," Dana said. "They need to go tonight or tomorrow."

"Tonight, then." He pulled out the package and peeled back the plastic. "Do we have that lemon left?"

"Half of one. It's kind of sad."

"Sad is fine."

He got the cast iron going too hot, the way he liked, and she moved to the far end of the counter to escape the spitting oil. She washed the last of the green beans, snapping the ends off into the compost bin, and asked about his afternoon. He said the client had rescheduled again. She said that was the third time. He said he knew.

They ate at the kitchen table because the coffee table was covered in her sister's wedding invitations, which she had volunteered to address and now resented. The chicken skin came out well. The rice was a little wet.

"More water next time," Owen said, not unkindly.

"I know. The cup's a bad cup."

"We could buy a measuring cup."

"We could." Neither of them wrote it down.

They talked about whether to go to his cousin's thing on Saturday and decided probably yes, briefly. Halfway through, Dana got up to refill her water glass and brought the pitcher back for him too.

He washed; she dried and put away, because she knew where things went. When the counters were wiped, they took the last two beers into the living room and moved the invitations to the floor.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to pick. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, doing the math: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of spinach going soft at the edges, three eggs, the block of cheddar with one hard corner.

"Chicken and rice again?" Marcus said from the doorway. He'd come in through the garage and was toeing off his work boots on the mat, the way she'd asked him to about forty times.

"Or eggs. Fried rice, sort of. I don't know if we have soy sauce."

"We have soy sauce. It's behind the vinegar." He came over and reached past her, and there it was, the bottle crusted brown around the cap.

She started the rice while he chopped the chicken off the bone, standing at the counter with the cutting board that had a warp in it. He kept a small pile of skin to the side for himself, which she pretended not to see. The kitchen radio was on the news, and after a minute he reached over and switched it to the station that played nothing but the eighties.

"That's the third night this week," she said.

"It's a good song."

"It's a Steve Winwood song."

"That's what I said."

The rice took longer than the package promised. Dana wilted the spinach in the pan with too much garlic; Marcus scrambled the eggs into it and broke them up with the edge of the spatula, which she'd told him ruined the finish. They ate at the table because they had a rule about that, though Marcus's phone sat face-down by his water glass.

"This is decent," he said.

"It's fine. It's food."

"No, it's decent." He got up for the hot sauce and brought her the mail on his way back, and she opened the electric bill while it was still hot enough to burn her mouth.


The rain had started sometime during Dana's commute, so she came in through the garage shaking water off her coat while Mark stood at the stove with the burner already on.

"There's chicken thawed," he said. "I was going to do the sheet pan thing but the oven takes forever."

"Just do it in the pan." She hung her coat on the back of a chair instead of the closet, which she knew he'd notice and not mention. "Is there any of that rice left?"

"From Sunday? That's four days."

"Three."

He opened the fridge and sniffed the container, then set it on the counter without a verdict. Dana took over the chicken, cutting the breasts into strips on the plastic board while Mark washed a head of broccoli he'd bought on a whim and had been feeling guilty about all week.

"How was the thing with Rebecca?" she asked.

"She rescheduled. Again."

"Of course she did."

The chicken hissed when it hit the oil. Mark broke the broccoli into florets with his hands, dropping them into a bowl with a splash of water to microwave, which Dana had explained was actually steaming and therefore fine. He got out two plates, then the good soy sauce, then remembered they were out of garlic and said so.

"Use the powder."

"It's not the same."

"It's Thursday."

He used the powder. They ate at the kitchen table with the overhead light on because neither of them got up to turn on the lamp, and the rain kept going against the window over the sink. Dana ate the rice. Mark watched her do it and said nothing.

Afterward she washed and he dried, and he told her about a coworker who'd bought a boat, and she said, "A boat," and they left it there.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, two eggs, a heel of parmesan.

"Chicken and rice?" she called out when she heard the door.

"Again?" Mark said, but he was already toeing off his shoes. "Fine. Yes. I'm not going to pretend I have a better idea."

He put water on for the rice while she pulled the meat off the bones with her fingers, dropping the carcass into a freezer bag for stock she probably wouldn't make. The green beans she trimmed fast and sloppy, snapping off the stem ends and leaving the tails on.

"Do we have that soy sauce?" she asked.

"Behind the vinegar."

"It's not behind the vinegar."

Mark came over and reached past her shoulder and produced it from behind the vinegar. She made a face at him. He kissed the side of her head and went back to the rice, which was boiling over, hissing on the burner.

"Turn it down," she said.

"I'm turning it down."

They ate at the kitchen table with the mail pushed to one side. The beans were too crunchy in places. Mark salted his food before tasting it, which she had stopped commenting on around year three.

"Your mom called me," he said. "Not you. Me."

"About the tickets?"

"About the tickets. I said we'd figure it out this weekend."

Dana nodded, chewing. Outside, someone's car alarm went off and stopped. She got up for the parmesan and grated some over both their plates without asking.

"Trash night," Mark said.

"I know it's trash night."

"I'm just saying it out loud so one of us does it."

Neither of them moved yet. The rice was still warm.


Tuesday, and the light in the kitchen was that flat gray-yellow of late February. Dana got home first, which meant she stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory. Two chicken thighs, a half bag of green beans, a lemon going soft at one end.

"Rice or potatoes?" she called when she heard the front door.

"Rice," Marcus said. He came in unwinding his scarf, kissed the side of her head, and reached past her for a beer. "There's rice, right?"

"There's always rice."

He rinsed a cup of it in the pot, swirling with his fingers, pouring the cloudy water down the drain twice, the way his mother did. Dana salted the chicken and set the cast iron on to heat. They moved around each other without much negotiation, twelve years of it: she took the stove side, he took the sink.

"Chris asked if we want to do Saturday," Marcus said.

"Doing what?"

"He didn't say. Probably that brewery with the dog."

"I don't want to sit outside in forty degrees again." The chicken went into the pan skin-down and complained loudly. Dana turned on the fan, which did approximately nothing.

"That's what I told him. More or less."

She trimmed the green beans while the chicken rendered, tossing the ends into the compost bin on the counter, which needed taking out and would not get taken out tonight. Marcus set the table with two plates and one fork, then noticed and got the second fork.

They ate at the small table by the window with the news muted on the tablet propped against the sugar bowl. The chicken was good. The rice was slightly wet.

"I overdid the water," he said.

"It's fine."

Afterward he washed and she dried, and the whole thing had taken forty minutes, and neither of them thought anything of it.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to choose. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, doing the math: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, rice in the cupboard.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the door.

"Again?" Mark said, but he was already toeing off his shoes. "Yeah, fine. Is there any of that peanut sauce?"

There wasn't. She checked anyway, moving jars around, and found instead a bottle of teriyaki with maybe two tablespoons left in the bottom.

"Teriyaki?"

"Sure."

She measured rice into the pot while he shredded the chicken with his fingers, pulling it off the bones and dropping the carcass into the trash bag under the sink. He had opinions about the beans—he wanted them blistered in the cast iron, not steamed—so she handed over the pan and let him do it, and he got the heat too high, the way he always did, and the smoke alarm gave one warning chirp before he waved a dish towel at it.

"It's fine," he said.

"It's smoking."

"It's supposed to."

They ate at the kitchen table because the coffee table in the living room had a stack of unopened mail on it that neither of them wanted to deal with. The beans were good, actually—dark in spots, salty. Mark drank water from a pint glass. Dana had half a beer left from Friday and drank it flat.

"Your mom called me," she said.

"About the thing in April?"

"About the thing in April."

"What'd you tell her?"

"That I'd talk to you." She pushed rice onto her fork with her thumb. "So. April."

"Let me look at my week," he said, meaning no, or meaning later, and she let it go, and he got up to put the kettle on.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a lemon.

By the time Marcus came in, shaking rain off his jacket, she had the beans in a colander and the oven preheating.

"Chicken again?" he said, not really complaining.

"You want to go get something?"

"No." He kissed the side of her head and went to change out of his work clothes. When he came back in sweatpants, he took over the beans without being asked, snapping the ends off and dropping them into a bowl. He always left them too long. She'd stopped mentioning it around year three.

"Rice or the potatoes?" she asked.

"Potatoes take forty minutes."

"Rice, then."

He put water on. She pulled the chicken apart with her fingers, tearing the meat into rough pieces, then squeezed the lemon over it and slid the pan into the oven just to warm it through. The beans went into a skillet with butter and too much garlic, which was how he liked them.

They ate at the table because Dana had asked, sometime last winter, if they could stop eating on the couch. Marcus had agreed and then mostly remembered.

"Your mother called me," he said.

"Why you?"

"She said your voicemail is full."

"It is." Dana pushed rice onto her fork with her thumb. "What did she want?"

"To know if we're coming at Easter."

"Are we?"

"I said I'd ask you."

She considered it, chewing. "Tell her yes. But we're not staying at the house."

"That's what I told her."

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they were done by seven-thirty, and the rest of the evening opened up in front of them, unremarkable and theirs.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in the open refrigerator with her coat still on, looking at a package of chicken thighs, a bag of green beans, and half a lemon that had gone hard on one side.

"Chicken?" she called.

Mark was in the entryway, prying off his shoes without untying them. "Sure. Is there rice?"

"There's the last of the jasmine. Maybe a cup and a half."

"That's enough."

She set the oven to 425 and dumped the beans into a colander to rinse. Mark came in, kissed the back of her head, and took over the rice because she always let it boil too hard. He measured water with the side of his finger, which she teased him about and which always worked.

"How was the thing with Priya?" he asked.

"Moved to Thursday. Which is fine, except now Thursday is insane." She patted the thighs dry with a paper towel, salted them, and laid them skin-side up on a sheet pan. The beans went around them with olive oil and too much garlic; she never measured garlic.

"You want the lemon?"

"The lemon's half dead."

"I'll cut around it."

They ate at the kitchen table because the coffee table had a lamp on it and neither wanted to move the lamp. The chicken skin had gone properly crisp. Mark ate the beans first, all of them, then the chicken, then the rice, in his methodical way that Dana had stopped finding strange around year three.

"This is good," he said.

"It's the same as always."

"It's good the same as always."

She told him about the parking situation at the clinic. He told her his brother had texted about Thanksgiving, and they agreed to think about it later, meaning next week.

Mark washed. Dana dried and put away, because she knew where things went.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a lemon.

By the time Marcus came in, she had the beans rinsed and the oven preheating.

"It's freezing out there," he said, hanging his keys on the hook they'd finally installed in March. "Did you get the mail?"

"I forgot."

"I'll go back down." He didn't move for a moment, just stood there rubbing his hands together, then leaned over to look in the pan. "Beans?"

"And chicken. There's rice in the freezer, the leftover kind."

"I can make fresh."

"That takes twenty minutes."

"So does the chicken." He was already reaching for the pot.

She let him. He rinsed the rice three times in a mesh strainer, the way his mother did, while she tossed the beans with olive oil and too much salt, then scattered them across a sheet pan. They worked around each other in the narrow galley kitchen, a choreography of hips and elbows, Marcus saying "behind you" out of habit even when she'd already stepped aside.

"Did Kelsey text you?" he asked.

"About the baby shower. I said we'd come."

"Both of us?"

"You can not come."

"No, I'll come." He set the lid on the rice and turned the burner down. "Is it going to be one of those where you play games?"

"Probably."

"Okay."

They ate at the table because Dana insisted on it, though the television murmured from the next room where Marcus had left it on. The chicken was dry. The beans were good — blistered, salty. He ate three-quarters of the beans.

"Sorry about the chicken," she said.

"It's Wednesday chicken," he said, and reached for the rice.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, three eggs, a wedge of parmesan.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the door.

"Is there enough chicken?" Mark came into the kitchen, setting his laptop bag on a chair he never used for sitting.

"There's enough if you don't have thirds."

He took the beans from her and started snapping the ends off over the trash can, which she'd told him a hundred times was less sanitary than using a bowl. She let it go. The rice cooker was already ticking away with the last of the jasmine rice, and she pulled the chicken apart with her fingers, dropping the bones into a bag for the freezer.

"Did you call about the gutter guy?" Mark asked.

"I left a message. He hasn't called back." She washed her hands. "It's been three days."

"He's probably slammed. Everybody's got leaves."

The beans went into a skillet with olive oil and too much garlic, the way Mark liked. Dana grated parmesan while he stood over the pan and moved things around unnecessarily. The kitchen window fogged a little at the bottom.

They ate at the table with the mail pushed to one side. Mark told a long story about a coworker who'd taken credit for something in a meeting, and Dana made the right noises while thinking about whether she needed gas in the morning.

"This is good," he said. "The garlic."

"It's the same as always."

"It's good the same as always."

She got up for the water pitcher. Outside, a car door slammed, and the neighbor's dog started up, and Mark reached over and took the last of her rice.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, the heel of a block of cheddar.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the door.

"Is there enough chicken?" Marcus came into the kitchen, loosening his tie with two fingers, and looked over her shoulder into the fridge like he might find something she'd missed.

"Enough if we don't get greedy."

He filled the electric kettle, because the rice cooked faster if you started it with hot water — a trick his mother swore by and Dana had never bothered to verify. While the water heated he pulled the beans out of the crisper and started snapping the ends off over the trash can, dropping them in with a soft ticking sound.

Dana shredded the chicken with two forks, standing at the counter, and ate a piece straight from the cutting board.

"That's the good part," Marcus said.

"There's more good parts."

The rice went in the pot with a knob of butter and too much salt, which they both preferred. Marcus put the beans in a pan with olive oil and turned the heat up higher than Dana would have, and she didn't say anything, and they came out slightly blistered, which was better.

They ate at the kitchen table with the mail pushed to one side. Marcus told her about a coworker who'd been fired, or possibly had quit, the story unclear even to the people involved. Dana said the word "resigned" carried a lot of weight.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they left the pot to soak because neither of them wanted to scrub it. The whole thing had taken twenty-five minutes.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, two eggs, a heel of Parmesan.

"Pasta?" she called when she heard the front door.

"Sure." Micah came into the kitchen unwinding his scarf. "Is there garlic?"

"There's the jar."

He made a face but didn't argue. He filled the pot and set it on the back burner while she pulled the chicken apart with her fingers, dropping the good pieces into a bowl and the skin into the trash. The green beans she trimmed on the cutting board, working fast, snapping off the bad ends.

"How was the thing with Renata?" she asked.

"Postponed. Again." He salted the water without measuring. "She's got a family situation, I guess. It's fine. It gives me the weekend."

"You said that last time."

"I know what I said."

The water took forever. Micah leaned against the counter and scrolled his phone, reading her a headline about a mayor she didn't care about. Dana tossed the beans in a pan with oil and let them sit until they blistered, then added the jarred garlic anyway. He didn't comment.

They ate at the table because Dana insisted on it, though the TV was audible from the next room, some cooking competition Micah had left running. She grated the Parmesan directly over his bowl, too much, and he said nothing about that either.

"This is good," he said, and meant it.

"It's chicken and noodles."

"It's good."

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they got through it in eleven minutes, and then she went to fold laundry and he finished the show, and the kitchen light stayed on until almost ten.


Diane got home first, which meant she chose. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, considering the half-package of chicken thighs that needed using and the bag of green beans she'd bought optimistically on Sunday.

By the time Peter came in, shaking rain off his jacket, she had the oven at 425 and was patting the chicken dry with a paper towel.

"You didn't preheat the pan," he said, hanging his jacket on the hook by the door.

"I'm not doing it your way tonight. I'm doing it the easy way."

"The easy way is worse."

"The easy way is one pan." She slid the sheet pan toward him. "Trim the beans if you want them trimmed."

He washed his hands and did it, snapping the ends off with his thumbnail and dropping them into the compost bin, which needed emptying. Diane salted the chicken heavily and Peter tossed the beans with olive oil in the same bowl she'd used for the chicken, which she pretended not to notice.

They talked about his sister's plans to visit in March, whether the guest room mattress was actually as bad as she'd said, and whether they should just buy a new one. Peter thought they should wait. Diane thought waiting was how they'd ended up with a nineteen-year-old mattress.

The chicken took thirty-five minutes. They ate at the kitchen table with the good plates, because the everyday plates were in the dishwasher, unwashed, from Tuesday.

"This is good," Peter said. "The skin's not crispy, though."

"I know."

"I'm just saying."

"I know you're just saying."

He ate two thighs and both scooped the last beans out of the pan. Afterward, Diane rinsed, Peter loaded, and they ran the dishwasher, which took twenty minutes to argue about the correct arrangement of the bowls.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, two eggs, a wedge of parmesan sealed in plastic.

"Pasta?" she called when she heard the door.

"Sure." Mark set his keys in the bowl and came into the kitchen, loosening his tie the way he always did, like it was choking him. "Is there garlic?"

"There's garlic."

He filled the pot too full, the way he always did, and she said nothing about it. She trimmed the green beans on the cutting board while the water took its time, dropping the ends into the sink. Behind her, Mark shredded chicken off the bone with his fingers, standing over the container so the juice wouldn't drip.

"Todd's leaving," he said.

"Todd who sits by the window?"

"Todd who sits by the window. Going to his brother's company in Charlotte."

"Huh." She scraped the beans into a pan with a little olive oil. "Is that good for you or bad for you?"

"Neither. Just weird." He rinsed his hands. "The office'll be quieter."

The pasta went in. Mark grated the parmesan onto a plate because they couldn't find the little bowl. They ate at the kitchen table, which had a stack of unopened mail on one end that neither of them moved. The beans were better than she expected. Mark ate his chicken first, then his pasta, the way he always did, separately.

"This is good," he said.

"It's fine."

"It's good."

She got up for the pepper. When she sat back down he had already put a second helping on her plate without asking, which was either presumptuous or thoughtful, and she decided, tonight, on thoughtful.


Dana got home first, which meant she chose. She stood in the open refrigerator, letting the cold air work on her neck, and decided on the chicken thighs before they turned.

By the time Marcus came in, shaking rain off his jacket, she had the oven at four hundred and was chopping a red onion badly.

"You're murdering that," he said.

"Then take over."

He washed his hands, dried them on the dish towel she'd told him a hundred times was for dishes, and took the knife. She let him. He was faster, and he liked being asked.

"There's half a bag of green beans," she said. "And rice."

"Rice takes twenty minutes."

"So?"

"So the chicken's twenty-five." He said it like a small victory, and started the rice cooker.

She salted the thighs, laid them skin-down in the cast iron to get color, and the kitchen filled with that spitting noise and smell that always made her hungrier than she'd been a minute before. Marcus tossed the beans with oil on a sheet pan, then reached past her for the pepper grinder and she leaned back against him for a second without either of them making anything of it.

They ate at the table because Dana had a rule about it, though the television was audible from the other room where Marcus had left it on the news.

"Your mother called me," he said.

"About the thing in August."

"About the thing in August."

"Tell her yes. I don't want to have three more conversations about it."

He nodded and ate the rest of a chicken thigh with his fingers, which she pretended not to see. The beans were slightly burned on one end of the pan and perfect on the other. She took the burned ones.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they were done by seven-forty.


Diane got home first, so she started the rice. Not the good rice from the Asian market on Route 9, just the bag of long-grain from the pantry, because it was Wednesday and nobody was coming over.

Marcus came in at six-twenty with the mail tucked under his arm and set it on the counter without looking at it. "Did you want the chicken thighs or the ground turkey?" he asked, already opening the fridge.

"Thighs. The turkey's from before we went to your sister's."

He sniffed the package anyway, then dropped it in the trash and got out the chicken. Diane moved sideways to give him the sink. They had worked out this choreography over nine years, the kitchen being narrow, and neither of them thought about it anymore.

"There's broccoli," she said. "It's a little sad but it's fine."

"Sad how?"

"Rubber-bandy. It'll be fine roasted."

He seasoned the thighs with salt, pepper, and the garlic powder, because he had stopped pretending he was going to mince garlic on a weeknight. The oven wasn't preheated. It never was. They stood there for four minutes waiting on it, Marcus scrolling something on his phone, Diane reading the water bill she'd finally picked up.

"It went up eleven dollars."

"Did you water the hydrangea a lot?"

"I watered it normally."

Dinner took thirty-five minutes. They ate at the table, not the couch, which was a rule Diane had instituted in March and Marcus had grudgingly accepted. The chicken skin came out crisp on one side and pale on the other. The broccoli was fine.

"This is good," he said, meaning it in a small way.

"The rice is a little gluey."

"It's fine."

Afterward he washed, she dried, and they left the pan to soak overnight, which they both knew meant morning.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, looking at a package of chicken thighs, half a bag of green beans, and a lemon that had gone slightly soft on one side.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the door.

"Sure." Mark came into the kitchen, set his keys in the bowl, and started running water over the rice in the mesh strainer. He always rinsed it, which Dana thought was unnecessary, and which she had stopped arguing about sometime in their second year of marriage.

She patted the thighs dry with a paper towel and salted them heavily. The skillet went on high, and by the time the oil shimmered, the kitchen already smelled like a place where something was happening.

"Do we have soy sauce still?"

"Door of the fridge. Behind the mustards."

The chicken hissed when it hit the pan. Dana pressed it down with a spatula and left it alone. Mark trimmed the green beans, dropping the stem ends into the compost bin under the sink, and asked her how the meeting went.

"They moved it. Again. Thursday now."

"Of course they did."

He set the beans in a bowl with a splash of water and covered them with a plate, which was how his mother steamed vegetables in the microwave, and which he still preferred to boiling them. Dana flipped the chicken. The skin had gone dark gold and stuck slightly, and she scraped it up carefully.

They ate at the small table by the window, the good part of the day now, plates warm in their hands. Mark squeezed the tired lemon over his beans. Dana ate the crisp skin first, then the meat.

"This is good," he said.

"It's fine." But she was pleased, and he knew it.

Afterward he washed, she dried, and neither of them turned on the television.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to choose. She stood in front of the open refrigerator until the cold made her arms prickle, then pulled out a package of chicken thighs and half a bag of green beans that had gone slightly limp at the ends.

"Thighs okay?" she called when she heard the front door.

"Sure." Marcus set his keys in the bowl by the door and came into the kitchen still wearing his jacket. He looked at the counter. "Rice or the potatoes?"

"Potatoes are old."

"They're fine. They're just soft." He picked one up and pressed his thumb into it. "Okay, they're not fine."

"Rice, then."

He filled the pot with water while she trimmed the beans, snapping off the bad ends and dropping them into the sink strainer. The radio was on low, some news program neither of them was listening to. Marcus turned it off without asking and Dana didn't comment.

He seasoned the chicken because he always did it better—more salt than she was comfortable with, paprika, garlic powder shaken directly over the meat. She got the cast iron going and stood back when he laid the thighs down skin-side first, the oil popping.

"Did Ellen ever email you back?"

"About the deck guy? No." He flipped a thigh, checked the color, put it back. "I'll call her tomorrow."

They ate at the table, which was not a given; sometimes they took plates to the couch. The green beans were a little underdone. Dana ate them anyway, alternating with bites of rice, and told him about a woman at work who had brought in a cake for no reason.

"For no reason at all?"

"She said it was a Tuesday."

Marcus laughed with his mouth full. Afterward he washed and she dried, and the skillet went back on the burner to dry out from the heat still in the metal.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, two eggs, a hunk of parmesan wrapped badly in plastic.

"Pasta," she said, when Marcus came in twenty minutes later and dropped his keys in the bowl by the door.

"Is there sauce?"

"There's butter."

He considered this, unwinding his scarf. "Buttered noodles is not dinner, it's what you eat at eleven at night."

"With chicken. And the beans."

"Okay." He rolled up his sleeves at the sink. "I'll do the beans."

They worked around each other in the narrow kitchen, a choreography twelve years old. Dana filled the big pot and set it on the back burner, which took longer but didn't rattle. Marcus snapped the ends off the beans and dropped them in a colander, tossing the bad ones toward the compost bin and missing twice.

"You're going to have to pick those up."

"I'm aware."

She shredded the chicken with two forks, standing at the counter, eating a piece. The water took forever. Marcus put on the radio, then turned it off when the news came on, then put on a record instead, something with a lot of horns that Dana had learned to tolerate.

They ate at the table because Dana's mother had once said something about eating on the couch that had lodged permanently in her brain. The pasta was too buttery. Marcus salted his again.

"There's a thing Thursday," he said. "Kevin's retirement."

"Do I have to go?"

"No. But it's at that place with the good bread."

Dana turned a bean over with her fork. "I'll go."

Afterward he washed and she dried, and the record finished, and neither of them got up to flip it.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to pick. She stood in the open refrigerator light for a while, then pulled out the package of chicken thighs that needed to be used tonight or thrown out tomorrow.

Marcus came in at six-twenty, dropped his bag by the stairs, and said, "It smells like nothing in here."

"Because I've been standing here holding raw chicken and thinking."

He washed his hands at the kitchen sink, which she'd told him a hundred times not to do while she was working there, and she moved her elbow to give him room anyway. He asked if there was rice. There was rice, but only the good kind she'd bought for a recipe she never made, so she said no, and he found a box of couscous behind the cereal.

She salted the thighs and put them skin-down in the cast iron. Marcus took over the couscous and the green beans, which meant he microwaved the green beans in the glass dish with a splash of water and a lid, then tossed them with butter and too much pepper. He always used too much pepper. She'd stopped mentioning it around year three.

"Sarah wants us to come Saturday," he said.

"For what?"

"Just dinner. Nothing."

"Then yes." She flipped the chicken. The skin had gone brown and stuck a little; she scraped it up with the spatula and it came free.

They ate at the table because Dana liked the table, though the TV was on in the next room with the sound low, some cooking competition. Marcus got up once for hot sauce. They talked about his brother's truck, then about whether the water heater sound was new.

Dana finished first and sat with her fork down, waiting, listening to him chew, which was a sound she'd decided years ago she didn't mind.


Marta got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in the open refrigerator light, coat still on, and took inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, a container of rice that had been in there long enough to make her suspicious.

"Chicken and rice," she called out when she heard the door.

"Again?" Dev set his laptop bag on the chair that was for laptop bags and mail and nothing else. "I'm not complaining. I'm observing."

"Observe the beans, then. They need trimming."

He washed his hands and took the beans to the cutting board while she pulled meat off the carcass with her fingers, dropping the bones into a bowl she'd eventually forget to freeze for stock. The kitchen radio was on the classical station, low, mostly because neither of them had changed it in three years.

"There's soy sauce in the door," she said. "And that chili thing."

"The crisp?"

"Whatever it is."

He found it, sniffed the jar, shrugged. She microwaved the rice with a wet paper towel over it, the way her mother did, and it came out fine. The beans went into the skillet with too much oil, and Dev didn't stir them enough at first, and a few got a good char, which was the best part anyway.

They ate at the kitchen table because the coffee table meant television and it was a Tuesday. Dev told her about a meeting that had been rescheduled twice and then canceled. Marta said she'd made the dentist appointment and moved his to the same morning so they could go together, which he said was either romantic or grim.

"Grim," she said. "The beans are good."

"The beans are burnt."

"That's what I said."

He did the dishes. She wiped the counter, badly, and he redid it after she left the room.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, considering a package of chicken thighs, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, half an onion wrapped in plastic.

"Thighs," she said out loud, to nobody.

Marcus came in twenty minutes later, dropped his keys in the dish by the door, and made a face at the smell. "Is that vinegar?"

"Mustard. I'm doing that thing your mom does."

"She uses way more mustard than that."

"Then get over here and add mustard."

He did, spooning it out of the jar while she moved the beans around in the other pan. They didn't talk much for a few minutes. The kitchen was narrow, so they kept trading places, one stepping back so the other could reach the drawer. Marcus turned on the fan over the stove, then turned it off because it was too loud to hear the beans.

"Rice or bread," he said.

"There's like two pieces of bread left."

"Rice, then." He filled the pot without measuring, which she'd stopped commenting on years ago. It always came out fine.

They ate at the table, which they only used about half the time. Marcus had brought his phone and then set it face-down without being asked. Dana told him about a coworker who kept scheduling meetings at 4:45. He told her the transmission thing was probably going to be four hundred dollars, maybe more.

"That's not terrible," she said.

"It's not great."

The chicken was good. The beans were fine. He ate two helpings of rice and she took the last of the beans, and neither of them mentioned that it was the same dinner as last Thursday.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they got it done in under ten minutes.


Diane got home first, so she started the rice. The bag said fifteen minutes but she'd learned it was closer to twenty in their kitchen, something about the burner or the altitude, she'd never figured out which.

Marcus came in at ten after six, dropped his keys in the dish by the door, and stood in the kitchen doorway loosening his tie.

"There's chicken thighs in the fridge," she said. "The ones from Sunday."

"Are they still good?"

"They're good. Smell them if you want."

He did smell them, holding the package near his face for a second before setting it on the counter. Then he got out the cast iron and turned the heat up higher than she would have.

"You're going to smoke up the whole place."

"That's how you get the skin right." He put the fan on anyway.

They worked around each other. She washed the broccoli and cut the stems off, tossing them in a bowl with oil and salt because Marcus liked it roasted and she didn't care either way. He put the pan in the oven for her without being asked.

"Kayla called," she said. "She wants to know if we're coming to the thing in April."

"What thing?"

"Her husband's birthday. The forty."

"Is it a whole weekend?"

"I think it's a Saturday."

"Then probably." He turned the chicken with tongs. "Ask me again when it's closer."

They ate at the table with the TV on in the other room, low, a basketball game neither of them was watching. The chicken skin was good. Diane said so, and he said the thighs were on sale again this week, he'd get more.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and there was a plate she handed back to him because he'd missed something on the underside. He didn't argue about it. He just ran it again.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to pick. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, two eggs, a heel of parmesan.

"Chicken again?" Marcus said from the doorway. He'd come in quietly, the way he always did, and she hadn't heard the front door.

"Chicken and rice. Or chicken and beans. Or I can make that pasta thing."

"The pasta thing." He set his keys in the bowl by the sink. "Do we have enough parmesan?"

"We have some parmesan."

"That's not the same as enough."

She handed him the wedge and he took it to the counter, unwrapping the plastic and holding it up to the light like a jeweler. Meanwhile she filled a pot, salted it too much on purpose, and set it on the back burner. Marcus grated cheese into a bowl and picked the green beans over, snapping the good ones in half and dropping the bad ones in the compost bin under the sink.

The radio was on low, some station out of the city doing a traffic report neither of them needed anymore. Dana shredded the chicken with two forks. When the water boiled she dumped in the last of the linguine and Marcus said, without looking up, "That's not enough for leftovers."

"I know."

"Just noting it."

They ate at the small table by the window, which was really a card table with a cloth over it, because they had never gotten around to buying a real one. Marcus told her about a coworker who'd been fired for something vague. Dana said the beans were good and he said the beans were fine, and they both took second helpings anyway.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and the sun went down over the neighbor's fence, orange for about four minutes.


Dana got home first, which meant she decided. She stood in the open refrigerator, jacket still on, and did the math: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp, rice.

"Fried rice?" she called toward the door when she heard Marcus come in.

"Is there egg?"

"Three."

"Then yes."

He hung both their coats properly, the way he always did, and she pretended not to notice. By the time he came into the kitchen she'd started the rice reheating in the microwave and was pulling chicken off the bone with her fingers.

"You want me to do that?"

"I'm already messy." She held out a piece of thigh meat and he took it from her hand and ate it. "It's good, right? It's still good."

"It's fine." He filled a glass at the tap, drank half of it, then found the wok in the low cupboard and set it on the front burner. "Beans or peas?"

"Beans. They're about to turn."

He rinsed them and snapped off the ends while she cracked the eggs into a bowl and beat them with a fork. Neither of them said much for a few minutes. The radio was on in the other room, low, some story about a school board meeting. He got the oil hot and the beans went in with a sound that made him step back.

"Too high?"

"No, that's right."

She handed him the rice, then the chicken, then the eggs at the end when he asked for them. He shook soy sauce over it without measuring. She got out two bowls, the deep ones.

They ate at the table, sitting across from each other, because Dana had a rule about the couch on weekdays that she mostly enforced. Marcus reached over twice to take beans out of her bowl. She let him.

"Tomorrow's trash," he said.

"I know."


Dana got home first, so she started the rice. The bag had been sitting in the pantry since a Costco trip in March, and she measured two cups into the pot, guessing at the water because the lines inside the rice cooker had worn away.

Mark came in at 6:20, dropped his keys in the bowl, and looked in the fridge without taking off his jacket.

"There's that broccoli," Dana said. "It's probably still fine."

He pulled out the bag and turned it over. "It's got the white stuff on the edges."

"That's not mold, that's just—it's fine. Cut those parts off."

He took the cutting board down and started trimming, standing at the counter in his jacket until he noticed and went to hang it up. When he came back, Dana had the chicken thighs out on a plate, patting them with a paper towel.

"Do we have the good soy sauce or just the regular?"

"Just regular. I keep forgetting."

"Put it on the list."

She wrote it on the whiteboard on the fridge, under *paper towels* and *Ellie's birthday card*, and then went back to the stove. The chicken went into the cast iron, and the sound filled the kitchen so they stopped talking for a minute. Mark salted the broccoli and slid it into the oven under the broiler, which he knew Dana thought was too aggressive for broccoli, but she didn't say anything.

They ate at the kitchen table with the mail pushed to one side. The chicken was good. The rice was a little wet.

"How was Nadia's thing?" Dana asked.

"She's not going to take it. The commute's insane."

"Ninety minutes?"

"Each way."

Dana nodded and ate some broccoli. It was slightly burned at the tips, which she liked, though she wouldn't have chosen it.

Mark washed; she dried. It took eleven minutes.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in the open refrigerator, still in her work shoes, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, two eggs, most of a block of cheddar.

"Chicken again?" Mark said from the doorway. He'd brought in the mail and was sorting it against his chest, dropping the credit card offers straight into the recycling.

"Chicken quesadillas."

"Sold."

She shredded the meat with two forks while he ran water over the green beans in a colander, snapping off the ends and tossing them into a pan with butter. Neither of them said much for a while. The radio was on in the other room, a news segment they'd both stopped listening to twenty minutes into the hour.

"Did you call about the gutter?" she asked.

"I left a message. The guy's voicemail says he's booked until October."

"October."

"That's what it said."

He grated the cheese while she heated the skillet, and when the first tortilla started to blister she pressed it down with the flat of the spatula. The kitchen smelled good. Mark set two plates on the table, then went back for the hot sauce because she always wanted it and always forgot to ask.

They ate at the small table by the window, sitting kitty-corner instead of across, the way they'd fallen into years ago without discussing it. The green beans were slightly underdone. Dana ate them anyway.

"These are good," Mark said. "Better than Tuesday."

"Tuesday was your night."

"That's what I'm saying."

She laughed, mouth full, and covered it with her hand. Outside, the neighbor's motion light snapped on for nothing—a cat, probably, or the wind.

He got up for water. She started stacking plates before he sat back down.


The rain had started around four, and by the time Dani got home her hair was flat against her forehead. Marcus was already in the kitchen, still in his work polo, holding the refrigerator door open with his hip.

"There's the chicken from Sunday," he said. "Or eggs."

"Chicken's been in there five days."

"Four."

She dropped her bag on the chair that had become the bag chair. "Four is fine. Make the rice thing?"

He pulled out the container and peeled back the lid, sniffed it, shrugged. "Smells like chicken."

Dani filled a pot with water and set it on the back burner, then remembered they were out of the jasmine rice and only had the brown, which took forty minutes. She held the bag up so he could see.

"Forty minutes," Marcus said.

"I know."

"Fine. I'm hungry now but I'll be hungry then too."

She measured the rice into the pot without rinsing it, which he noticed and didn't mention. He shredded the chicken with two forks, standing at the counter, and got out the soy sauce, the sesame oil, and the half-empty jar of chili crisp they'd been working on since March. There was one green onion in the crisper drawer, limp but usable. He chopped it while she sat down and looked at her phone, then put her phone face-down.

"Your mom called me," he said.

"About the reunion."

"She wants to know if we're driving or flying."

"What did you say?"

"I said I'd ask you." He scraped the onion off the cutting board with the flat of the knife.

They ate at the table with the mail still on it, pushed to one side. The chicken was a little dry. Marcus put more chili crisp on his and then on hers when she nodded at the jar.

"Driving," she said finally.

"Okay," he said, and got up to refill his water.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, taking inventory: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, the heel of a block of cheddar.

"Chicken and rice?" she called when she heard the door.

"Sure." Mark came into the kitchen and set his keys in the ceramic dish by the toaster, the one his sister had made in a pottery class. He looked over Dana's shoulder into the fridge. "There's that jar of salsa. We could do it like a bowl thing."

"A bowl thing."

"Rice, chicken, salsa, cheese."

Dana considered it, then handed him the beans. "Fine. You do those. Not soggy this time."

"They weren't soggy."

"They were gray."

Mark filled a pot and turned on the burner, then trimmed the ends off the beans with a paring knife because he could never find the good scissors. Dana shredded the chicken with two forks, pulling it apart in strips and eating a piece straight from the cutting board. The rice cooker clicked and hissed on the counter. Outside it was already dark at six-fifteen, which she mentioned, and he said something about how at least it stopped getting worse after December.

They ate at the table with the mail pushed to one side. Dana had put too much salsa in hers and drank most of her water in the first two minutes. Mark told her about a coworker who kept scheduling meetings at four-thirty on Fridays. Dana said he should say something. Mark said he wasn't going to say anything.

Afterward she rinsed and he loaded, because that was the arrangement and had been for six years. The beans, she admitted, were fine.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, looking at half a rotisserie chicken, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, and a container of rice from Sunday.

"Chicken again?" Marcus said from the doorway. He'd come in through the garage, keys still in his hand.

"Chicken and beans. Or I can make eggs."

"Chicken's fine." He set his keys in the dish by the phone charger and started unbuttoning his cuffs. "I'll do the beans if you do the rest."

She pulled the chicken apart with her fingers while he ran water over the beans in a colander, snapping off the ends and dropping them into the sink. He always took too long at it, inspecting each one. Dana turned on the oven, then changed her mind and got out the skillet instead.

"Did you call about the water bill?"

"They said it's the meter." Marcus tipped the beans into the pan she handed him. "Or the toilet's running. He asked if the toilet runs."

"Sometimes."

"That's what I said." He shook the pan. "So now we're getting a plumber, apparently."

They ate at the kitchen table because the living room was full of laundry neither of them had folded. The rice was drier than it had been Sunday. Marcus put hot sauce on his and then, after tasting hers off her fork, on hers too.

"Better," she admitted.

"There's a game on."

"I'm going to shower."

He nodded, chewing, already half-turned toward the counter where his phone sat face-down. Dana ate the last green bean off his plate. He didn't stop her. Outside, someone's dog started barking, and the sound of the neighbor's car door came through the window, and it was still light out, barely, at seven-fifteen.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to choose. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, considering the half package of chicken thighs and the bag of green beans that had another day in it, maybe two.

"Chicken and rice," she called out when she heard the front door.

"Fine by me." Marcus came into the kitchen shedding layers, his tie already loose. He looked at the counter, then at her. "Did you take the rice out?"

"I just got here."

He got the rice from the cabinet and the measuring cup from the drawer, and they moved around each other in the narrow space between the stove and the island, the way they'd learned to over eleven years. She salted the chicken and put it skin-side down in the cast iron. He filled the pot, set it on the back burner, and then leaned against the counter looking at his phone until she said his name.

"Beans," she said.

"Right."

He trimmed the ends with a paring knife, sliding them onto a plate, while she flipped the thighs and turned the heat down. The kitchen smelled like rendered fat. Somewhere upstairs the radiator started knocking.

"I got an email from your mother," he said.

"About Thanksgiving."

"About Thanksgiving."

"I'll deal with it." She poked at the beans he'd added to the skillet. "Not tonight."

They ate at the kitchen table, not the dining room, with the overhead light on and no music. Marcus told her about a coworker who had quit dramatically by email. Dana said the rice was a little dry, and he said it was fine, and she agreed that it was fine, mostly.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and they were done by seven forty.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, looking at a half package of chicken thighs, a bag of green beans going limp at the tips, and a lemon.

By the time Marcus came in, shaking rain off his jacket, she had the oven at 425 and the beans dumped on a sheet pan.

"You're doing the thing with the lemon," he said.

"I'm doing the thing with the lemon."

"Can we not do garlic powder this time? Just salt."

"You said last time it needed garlic powder."

"I said it needed something." He took over the beans, pushing them into a single layer with his hands because they never could find the tongs. "Where's the tongs?"

"Dishwasher. Bottom rack, probably dirty."

He found them and rinsed them anyway. Dana laid the thighs skin-side up on a second pan, salted them heavily, squeezed the lemon over top, and slid both pans in. Twenty-five minutes, she guessed, maybe thirty.

They ate at the table because Marcus had a thing about eating on the couch on weeknights, a rule Dana broke roughly every other Wednesday. He poured half a glass of the wine that had been open since Sunday, tasted it, and made a face.

"It's fine," she said.

"It's not fine. It's not bad."

The chicken skin had gone crisp in places and stayed rubbery in others. The beans were better than they had any right to be. Dana told him about the woman at work who kept microwaving fish, and he laughed at the part she didn't think was the funny part. He told her his brother had called about Thanksgiving, and she said they'd talk about it later, and meant it.

Afterward he washed, she dried, and they got the kitchen back to neutral in eleven minutes.


Dana got home first, which meant she got to decide. She stood in front of the open refrigerator with her coat still on, cataloging: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans going soft at the tips, two eggs, a lemon that had hardened into something ornamental.

"Chicken and rice?" she called out when she heard the door.

"Again?" Marcus said, but he was already toeing off his shoes. "Fine. Yes. I'm too tired to have an opinion."

He took the rice, because he was better at it, and she took the beans. They worked around each other in the narrow kitchen, a choreography they'd stopped noticing years ago—she stepped back, he reached past her for the salt, she took the colander out of his hand and put it in the sink.

"These are questionable," she said, holding up a green bean that bent instead of snapped.

"Cook them harder. Put butter on them."

"That's not how it works."

"It's how everything works."

She trimmed the good ends off and threw the rest away. The chicken she pulled apart with her fingers, standing over the cutting board, eating a piece of the skin before she could stop herself. Marcus watched the rice with his hands on the counter, the lid tilted just slightly, the way his mother had taught him.

They ate at the table because Dana insisted on it, though the television was audible from the living room where Marcus had left it on. He told her about a coworker who'd been fired, sort of, ambiguously. She told him her sister had called about Thanksgiving and she hadn't called back.

"You should call her back."

"I know."

The beans were tough. Marcus ate them anyway, and didn't say anything, and she noticed that he didn't, and she reached over and took one off his plate.