The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added three things at the bottom in ballpoint: coffee filters, the good cheddar, batteries (AA??).

They left the apartment at ten, later than they'd meant to. Dana drove because Marcus's registration sticker was expired and he was convinced this made him more likely to get pulled over, which Dana said was not how any of that worked. The first stop was the dry cleaner, where Marcus ran in with the blue tickets while Dana idled in the fire lane and watched a man in the strip mall parking lot try to fit a folded-up card table into a Civic.

At the hardware store they spent eleven minutes in the lightbulb aisle. Marcus held up two packages and asked which was warmer, and Dana said the one on the left, and Marcus said he thought the one on the right, and they bought the one on the right. They also got a rubber washer for the kitchen faucet, which had been dripping since February.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays are. Dana took the cart and the left side of the list; Marcus took the produce and the deli counter and came back with a number in his hand and no ham, having realized he was seventeen people away. They found each other again in the cereal aisle. Dana put back the store-brand tortillas when Marcus made a face at them. He put a bag of frozen dumplings in the cart without comment and she pretended not to notice.

At checkout the card reader asked for a tip and Marcus said, out loud, "For what?" The cashier laughed.

They unloaded the trunk in two trips. Marcus fixed the faucet in about ten minutes, sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor with the water off, while Dana put away the cold things first, then everything else.


The alarm didn't go off Saturday, which meant Priya woke at nine to the smell of coffee already burning. Dev had made a pot at seven, forgotten about it, and fallen back asleep on the couch with a documentary paused on the screen.

"It's fine," she said, pouring it anyway. "It tastes like a tire, but it's fine."

They made a list on the back of an envelope from the electric company. Dev wanted to add ice cream. Priya pointed out they still had half a carton of the mint chip he'd insisted on three weeks ago and hadn't touched. He added ice cream anyway, then crossed it out, then wrote *maybe*.

The laundry room in their building had four machines and two of them worked. Dev went down with the basket at ten and came back up at ten-oh-five because someone had left a load sitting in the good washer since, judging by the mildew smell, Thursday. They moved it into a cart. Priya felt guilty about it for roughly one flight of stairs.

At the grocery store Dev pushed the cart and drifted, the way he always did, toward the hot sauce aisle. Priya found him there holding two bottles, comparing Scoville numbers with genuine seriousness.

"We have six," she said.

"Not this one."

She let him keep it. He put back the frozen dumplings when she reminded him they had a bag already, and he remembered milk, which she'd forgotten to write down, and that felt like a fair trade.

Checkout took twenty minutes. The self-scan flagged the wine and they waited for someone to come look at Priya's license.

Home, they put things away badly — cans stacked wrong, the milk shoved in front of everything. Dev switched the laundry. Priya sat down on the arm of the couch and did not get back up for a while.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of a receipt in her cramped handwriting, but Michael carried it because she'd lose it otherwise. They took his car, the one with the check-engine light that had been on since March.

First the hardware store, for a replacement filter for the furnace and a package of the specific screws Michael insisted were different from the ones they already had at home. Dana wandered off to look at the paint chips while he stood in aisle seven comparing lengths. She came back with three cards fanned out like a poker hand.

"For the bedroom," she said.

"We're not painting the bedroom."

"Someday we are."

At the grocery store she pushed the cart and he did the picking, which was their system. Produce first, then the long slow crawl through the middle aisles. He put a box of the sugary cereal in and she took it out. He put it back in. She let it stay.

They argued mildly about whether they still had olive oil at home. Neither could remember, so they bought a bottle, which meant they would come home to two. In the checkout line Dana read the tabloid headlines out loud in a newscaster voice until Michael laughed and the woman ahead of them turned around.

Unloading took two trips. Michael carried the heavy bags because his hands were bigger; Dana did the eggs and the bread. She put things away while he went down to the basement to swap the furnace filter, and when he came up his forearms were gray with dust.

"Did we have olive oil?"

"Two bottles now."

"Told you."

"You did not tell me. You said you weren't sure."

She handed him a beer from the door of the fridge. It was two in the afternoon. There was still laundry, but neither of them mentioned it.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added things at the bottom in his all-caps scrawl: PAPER TOWELS. THE GOOD COFFEE, NOT THE OTHER ONE.

They left the apartment a little after ten, later than they'd meant to. Dana drove because Marcus's car was still making the noise, the one he kept promising to get looked at. First stop was the dry cleaner's, where she picked up two blouses and his one decent suit jacket, and then the hardware store on Cleveland, where Marcus spent eleven minutes in the plumbing aisle comparing two rubber washers that appeared, to Dana, to be identical.

"They're not," he said. "One's for the hot side."

"Okay."

"You don't believe me."

"I believe you." She was already walking toward the register with a box of furnace filters.

The grocery store was crowded, which is what you get for going at noon on a Saturday. They split up at the produce section — Dana toward the apples, Marcus toward the deli counter to get the ham sliced thin, which was the only way she'd eat it. They found each other again by the cereal, compared notes, argued briefly about whether they already had rice at home. Marcus was sure they did. Dana bought a bag anyway.

At checkout he bagged while she paid, and in the parking lot they discovered a broken egg at the bottom of one bag, a slow yolk leak into the paper. Dana said a word her mother wouldn't have liked.

At home they put everything away, and Marcus found the rice — an unopened two-pound bag, right where he'd said it would be, behind the oatmeal.

He didn't say anything. He just held it up.

"Fine," Dana said. "Fine. Change the furnace filter."

He was still grinning when he went down the hall.


The list on the fridge had been accumulating all week in two different handwritings. Dana's was small and slanted; Marcus wrote in block capitals, which meant BREAD took up half a line. By ten on Saturday morning they'd added eggs, a replacement for the light bulb over the stove, and, underlined twice, LITTER.

They took Marcus's car because Dana's had a check-engine light she was choosing to ignore. First stop was the hardware store, where they spent eleven minutes in the lighting aisle debating warm white versus daylight. Dana held up two boxes. Marcus said they looked identical. Dana said that was because he was standing under fluorescents. They bought the warm white.

At the grocery store, Marcus pushed the cart and Dana navigated. They had a system: she took produce and dairy while he handled the middle aisles, and they met near the deli counter to reconcile. It mostly worked. He came back with a bag of tortilla chips that had not been on the list.

"We have chips," she said.

"We have stale chips."

She let it go, and added a jar of salsa to the cart.

Checkout took longer than expected because the person ahead of them had coupons for everything. Dana scrolled her phone. Marcus read the tabloid headlines and reported the more implausible ones under his breath until she told him to stop.

Home, they carried the bags in two trips. Marcus put away the cold things while Dana broke down the boxes for recycling. He changed the bulb over the stove, standing on a kitchen chair while she held the back of it, which he insisted was unnecessary and she insisted was not.

The kitchen looked brighter. Marcus opened the chips. Dana got two bowls down and, without being asked, the salsa.


The list was written on the back of an envelope, in Dana's handwriting, with three items added in Marcus's cramped block letters at the bottom.

"Coffee filters," Dana read out in the car. "We have coffee filters."

"We have four coffee filters."

"That's still filters."

He pulled into the Kroger lot, into the second-to-last row because he refused, on principle, to circle for a closer spot. Inside, the store smelled like rotisserie chicken and floor wax. Dana took the cart. Marcus took the list.

They had a system that neither of them had agreed to out loud. She moved fast through produce, squeezing avocados and putting most of them back, while he stood in front of the yogurt reading labels like a man studying for an exam.

"Do you want the plain or the vanilla?"

"Plain. We always get plain."

"You said last time the plain was chalky."

"I said it *was* chalky. I didn't say get vanilla."

He put the plain in the cart.

In the cereal aisle they ran into Renata from Marcus's office, who talked for six full minutes about her kitchen renovation while Dana nodded and slowly, imperceptibly, edged the cart toward the end of the aisle. When Renata finally left, Dana said, "Six minutes," and Marcus said, "It was four," and neither of them was right.

Checkout took longer than the shopping. Marcus bagged. Dana paid, then he Venmoed her half before they got to the car, the way he always did, a habit from the first year that neither had thought to stop.

At home they put everything away, and then Dana ran a load of towels while Marcus took the recycling out to the bin and dragged it down to the curb, a day early, because Sunday nights he always forgot.

By two o'clock the kitchen was clean and the afternoon lay open in front of them, unassigned. Dana made coffee. There were four filters left, and then three.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of a receipt, but Marcus was the one holding it in the car, reading items aloud while she drove.

"Coffee filters," he said. "The cone ones, right? Not the basket."

"Cone. If you get basket again I'll make you drink it anyway."

They stopped at the hardware store first because the bathroom faucet had developed a drip that woke Marcus up at two in the morning, or so he claimed. Dana had slept through it every night for a week. The guy at the counter asked what kind of cartridge, and neither of them knew, so Marcus took a photo of the faucet on his phone and they squinted at it together under the fluorescent lights until an employee wandered over and identified it.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturday grocery stores always are. Dana pushed the cart. Marcus went ahead of her, doubling back with things—a jar of the peanut butter she liked, a bag of tortilla chips he had not consulted her on.

"We don't need those."

"We don't need most of this."

She let it stay in the cart. In the produce section they had a small disagreement about how many bananas constituted a reasonable number for two people in a week, and settled on six, which Dana thought was too many and Marcus thought was barely enough. At checkout he bagged while she paid, and they loaded the trunk in the parking lot with the doors open and the radio going.

At home Marcus put away the cold things while Dana started the laundry that had been sitting in the machine since Thursday, smelling faintly sour. She ran it again with vinegar. Then they sat on the kitchen floor with the faucet parts spread out on a towel, and Marcus read the instructions off his phone, and it took forty minutes, and it worked.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of an envelope from the gas company, but Marcus was the one holding it in the car, squinting at her handwriting.

"Is that 'cilantro' or 'coriander'?"

"Same plant," she said, turning into the parking lot. "Cilantro. For the tacos."

They split up inside the store, which they'd learned was faster, though it meant texting each other from opposite ends of the building. Marcus took produce and the bakery. Dana took the middle aisles and the meat counter. He found her twenty minutes later comparing two nearly identical packages of chicken thighs.

"This one's a dollar less," she said. "But it expires Monday."

"We're cooking Sunday."

"Okay." She put it in the cart, then took it back out and put it in again. "Did you get eggs?"

"You didn't write eggs."

"I thought it." She waved him off toward the dairy case.

At the register the total came to eighty-three dollars, which felt like too much for six bags, and Dana said so, and Marcus said it always felt like too much, and the cashier, who had heard this exchange four hundred times, said nothing and handed them the receipt.

They stopped at the hardware store for a furnace filter and a package of picture hangers. Marcus wanted to look at paint chips for the bedroom; Dana stood beside him for eight minutes making noncommittal sounds while he narrowed it from six colors to four.

"We can decide later," he said finally.

"We can decide later," she agreed.

Home by two. He carried the heavy bags; she got the door. The milk went in the fridge, the paper towels went under the sink, and the cilantro sat on the counter in its plastic sleeve because neither of them wanted to deal with it yet. Dana started a load of laundry. Marcus changed the furnace filter and found the old one was worse than either of them had guessed.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus insisted on carrying it, folding the paper into a small square he kept checking in his palm as they crossed the parking lot.

"You always do this," she said. "You memorize it and then buy things that aren't on it."

"One time. I bought one pineapple."

"You bought a pineapple, a rotisserie chicken, and a bag of those chocolate-covered pretzels."

"The pretzels were for you."

Inside, the store was crowded in the way it always was on Saturdays around eleven — people in workout clothes, kids riding on the front of carts. Dana took produce, Marcus took the middle aisles. They'd worked this out over three years of living together, ever since the apartment on Fifth where the kitchen was too small for both of them at once. She picked over the bell peppers, found two that weren't soft, and grabbed a bag of the small oranges because they were on sale.

They met again by the dairy case. Marcus had, in fact, added a box of ice cream sandwiches.

"It was a long week," he said.

"I didn't say anything."

The checkout line moved slowly. Ahead of them a woman was arguing gently with the cashier about a coupon. Dana leaned against the cart and scrolled her phone; Marcus read the tabloid headlines and reported the more absurd ones under his breath until she told him to stop.

Afterward they loaded the trunk, and Marcus drove them to the hardware store for furnace filters and a new hose washer, which took four minutes, and then to the dry cleaner, which was closed, which neither of them had thought to check.

"Monday," Dana said.

"Monday," he agreed.

At home they carried everything up in two trips. She put away the cold things; he broke down the boxes for recycling. By one o'clock the kitchen was quiet again, and the afternoon was still theirs.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added three things at the bottom in his cramped block letters: COFFEE FILTERS, LIGHT BULBS (60W), TORTILLAS.

"We have tortillas," Dana said in the car.

"We have four tortillas. That's not tortillas, that's a rumor of tortillas."

She let it go. The Kroger parking lot on Saturday morning was already two-thirds full, and Marcus circled twice before taking a spot near the cart return, which Dana pointed out was the correct move anyway since he'd have to walk the cart back.

Inside they split up, which they'd learned the hard way was faster. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the middle aisles, where he spent eleven minutes comparing pasta sauces because the brand they liked had been rearranged. He texted her a photo of two jars. She texted back: *the one we always get. left one.* He bought the right one because it was a dollar less and he decided she wouldn't notice.

They met at the meat counter. Dana had a bag of clementines she hadn't put on the list and Marcus said nothing about it, which she noticed and appreciated.

At the register, the card reader asked about cash back twice and Dana pressed no twice, and the total was eighty-seven dollars, about what it always was.

Afterward they stopped at the hardware store for the light bulbs, and then at the dry cleaner, where the woman behind the counter recognized Marcus and asked after his shoulder. He said it was better. Dana waited by the door with the keys, scrolling.

Home, they carried everything in one trip, which felt like an accomplishment. Dana put the cold things away while Marcus broke down the boxes for recycling and changed the bulb in the hallway fixture, standing on a kitchen chair, Dana holding the back of it without being asked.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added three items at the bottom in his cramped block letters: BATTERIES, TRASH BAGS, SOMETHING FOR SUNDAY.

"What does 'something for Sunday' mean?" she asked in the car.

"I don't know. Dinner. We always end up eating cereal on Sundays."

"That's because you eat all the leftovers on Saturday."

He didn't argue with that. He turned into the Kroger lot and found a space near the cart return, which he considered a small victory and mentioned out loud, and Dana said, "Congratulations," in the flat way that meant she was actually a little impressed.

Inside they split up, which they'd learned was faster. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the middle aisles. She texted him a photo of two bags of coffee — *which one, the dark or the breakfast blend* — and he wrote back *dark* before she'd finished reading his reply about being in the paper goods aisle. They met again by the meat counter. He'd found a pork loin on manager's special, marked down to $6.40, and held it up like evidence.

"That's Sunday," he said.

"That's Sunday and Monday."

The self-checkout ate her coupon and a teenager in a green vest had to come over and scan a badge. Marcus bagged. In the parking lot the wind pushed the cart sideways and Dana caught it with her hip.

At home they carried everything in two trips. She put the cold things away; he broke down the boxes for recycling and finally changed the batteries in the smoke detector that had been chirping since Wednesday, standing on a kitchen chair while she held the chair back, unnecessarily.

"Laundry?" she said.

"After lunch."

"You said that last Saturday."

"And I did it," he said, "after lunch."


The list was Dana's, but Marcus held it, because Dana always lost things between the car and the cart corral.

"Coffee filters," he read. "Do we need the cone ones or the basket ones?"

"Cone." She was already three steps ahead, angling toward produce. "The basket ones are for the machine my mother gave us that we never use."

They'd started the morning with laundry — two loads before nine, Marcus sorting darks while Dana ran the vacuum over the living room rug, which had accumulated an alarming amount of cat hair given that they didn't own a cat. Then the bank, then the hardware store for a furnace filter and a package of felt pads for the dining chairs that had been screeching across the floor since March.

Now Kroger, at eleven-thirty on a Saturday, which had been a mistake.

Dana squeezed avocados with a skepticism bordering on hostility. "These are all either rocks or pudding."

"Get the rocks. We'll eat them Wednesday."

"We won't. We'll forget them and throw them out Friday."

"Then get the pudding."

She got four rocks. Marcus circled back for the coffee filters and a box of the cereal Dana claimed she didn't like but ate steadily. At the deli counter they waited nine minutes for a half pound of turkey while Dana narrated a work story about a coworker named Pat and a misdirected email.

At checkout Marcus bagged while Dana paid, and they argued mildly about whether eighty-six dollars was a lot for a week.

In the parking lot the cart had a bad wheel and pulled left. Marcus fought it the whole way. Dana carried the eggs separately, cradled against her ribs like something breakable, which they were.

"Furnace filter," she said, unlocking the trunk. "You're doing that part."

"I know."

"I'm just saying it out loud."


The dishwasher had been making a noise since Wednesday, a low grinding that Priya insisted was fine and Marcus insisted was not. Saturday morning they compromised: he pulled it out from under the counter while she looked up the model number on her phone, and they discovered a plastic fork wedged in the drain.

"That's yours," she said. "I don't use plastic forks."

"You absolutely use plastic forks. You brought home that whole bag from your cousin's barbecue."

She didn't argue, which he took as a win. By ten they had a list going on the back of an envelope, half in her handwriting and half in his, and by ten-thirty they were in the car with the recycling bins rattling in the back because they'd missed pickup two weeks running.

At the store, she pushed the cart and he did what he called "reconnaissance," disappearing down aisles and returning with things not on the list. Pickles. A cantaloupe he thumped twice and declared perfect. She let the cantaloupe go and vetoed the second jar of pickles, pointing out the unopened one in the fridge door.

They fought briefly about chicken thighs versus breasts, resolved it by buying both, and stood a long time in front of the coffee because their usual brand had gone up two dollars. Marcus wanted to switch. Priya wanted to see if it went back down. They bought a smaller bag as a hedge against nothing in particular.

The line was long. He unloaded the cart, she bagged, and they got the frozen things into the same bag without discussing it.

At home he carried the heavy things in while she started putting away, and then he swept the kitchen floor because it was his week, and she ran the dishwasher, and it didn't grind, and they both stood there listening to it not grind for a second longer than necessary.


The car's air conditioning had been broken since June, so they drove to the store with the windows down, Marcus's arm hanging out into the heat.

"You have the list?" he asked.

Priya held up her phone. "It's in my notes. I added toilet paper."

"We just bought toilet paper."

"We bought paper towels. There's a difference, and you're the one who used the last of it Tuesday and didn't tell me."

He didn't argue. The Kroger parking lot was full, and they circled twice before Marcus gave up and parked near the garden center, which meant a long walk past pallets of mulch and drooping mums.

Inside, they split the list. Priya took produce and dairy; Marcus took the middle aisles, where he stood too long comparing prices on pasta sauce before texting her a photo of two jars. She wrote back: *the cheap one is fine.* He bought the other one anyway.

They met again by the deli, where a woman with a toddler had commandeered the entire counter, and waited eight minutes for a pound of turkey. Priya leaned against the cart, scrolling. Marcus watched the number board.

At home they unloaded in two trips. Priya put things away wrong—cereal on the middle shelf instead of the top—and Marcus fixed it without comment, then stopped himself, because they'd talked about that.

Afterward he took the recycling out and dragged the bin to the curb, though it wasn't pickup day until Monday. She started laundry, sorting his work shirts from the towels, and found four dollars in the pocket of his jeans, which she kept.

By two o'clock the kitchen smelled like the lemon cleaner she liked and he found too strong. He sat down with a beer. She sat down next to him with the other half of it.

"Home Depot?" she said.

"Tomorrow," he said, and she let it go.


The list was Maya's, written on the back of a utility bill envelope, but Dev was the one holding it in the parking lot of the Kroger on Belmont, squinting at her handwriting.

"Is that 'scallions' or 'salmon'?"

"Scallions. We're not made of money."

Inside, they split up the way they always did, which never worked. Maya took the produce; Dev took the aisles. He came back with two boxes of cereal, one of which she put back.

"We have half a bag of granola at home."

"That's yours. It tastes like gravel."

"It's *fiber*."

They compromised on the honey clusters. In the dairy aisle, Maya stood a long time in front of the yogurt, comparing sugar content, while Dev leaned on the cart and read texts from his sister about their mother's knee surgery. He typed something, deleted it, typed it again.

"You okay?"

"She wants me to call this week."

"So call her Sunday. Before the game."

At checkout, the card reader took three tries. The kid bagging groceries put the eggs under the canned tomatoes and Maya rearranged them without saying anything.

They loaded the trunk over an argument about whether they needed to also stop at the hardware store. Dev insisted the toilet flapper could wait another month. Maya pointed out he'd said that in July.

They stopped at the hardware store. It took eleven minutes.

Back at the apartment, they carried everything up in two trips, and Maya started putting things away while Dev knelt behind the toilet with the water shut off and his phone propped on the sink playing a tutorial. The old flapper came out slick and orange with mineral crust.

"Got it," he called.

"Did you actually get it or are you saying that so I'll stop asking?"

He flushed. It worked. He came out to the kitchen holding the ruined flapper like a trophy, and she handed him the milk to put on the top shelf, where she couldn't reach.


The morning had gotten away from them, as Saturdays did. By the time Nadia found her keys under a stack of unopened mail, it was almost eleven, and Theo was already outside scraping frost off the windshield with the edge of a plastic ice scraper he'd bought three winters ago.

"We need light bulbs," she said, climbing into the passenger seat. "The one over the sink went out again."

"That's the third one this year. I think it's the fixture."

"Then we need a fixture."

He backed out of the driveway carefully, because their neighbor parked too close to the curb and had once made a comment about it. They went to the hardware store first, where Theo spent eleven minutes comparing LED packages while Nadia wandered to the paint chips and brought back four samples of nearly identical off-whites, holding them up to his face like she was choosing foundation.

"They're the same," he said.

"They're not."

At the grocery store, they split the list. She took produce and dairy; he took the middle aisles, which he preferred because he liked reading nutrition labels and she found that unbearable. They met near the frozen section, and he had put chicken thighs in the cart even though she'd written breasts.

"Thighs are better," he said. "They don't dry out."

"You always do this."

"Because I'm always right."

She let it go. In the checkout line she noticed he'd also grabbed the good coffee, the kind she liked and never bought for herself, and she didn't say anything about that either.

At home they carried the bags in together, four trips, and she put things away while he stood on a kitchen chair with a screwdriver, muttering at the light fixture. Around two, it flickered on. He looked down at her, pleased with himself.

"Don't say it," she said.

"Wasn't going to."


The list was Dana's, but Marcus had added things to it in his cramped handwriting: batteries, the good coffee, dish soap (NOT lemon).

They left the apartment a little after ten, later than they'd meant to. Dana drove because Marcus had driven all week. At the hardware store on Wexler they spent twenty minutes looking for a replacement washer for the bathroom faucet, which had been dripping since Thanksgiving. An employee in a red vest eventually found it in a bin two aisles over from where Marcus had been searching, and Marcus said, "I was close," and Dana said, "You were in a different zip code."

The grocery store was crowded. Dana pushed the cart and Marcus went ahead, grabbing things and doubling back. He held up two brands of pasta sauce and she pointed at the one on the left without really looking. In the produce section she squeezed avocados while he wandered off and came back with a bag of the sour candy he liked, which he set in the cart without comment, and she didn't say anything either. They disagreed briefly about whether they already had garlic at home. They bought garlic.

At checkout the card reader failed twice before it took. Marcus bagged while Dana paid, and they loaded the trunk in the flat gray light of the parking lot.

Back home, they carried everything up in one trip, which felt like an accomplishment. Dana put the cold things away; Marcus took the faucet apart on a towel spread across the sink, and after a false start involving the wrong-size wrench, the dripping stopped. He turned the water on and off twice to be sure.

"Listen," he said.

Dana came and stood in the doorway and listened to nothing.

"Huh," she said. "Four months."

Then she went to start a load of laundry, and he went to find the sour candy.


The list was Marcus's handwriting, but Priya had added things in the margins: batteries, that cilantro thing you like, DUCT TAPE (underlined twice, because he'd forgotten it three weeks running).

They started with the recycling. Marcus hauled the bin down two flights while Priya broke down the Amazon boxes that had colonized the corner by the door. The building's dumpster area smelled like warm beer. She flattened a box with her heel and he said, "That's the one the blender came in," and she said, "The blender's been out of the box since March," and they both stood there for a second like the box had been a pet.

At the hardware store they spent eleven minutes on furnace filters because Marcus insisted the old one was 16x25 and Priya had photographed the label in October, which she produced from her phone with an expression she tried to keep neutral. 20x25. He conceded gracefully, mostly.

The grocery store was Saturday-crowded. They did their usual split — she took produce and dairy, he took the middle aisles and the meat counter — and reconvened by the yogurt. He'd bought the wrong pasta shape. She let it go. She'd forgotten the eggs, so they walked back, and Marcus pushed the cart with his forearms draped over the handle in a way she'd noticed on their third date and still, inexplicably, found charming.

Self-checkout ate a coupon. Priya waved down the attendant while Marcus bagged, doing his cold-things-together system.

At home they put everything away, and he found the duct tape already in the junk drawer, unopened, from some previous forgotten trip. He held it up. She laughed at him from inside the refrigerator door.

"Next week," she said, "I'm writing the list."

He said she always wrote the list. That was, he pointed out, the entire problem.


The list was Dana's idea, written on the back of an envelope from the electric company. Marcus drove because Dana hated the left turn onto Weber Road, and he liked having something to do with his hands.

They hit the hardware store first, for furnace filters and a replacement flapper for the toilet that had been running since Tuesday. Marcus stood in the plumbing aisle comparing two packages that looked identical while Dana wandered off and came back with a bag of tulip bulbs.

"It's October," he said.

"That's when you plant them." She dropped them in the cart. "You'll thank me in April."

At the grocery store, they split the list. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the middle aisles, which he claimed to navigate more efficiently. They met at the end of the cereal aisle, and she'd already texted him a photo of two brands of yogurt.

"I answered that," he said.

"You said 'either.' That's not answering."

He put the plain one in the cart. In the meat section they debated chicken thighs versus a pork shoulder, settled on both, and Dana said she'd do the shoulder Sunday in the slow cooker if he handled the sides. Somewhere near the freezer cases she remembered they were out of coffee, and Marcus went back for it while she got in line.

The self-checkout was jammed, so they waited behind a woman with a cart full of Halloween candy. Marcus bagged. Dana paid, then took the receipt and looked at it the way she always did, like it might have made a mistake.

Back home, they put things away in a rhythm neither of them had ever discussed. Dana started a load of towels. Marcus knelt at the toilet tank with the flapper and the water shut off, and called out that he might need her to hold something in a minute.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of an envelope from the electric company, but Marcus was the one holding it when they walked into the store.

"Coffee," he read. "You wrote coffee twice."

"Because we're almost out of both kinds." She pulled a cart from the corral and gave it a shove down the produce aisle. "The good stuff and the stuff you make when you're in a hurry."

"The good stuff is a lie. It tastes exactly the same."

"It does not." She stopped in front of the apples, turning one over in her hand, looking for bruises. "Get the mushrooms. The white ones, not the little brown ones."

He came back with the little brown ones. She looked at him, and he shrugged, and she put them in the cart anyway.

They'd been up since eight. The morning had gone to laundry — two loads, one still damp in the dryer — and to Marcus finally hanging the shelf in the bathroom, which involved thirty minutes of arguing about whether it was level and then a trip to the hardware store for the right anchors. Dana had stripped the bed and scrubbed the stovetop while he was gone. When he got back she made him hold the shelf while she stood on the toilet lid with the drill.

In the checkout line she counted the cart and realized they'd forgotten bread.

"I'll go," Marcus said, and jogged off, and came back with bread and a package of Oreos that hadn't been on any list.

"Really."

"They were on sale."

At home they carried the bags in from the driveway in two trips, and the milk went in the fridge, and the receipt went on the counter where it would sit for a week. Dana started the second load of laundry. Marcus opened the Oreos.


The list was Maya's, written on the back of a receipt in her cramped handwriting, but Dev was the one who kept it in his pocket. They took his car because hers still had the check-engine light on, a problem they had agreed to deal with next weekend for three weekends running.

First the dry cleaner, where Dev picked up two of Maya's blazers and discovered the woman behind the counter had never fixed the button on his gray shirt, despite the note stapled to the ticket. He didn't argue. Maya waited in the car with the windows down, listening to a podcast about a missing hiker, and when he got back in she paused it and said, "Did she fix it?" and he said, "No," and she said, "Of course not."

At the grocery store they split the list the way they always did. Maya took produce and dairy; Dev took the middle aisles, where the pasta and canned tomatoes were. They met by accident in front of the yogurt, both surprised, and stood there a minute comparing carts like people showing off vacation photos.

"We don't need three peppers," Dev said.

"We do if you make that thing with the sausage."

"I wasn't going to make that."

"You were thinking about it."

He put the peppers back. She took them out again when he wasn't looking.

The self-checkout froze twice. A teenage employee came over, scanned her badge, and left without saying anything. The total was forty dollars more than Maya expected, which was also true last week.

At home they unloaded the trunk in two trips. Dev started a load of towels. Maya put things away in the order that made sense to her, which was not the order that made sense to Dev, and he let it go, and then the afternoon was mostly gone.


The list was Dara's, written on the back of an envelope from the gas company, and Miles kept losing it. He found it in the cupholder somewhere around the second stoplight on Ellsworth, smoothed against his thigh, and read it aloud while she drove.

"Coffee, milk, that bread you like, chicken thighs, dish soap. Also 'lightbulbs (kitchen, the small ones)' — you spelled lightbulbs wrong."

"Prove it."

"Well, I can't, but it looks wrong."

The parking lot was full of the ten-thirty crowd, people with toddlers strapped into carts shaped like race cars. Dara took the cart because Miles steered like someone who had never been in a hallway. He drifted toward the bakery samples. She let him.

They divided at produce. She squeezed avocados and put back three; he came back with an enormous bag of clementines, which was not on the list, but they'd eat them. In the dairy aisle he read the labels on the oat milk out loud in a British accent until a woman with a phone in her hand gave them a look, and then he stopped, but only for a minute.

The self-checkout scanner refused the clementines twice. Dara pressed the flashing help button, and a teenager in a green vest came, tapped something, and left without making eye contact.

At home they carried the bags in two trips and Miles put the cold things away wrong — cheese in the crisper, eggs in the door — and she moved them without saying anything, then said something anyway.

Afterward he took the recycling out and hosed off the bin, which had been sitting sour since Wednesday. She changed the kitchen lightbulbs standing on a chair, and he held the chair, which was unnecessary, and she let him do that too.

By one o'clock the list was on the counter, crossed through, holding down the mail.


Saturday started slow. Priya woke first, made coffee, and sat on the couch with her laptop, half-reading the news and half-listening to Dan moving around the bedroom. When he came out, hair still flat on one side, she handed him the second mug without looking up.

"We're out of everything," he said, opening the fridge. "There's ketchup and one egg."

"I made a list on my phone. I'll share it."

They split the morning first. Dan carried three loads of laundry down to the basement of the building while Priya stripped the sheets and scrubbed the bathroom sink, arguing pleasantly through the open door about whether the grout was really that bad. She won. He bought a bottle of cleaner later, at the store, and grumbled about the price.

The grocery store was crowded, the parking lot full of people loading trunks. Priya pushed the cart while Dan read from the shared list, which he kept editing as they went.

"Do we need almond milk or regular?"

"Both. I use the almond for coffee."

"That's a waste of fridge space."

"Then drink the almond."

He put both in the cart. They lingered in the produce section, Dan turning avocados over in his hand, testing them with his thumb, while Priya picked out apples and a bag of lemons. At the deli counter, they waited nine minutes for a half pound of turkey. She checked her email. He read the ingredients on a box of crackers with genuine interest.

At checkout, they bagged their own groceries because the lane was self-serve, and it took longer than it should have. Dan scanned; Priya bagged, sorting cold things together.

Back home, they carried the bags up two flights in one trip, which was a mistake. Priya put things away. Dan went back down for the laundry.


The list had been on the fridge since Wednesday, and by Saturday morning it had grown crowded with Dana's cramped handwriting and Marcus's blocky additions at the bottom: BATTERIES (AA, the good kind), SOMETHING FOR SUNDAY.

They started with the laundromat, because the machine in their building had eaten four quarters and given nothing back. Marcus carried the bag down two flights while Dana held the door. They sat on plastic chairs for forty minutes, splitting a bag of vending machine pretzels, and Dana read aloud from an article about a man who had walked across Kansas. Marcus said he didn't understand why anyone would do that. Dana said that was the point.

At the grocery store, they took separate halves of the list, which was their system and had been for three years. Dana handled produce and dairy; Marcus took the aisles. They met at the end of the cereal aisle like people arriving at a rendezvous, and Marcus held up two boxes of pasta.

"They didn't have the shape you like."

"That one's fine."

"It's not fine, you always say it holds too much sauce."

"Then get the other one."

He got both. At the register, Dana remembered the batteries, and Marcus went back for them while the cashier scanned everything else, and Dana stood there with her card out, apologizing, and the cashier said it happened all the time.

In the parking lot the sun had gotten hot on the car's roof. They loaded the trunk, argued mildly about whether the eggs should ride in the back seat, put the eggs in the back seat. On the way home they stopped for gas and Dana went in for coffee neither of them needed.

Upstairs, they put things away together — Marcus on the high shelves, Dana on the low ones — and afterward the afternoon was still there, unspent, waiting.


The list on the fridge had grown all week, written in two different hands. Dana's additions were practical—dish soap, paper towels, coffee filters—while Marcus had scrawled "GOOD bread, not the sad kind" somewhere near the bottom.

They left the apartment a little after ten, later than they'd meant to. Marcus drove because Dana wanted to answer a text from her sister, and by the time she looked up they were already pulling into the lot behind the hardware store.

"Furnace filter," she said. "And those hooks for the bathroom."

"I still think we should just use the ones we have."

"They fall off the wall, Marcus."

He conceded the point. Inside, they spent eleven minutes in the aisle debating the merits of adhesive versus screws, and left with screws, a filter, and a single packet of drywall anchors that Marcus insisted they'd need eventually.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays always were. Dana pushed the cart while Marcus went ahead, doubling back with things he'd found. He held up two boxes of cereal, one in each hand, and she pointed at the left without slowing down. In produce, she squeezed avocados until she found two that would be ready by Tuesday. He put a pineapple in the cart, and she raised an eyebrow.

"We never eat those," she said. "They just sit there and get sad."

"This time will be different."

They ended up with the pineapple, plus a bag of coffee, chicken thighs on sale, and bread from the bakery counter that Marcus declared acceptable. The self-checkout misread the spinach, and a teenage employee came over and fixed it without being asked twice.

At home, Dana put away the cold things while Marcus took the filter down to the basement. When he came back up, she'd already started a pot of coffee, and the pineapple was sitting on the counter, waiting.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of an envelope from the gas company, but Marcus was the one who carried it into the store, folded once and tucked into his jacket pocket like a receipt he might need later.

They'd already been to the hardware store on Winslow, where Dana stood in the plumbing aisle comparing two nearly identical rubber washers while Marcus wandered off to look at extension cords they didn't need. The kitchen faucet had been dripping since Tuesday. She'd watched a video about it on her phone that morning, sitting on the closed toilet lid with the cat pressed against her ankle.

Now, in the produce section, Marcus held up a bag of oranges.

"These are the ones with the seeds," Dana said.

"You don't know that."

"They're always the ones with the seeds."

He put them back and took the other bag, which cost sixty cents more, and neither of them said anything about it.

They moved through the store in the loose, practiced way of people who had done this maybe two hundred times. Marcus pushed the cart. Dana went ahead and came back with things — a box of pasta, a jar of the mustard he liked, a package of chicken thighs she squeezed through the plastic before setting down. At the deli counter they waited nine minutes for a half pound of turkey because the woman ahead of them wanted six things sliced to different thicknesses.

"We could just get the packaged kind," Marcus said.

"It tastes like a sponge."

"It tastes like turkey-adjacent sponge."

She laughed, which he'd been going for.

In the car, the bags sat between them on the back seat, leaning into each other. Dana read the receipt while Marcus backed out.

"We spent eighty-four dollars."

"On what?"

"Turkey-adjacent sponge, apparently."

He put on the blinker. The faucet was still dripping when they got home, and it took him until almost four to fix it.


The list was Maya's, written on the back of a receipt in the car while Dev drove. She kept adding to it at stoplights.

"Do we need eggs?" she asked.

"We have four."

"That's not enough for anything."

"It's enough for breakfast."

She wrote eggs anyway.

The Kroger on Belmont was crowded the way it always was on Saturday mornings, families clogging the produce section, an old man parked in front of the bananas with an expression of genuine indecision. Dev took the cart because Maya drove it into things. She went ahead of him, picking up bell peppers and putting them down, holding a bag of limes up to the light like a jeweler.

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

"What thing?"

"Where you inspect every lime."

"One of them is always bad. I'm just finding out which one now instead of Wednesday."

They split up in the middle of the store. He got coffee, tortillas, the yogurt she liked and the yogurt he liked, which were different. She texted him a photo of two pasta sauces with the caption *which*. He sent back the left one, then found her in the freezer aisle holding both.

At the register, they did the thing they always did, where he unloaded and she bagged, and the cashier said they were efficient, and Maya said they'd had practice.

In the parking lot the cart wanted to go left. Dev wrestled it while Maya opened the trunk, and they loaded eleven bags and a case of seltzer, and she remembered they hadn't gotten trash bags.

"Next time," he said.

"We'll be out by Tuesday."

"Then Tuesday I'll get trash bags."

She said okay. On the drive home they argued mildly about whether the laundry could wait until Sunday, and it could, and it did.


The list was Maya's, but Daniel was the one who insisted on the hardware store first, because the toilet in the back bathroom had been running for eleven days and he'd finally admitted he couldn't fix it with willpower alone. They stood in aisle seven while an employee named Rick explained flappers to them with more enthusiasm than the subject warranted, and Maya held up two versions, and Daniel said, "The cheap one," and Maya put the cheap one in the cart and also, quietly, the expensive one, because she'd been married to the cheap one's failures before—not married, she corrected herself, just familiar.

At the grocery store, they split up. This was the system. She took produce and dairy; he took the middle aisles, where he always came back with something not on the list. She was squeezing avocados when he appeared with a jar of pickled okra.

"Nobody in this house eats pickled okra," she said.

"I'm going to become a person who eats pickled okra."

"You said that about kimchi."

"And now look at me." He put it in the cart. She let him.

They argued mildly about which brand of coffee, resolved it by buying neither and getting the store brand, and stood in the self-checkout while a machine accused them repeatedly of unexpected items in the bagging area. Daniel did the scanning. Maya bagged, faster than he scanned, which annoyed him in a way he didn't mention.

In the parking lot the cart wanted to veer left. She held the trunk open while he loaded, and he handed her the eggs to hold in her lap, the way he always did, as though she were the only reliable surface in the vehicle.

At home she put things away. He knelt behind the toilet with the shutoff valve seized shut, and swore, and called her name.


The alarm didn't go off, which meant they both woke at 9:40 to a Saturday already half-formed. Dana made coffee while Marcus stripped the sheets, muttering about how the mattress protector always got twisted around itself in the wash.

"We need to leave by eleven if we're going to hit the hardware store first," she said, handing him a mug.

"Hardware store's not going anywhere."

"The paint counter closes at four on Saturdays."

They compromised: laundry started, then errands. At the hardware store, Marcus held up two nearly identical swatches of pale gray while Dana squinted. "That one's warmer."

"They're the same."

"They're not the same. Yours has yellow in it."

They bought the one with yellow in it, plus a replacement filter for the furnace and a package of picture hangers they'd been meaning to get since March.

The grocery store was crowded. Dana pushed the cart while Marcus worked from a list on his phone, doubling back twice for things he'd skipped. She added a box of the cereal she liked and he pretended not to notice the price. In the produce section they had a brief, low-voiced disagreement about whether they actually needed a second bag of onions, which ended when she pointed out the first bag had sprouted.

At the register, the card reader failed twice before taking his tap. The bagger asked if they wanted paper or plastic and Dana said paper, and Marcus, who preferred plastic, said nothing.

They unloaded the car together, six bags in two trips. Dana put away the cold things while Marcus went down to move the laundry, and came back up to report that the dryer was making the noise again.

"We should call somebody."

"Monday," she said, and handed him the onions to put in the pantry.


Saturday started slower than they'd planned. Dana woke first, stood in the kitchen in one of Marcus's old T-shirts, and discovered the coffee filters were gone. She wrote *filters* on the back of an envelope and set it by the sink, which was how their lists always began.

By ten they had eleven items and a plan. Marcus stripped the bed while Dana wrestled the vacuum out of the hall closet, where it lived wedged behind a folding chair neither of them remembered buying. He carried the sheets down to the basement laundry, came back up, and found her arguing with the vacuum's belt.

"It's the roller," he said.

"I know it's the roller."

He got a butter knife and worked out a knot of hair while she held the base steady. It took eleven minutes. They agreed the vacuum was on its last legs and did not agree on whether to replace it now or in the fall.

At the grocery store, Marcus pushed the cart and Dana walked ahead, moving fast, the way she did everything. She put back the expensive coffee. He put it in again when she wasn't looking. In the produce section they stood a long time over the tomatoes, which were pale and hard, and settled on a can of crushed instead. Dana added a bag of limes that wasn't on the list. Marcus added tortilla chips that also weren't.

The self-checkout flagged the limes as unexpected in the bagging area. Dana waved for the attendant while Marcus kept scanning.

At home they unloaded, and he moved the laundry to the dryer, and she started the vacuum, and for a while neither of them could hear the other. Later, on the couch, she said they should look at vacuums online. He said sure, next weekend. Neither of them meant it.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus was the one holding it, squinting at her handwriting while she pushed the cart down the produce aisle.

"Does that say 'cilantro' or 'celery'?"

"Cilantro. We have celery. It's been in the drawer since—" She stopped. "Actually, throw out the celery when we get home."

He grabbed a bunch of cilantro and dropped it in beside the apples. Saturday morning at the Kroger on Ballard meant navigating around families and a man in a Steelers jacket parked in front of the bananas, talking on speakerphone. Dana steered around him without comment.

They'd already been to the hardware store for a furnace filter and to the bank, where Marcus deposited a check from his uncle that had been sitting on the dresser for three weeks. Dana had waited in the car with the radio on, and when he came out she'd said, "Your uncle writes checks like it's 1994," and he'd said, "He also puts the year in the memo line, so."

In the cereal aisle they had the same negotiation as always. Marcus wanted the sugary one. Dana pointed out he never finished the box.

"I finished the last box."

"You gave the last box to Tyler."

He put it back. She put it in the cart, and he didn't say anything, just smiled at the floor a little.

At checkout, the total came to eighty-seven dollars and change, and Dana paid because Marcus had covered the filter and the light bulbs. In the parking lot, they loaded bags into the back of her Corolla, and Marcus said he'd change the filter that afternoon if she'd help him figure out the thermostat.

"That's a two-person job now?"

"It's a two-person job if you want it done right."

She handed him the keys and got in the passenger side.


The list was Maya's, written on the back of an envelope, but Dev was the one holding it in the Kroger parking lot, squinting at her handwriting.

"Does this say 'cilantro' or 'celery'?"

"Both. It says both. There's a comma."

"There's a smudge."

They started in produce because Maya insisted it was the only rational way to move through a grocery store, and Dev had long ago stopped arguing about it. He pushed the cart while she pressed her thumb into avocados, rejecting four before finding two she liked. A woman with a toddler in the seat of her cart apologized as she reached past them for limes, and Maya said no worries, and the toddler stared at Dev with frank suspicion until they turned the corner.

They disagreed, briefly and without heat, about yogurt. Dev wanted the big tub; Maya pointed out that the last big tub had gone furry in the back of the fridge. They bought the big tub anyway, because it was cheaper, and Dev promised to eat it.

At the register, Maya bagged while Dev paid, and they loaded the trunk in the flat white light of a March afternoon, the wind coming across the lot cold enough to make her pull her sleeves over her hands.

Back at the apartment, they carried everything up in two trips. Dev put away the cold things badly — Maya rearranged the fridge behind him without comment — and then he took the laundry down to the basement while she scrubbed the stovetop, which had needed it for a week.

At three-thirty he came back up with the basket on his hip and found her sitting on the kitchen floor with the cabinet under the sink open, sorting through half-empty cleaning bottles.

"We have four Windexes."

"Four?"

"Four."

He set down the basket and sat beside her on the linoleum, and they started deciding what to throw away.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus held it, because she'd learned years ago that if he didn't have a job at the store he wandered off toward the seasonal aisle and came back with a citronella candle.

They'd started the morning with laundry. Marcus carried the basket down two flights to the machines in the basement while Dana stripped the bed, and when he came back up she'd already stacked the recycling by the door and was standing in the kitchen frowning at the coffee maker.

"It's doing the thing again," she said.

"The dripping thing?"

"The dripping thing."

He unplugged it, took the carafe out, wiped the plate with a paper towel, and put it back. It still dripped. They agreed to look at a new one eventually, which they both understood meant August at the earliest.

At the store, Dana pushed the cart and Marcus read the list aloud, item by item, in a voice like a man calling out train stops. They disagreed briefly about yogurt — she wanted the plain, he wanted the vanilla, they got both — and stood too long in front of the pasta sauce because neither could remember whether they still had a jar at home. Marcus said they did. Dana said he'd said that last time and they'd ended up with four. They bought one.

In the checkout line, Dana remembered they needed trash bags and Marcus jogged back for them, returning slightly out of breath, holding them up like a trophy. The cashier asked if they'd found everything all right. They said yes.

They loaded the car in the gray afternoon light, and Marcus took the cart back to the corral even though the parking lot was mostly empty and no one would have known. On the drive home Dana held the eggs in her lap and told him she'd cook, if he'd do the dishes. He said that was fair.


The list was in Dana's phone, but Marcus wrote his own on the back of a receipt because he claimed he thought better in ink. They left the apartment at ten, later than planned, because Dana had started a load of towels and then decided the whites should go in first.

The hardware store came first. Marcus needed a new washer for the bathroom faucet, which had been dripping since March in a rhythm Dana had learned to sleep through. He stood in aisle six holding two small packages, comparing them, while Dana wandered to the paint chips and brought back a fan of grays.

"For what?" he asked.

"The bedroom. Eventually."

"Eventually," he agreed, and put the fan in the cart, which was not a thing you were supposed to do, and she put it back.

At the grocery store they split up. She took produce and dairy; he took the middle aisles, which he preferred because nobody blocked them with their carts to have long conversations. He texted her a photo of two brands of tortillas. She texted back *the green bag*. He bought the green bag.

They met at the deli counter. She had strawberries that weren't quite in season and a bag of shredded cheese she said was for the enchiladas and he said was for eating out of the bag. At checkout he bagged while she paid, and they argued mildly about whether the eggs should go on top or in their own bag, and settled it the way they always did, which was that she was right.

Back home, Marcus fixed the faucet in eleven minutes and felt disproportionately good about it. Dana folded towels on the bed and put the paint chips on the fridge under a magnet from a wedding they'd gone to in Ohio. The apartment smelled like detergent. It was one thirty. There was still most of a Saturday left.


The list had been magnetized to the fridge since Wednesday, accumulating additions in two different handwritings. Dana's were practical—dish soap, coffee filters, bread. Marcus had written "cereal (the good kind)" and, later, "SALSA."

They left the apartment a little after ten, Marcus carrying the reusable bags they always forgot until they were halfway down the stairs. Today he'd remembered. He held them up like a trophy.

"I'm proud of you," Dana said, unlocking the car.

First stop was the hardware store, because the bathroom faucet had developed a drip that had graduated from ignorable to maddening. Marcus stood in the plumbing aisle for eleven minutes comparing washer kits while Dana wandered off and came back with a small potted succulent.

"That's not on the list."

"It was four dollars and it looked lonely."

At the grocery store, they fell into their usual division of labor without discussing it. Dana took the produce and dairy; Marcus took the interior aisles and the deli counter. They reunited near the frozen section, comparing carts like generals reporting from opposite fronts.

"You got the sharp cheddar?"

"I got the sharp cheddar. You got the salsa?"

"I got two salsas. One's a medium, one's a hot, we'll see how brave we're feeling."

The checkout line moved slowly. A woman ahead of them had a coupon dispute. Marcus read the tabloid headlines aloud in a newscaster voice until Dana told him to stop, which he did, mostly.

At home they unloaded together, Dana putting things away while Marcus broke down the boxes for recycling. Then he knelt under the bathroom sink with a wrench and the washer kit while she read him the instructions off her phone, and after twenty minutes and one small flood, the dripping stopped.

They stood there listening to the silence.

"Should we do the laundry?" Dana said.

"Let's do it tomorrow," Marcus said.

They did it tomorrow.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of a pharmacy receipt, but Marcus was the one holding it when they walked into the store at ten past nine.

"Coffee first," he said.

"Coffee's aisle seven. We start with produce or the lettuce gets crushed."

He didn't argue. He'd learned. She picked over the bell peppers with the seriousness of someone defusing something, and he wandered two steps behind pushing the cart, stopping to read the price on a bag of clementines.

"Do we need these?"

"We don't need any of this. We're not going to starve either way."

"That's a yes." He put them in the cart.

They moved through the store in their usual pattern, which was that Dana walked ahead and Marcus caught up. In the cereal aisle he put back the sugary thing he'd grabbed, unprompted, and she pretended not to notice. At the deli counter she took a number and he leaned against the glass and told her about a coworker who'd started bringing a rice cooker to the office and using it at his desk.

"That's insane."

"It smells great, honestly."

They disagreed about whether they already had garlic at home. She was right. They bought garlic anyway.

Afterward, in the parking lot, the sun was already hot on the roof of the car and the ice cream had to go in the bag with the frozen peas. He drove. She read him the rest of the day: return the drill to his brother, drop off the shoes at the cobbler on Fifth, pick up her prescription.

"That's it?"

"And the laundry, but that's not a trip."

"Everything's a trip," he said, and she laughed, and he took the long way because the light on Wexler was always red.

At home they carried in four bags each so they wouldn't have to make two trips.


The list on the fridge had been growing all week, magneted under a coupon for oil changes that had expired in March. Dana pulled it down while Marcus rinsed the coffee pot.

"We need to hit the hardware store first," she said. "The shower drain's still slow."

"I told you, it's hair."

"It's your hair too."

They took his car because hers was low on gas and neither wanted to deal with it yet. At the hardware store Marcus stood in the plumbing aisle comparing two nearly identical drain snakes while Dana wandered off and came back with a packet of furnace filters they'd forgotten they needed in October. The cashier asked if they'd found everything okay and Marcus said mostly, which made Dana laugh in the parking lot.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays always were, carts stalling at the ends of aisles. Dana pushed while Marcus read from the list on his phone, where he'd photographed her handwriting.

"Bread. The seeded kind or regular?"

"Seeded. You hate the seeded."

"I'm buying it for you."

He put back a box of cereal she said was mostly sugar, then quietly put it in when she went for eggs. They argued mildly over chicken thighs versus breasts and settled on both. In the checkout line Dana rearranged the belt so the cold things went together, a habit she'd picked up from her mother and which Marcus had stopped teasing her about two years ago.

At home they carried everything in two trips. Marcus put away the freezer things while Dana wiped down the produce drawer, which had a smear of something in the corner. Then he lay on the bathroom floor with the drain snake and swore twice, and she brought him a beer and stood in the doorway watching, offering advice he did not want.


The list started as a magnet-pinned scrap on the refrigerator and ended up mostly in Dana's head anyway. She read it out loud from the passenger seat while Marcus backed the Civic out of the apartment lot.

"Detergent, coffee, chicken thighs, the good tortillas—not the ones you got last time."

"Those were fine."

"They were cardboard."

They hit the hardware store first, because Marcus had been saying for three weeks that the smoke detector's low-battery chirp was going to drive him out of the building. He stood in aisle six comparing nine-volt multipacks while Dana wandered off and came back with a rubber drain snake, holding it up like evidence.

"Your hair," she said.

"Our hair."

"Mine doesn't clog it."

They bought both. At the grocery store the cart had a bad wheel, and Marcus refused to swap it out on principle, steering it in a slow rattling drift while Dana went ahead into produce. She squeezed avocados, put three in a bag, then put one back. He caught up in the cereal aisle and put a box of Frosted Flakes in the cart without comment. She didn't say anything either, just moved it so it wouldn't crush the bread.

At the deli counter they waited eleven minutes for a half pound of turkey. Dana leaned against the case and told him about her sister's new dog, some kind of terrier mix that had already eaten a remote control. Marcus laughed at the wrong part and she elbowed him.

Checkout was $137.42, more than either expected, and Marcus said so in the parking lot while Dana loaded bags into the trunk. Back home they carried everything up in two trips, and he changed the smoke detector battery while she put the cold things away.

The chirping stopped. He came down off the chair.

"Lunch?" she said.

"Sandwiches. We have turkey."


The list was Nora's, but Deshawn was the one who kept it, folded in his back pocket the way his father used to carry receipts. They'd started the morning slow — coffee, the radio, Nora scrubbing the burner grates while Deshawn hauled two weeks of recycling down to the bins behind the building.

"We need to hit the hardware store first," he said, coming back up the stairs. "That shelf bracket."

"After groceries the ice cream melts."

"That's why hardware's first."

At Ace, they spent eleven minutes in the fastener aisle because Nora insisted the old bracket was 3/8-inch and Deshawn insisted it wasn't, and then an employee named Curtis measured it with calipers and it was neither. They bought a whole new bracket set and a package of drywall anchors and, because Nora spotted them by the register, a set of felt pads for the chair legs that had been scratching the floor since March.

The grocery store on Saturday was a slow river of carts. They split up — she took produce and dairy, he took the middle aisles — and met near the deli, where Deshawn was holding two brands of pasta sauce like he was weighing evidence.

"Just get the one your mom uses."

"My mom uses whatever's on sale."

"Then that one."

They got the one on sale. Also: chicken thighs, a bag of yellow onions, oat milk, tortillas, dish soap, a birthday card for Nora's coworker, and, at the last second, a rotisserie chicken because neither of them wanted to cook that night. The total was more than they expected. It always was.

In the parking lot Deshawn loaded the trunk and Nora returned the cart, and on the drive home she read the card options aloud from her phone until he laughed and said none of them, just write something.

They put the groceries away together. The shelf bracket sat on the counter until Sunday.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of a utility bill envelope, but Marcus was the one holding it in the car, reading items aloud while she drove.

"Coffee, obviously. Onions. Sour cream — do we need sour cream?"

"We need it for the thing I'm making Wednesday."

"What thing?"

"The chicken thing."

"Ah," Marcus said. "The chicken thing."

They stopped at the hardware store first, because the light in the hallway had been out for eleven days and Dana had started calling it the tunnel. Marcus stood in front of a wall of bulbs looking genuinely defeated until an employee named Rich pointed out the packaging said sixty-watt equivalent. They bought a four-pack and a replacement furnace filter that Marcus insisted was overdue.

The grocery store was crowded in the way it always was on Saturdays, carts abandoned mid-aisle, kids melting down near the cereal. Dana took the left side of the store and Marcus took the right, which they'd worked out two apartments ago. She got produce and dairy; he got the pasta, the canned things, the paper towels that were on sale but only if you bought two. They met near the meat counter and compared carts like customs agents.

"You got the wrong sour cream," she said.

"It's sour cream."

"It's fat free. It'll split."

He put it back. At checkout he bagged while she paid, and they argued mildly about whether the eggs should go on top or in their own bag, a debate with no resolution in six years.

At home they carried everything in two trips. Marcus changed the hallway bulb while Dana put things away, calling out when she couldn't find where the rice had gone. The hallway lit up. She stood at the end of it, squinting.

"Bright," she said.

"That's the idea," he said, folding up the stepladder.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus was the one holding it, because Dana had a habit of losing paper.

"Bread, eggs, whatever we need for Tuesday," he read aloud in the car. "What's Tuesday?"

"Your mom's coming over."

"Right." He folded the list into his shirt pocket. "So, chicken."

At the store, Dana took the cart because Marcus steered it into displays. They moved through produce with the unhurried inefficiency of people who had nowhere else to be until three. Dana squeezed avocados and rejected four before finding two that felt right. Marcus wandered off and came back with a bag of the peppery crackers he liked, which Dana looked at without saying anything, and he put back, and then took again when she turned toward the onions.

"I saw that."

"You didn't see anything."

They argued mildly about yogurt — she wanted the big tub, he wanted the individual cups because he ate them at work — and settled on both. In the meat case, Marcus held up two packages of chicken thighs and Dana pointed at the one on the left without looking up from her phone, where she was checking whether they still had rice.

"We have rice," she said. "We have a lot of rice."

Checkout took longer than it should have because the woman ahead of them had coupons. Marcus bagged. Dana paid, and he said he'd get her back for his half, and she said he always said that, and he said he always did it, which was mostly true.

At home they carried everything in two trips. Dana put things away while Marcus took out the recycling and then stood in the driveway for a minute, looking at the tire that had been low all week.

"It's still low," he called.

"So take it in."

"After lunch," he said, and went inside to see what there was.


The list was Maya's, written on the back of an envelope in blue pen, but Dev was the one holding it in the Safeway parking lot, squinting.

"You wrote 'the good bread,'" he said. "That's not a brand."

"You know which one. The seeded one from the bakery case."

"There are four seeded ones."

"Then buy the one you like and I'll complain about it later."

Inside, they split up, which they always did and which never saved time. Maya took the produce and the dairy wall; Dev took the middle aisles and the bakery. He found her ten minutes later standing in front of the yogurt like she was reading a menu in a foreign country.

"They discontinued the vanilla one," she said.

"They didn't discontinue it. They moved it."

"It's not here."

He reached past her shoulder, two shelves down, and handed her the tub. She took it without comment, which he decided to accept as gratitude.

They argued mildly about whether they needed another jar of peanut butter—there was one at home, she said, but it was almost empty, he said, and the almost-empty jar had been almost empty for three weeks. They bought it. At the register, Maya bagged while Dev loaded, and the teenager scanning items told them about a coupon they could have used, which annoyed them both in a companionable way.

At home, they carried everything up in two trips. Dev put the cold things away; Maya broke down the cardboard box the cat litter came in, which took longer than it should have because the tape was aggressive. Then she started a load of towels while he took the recycling bin out to the curb, even though pickup wasn't until Tuesday, because otherwise it would sit in the kitchen all weekend and they'd both pretend not to see it.

By two o'clock the apartment smelled like laundry detergent. Maya made toast with the good bread. It was, in fact, the right one.


The list was Maya's, written on the back of a receipt in blue pen, but Danny was the one carrying it into the store, folded twice and tucked under his thumb against the cart handle.

"Coffee first," he said. "Then we loop back for produce."

"That's backwards. Produce is right there."

"It's a system."

She let him have it. They'd lived together fourteen months and she'd learned which arguments were worth the calories. In the coffee aisle he stood too long comparing two bags of the same medium roast, one of which was forty cents cheaper, and she wandered off to look at the seasonal display of cookies she wasn't going to buy.

At the deli counter she took a number and he read the list out loud, adding things.

"We don't need capers," she said.

"We're out of capers."

"We've been out of capers since March. That's data."

He put the capers back.

The self-checkout ate a coupon and a teenage employee named Aaron came over and scanned his badge and fixed it without seeming to look. Danny bagged. Maya loaded the cart. In the parking lot the wind picked up and a receipt blew under a Subaru, and neither of them chased it.

At home they unpacked, and Maya found the ice cream had gotten soft on the drive. She stuck it in the freezer anyway. Danny broke down the boxes for recycling and hauled the bin to the curb even though pickup wasn't until Tuesday, because he was already outside and it was there.

They still had the dry cleaning to get, and the bathroom sink was draining slow, and there was a birthday card for his mother sitting unsigned on the counter since Thursday.

"Sink or card," Maya said.

"Card," Danny said. "I need to work up to the sink."

She handed him the pen.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of a takeout receipt, but Marcus was the one holding it in the parking lot of the Kroger on Whitcomb.

"You wrote 'stuff for tacos,'" he said. "That's not a list. That's a mood."

"You know what goes in tacos."

"I know what *I* put in tacos."

Inside, they split up the way they always did—Dana toward produce, Marcus toward the aisles—and reconvened near the dairy case with a cart that had a wobbling wheel. She'd found limes on sale and a bag of tortillas she liked better than the ones he usually got. He'd added a box of the cereal she pretended not to eat.

"We need paper towels," she said.

"We have paper towels."

"We have four sheets and a cardboard tube."

They argued mildly about whether to get the store brand, then got the store brand. At the register, Dana bagged while Marcus paid, and the cashier said something about the weather finally turning, and they agreed that it had.

The car smelled like the rotisserie chicken by the time they got home. Marcus carried the heavy bags in one trip because he always tried to, and Dana held the door with her foot and told him he was going to break a finger someday.

Groceries away, they moved on. She stripped the bed and started a load of sheets. He took the recycling out and then stood in the driveway a minute, looking at the front tire he'd been meaning to check. When he came back in she was on the phone with the pharmacy, on hold, mouthing something to him about the vacuum bag.

By four they were done, more or less. Dana sat on the couch with her feet in his lap, and neither of them said anything for a while, and it was fine.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of an envelope from the electric company, but Marcus was the one who insisted on the store on Eleventh instead of the closer one.

"They have the bread you like," he said, backing the car out.

"They have the bread I *tolerate*."

"That's still a preference."

They hit the laundromat first, because their building's machines had been broken since Tuesday and the super kept saying Thursday. Dana fed quarters while Marcus sorted, and they sat for forty minutes in orange plastic chairs, sharing a bag of pretzels from the vending machine and half-watching a soccer game on the mounted TV. She read him a text from her sister about a wedding in June. He said they should probably book something before the prices went up. She said she'd look tonight and then didn't write it down, which meant she wouldn't.

At the grocery store, they split the list. Marcus took produce and dairy; Dana took everything in the middle aisles, which she claimed was harder and he claimed was where all the snacks were. They found each other by the deli counter. He'd gotten the wrong kind of yogurt, the vanilla instead of plain, and put it back with the exaggerated patience of a man who thinks yogurt distinctions are a conspiracy.

The line was long. A kid ahead of them was having a slow, quiet meltdown about a candy bar, and Dana looked at Marcus and Marcus looked back, and neither of them said anything, but the look had a whole conversation in it.

They carried the bags up in one trip because Marcus refused, on principle, to make two. Dana put things away. Marcus started the dishwasher, then sat on the counter and ate crackers out of the box while she told him he was going to spill crumbs everywhere, which he did.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of an envelope from the gas company, but Marcus was the one holding it as they walked into the store. He liked having a job.

"Bananas first," he said. "You always forget bananas."

"I forgot them one time."

"Twice."

They moved through produce without much system. Dana squeezed avocados and put three in the cart, one hard, one nearly ready, one for tonight. Marcus wandered off toward the bulk bins and came back with a bag of trail mix she hadn't asked for.

"That's not on the list."

"It's now on the list." He wrote *trail mix* under *paper towels* in handwriting that looked nothing like hers.

In the cereal aisle they had the same argument they'd had for two years, which was less an argument than a routine: he wanted the sugary one, she wanted the one with fiber, and they bought both, as always. At the deli counter Dana took a number and Marcus stood a little apart, checking his phone, then held up a finger when the number was called because Dana had drifted to look at cheese.

Checkout took longer than it should have. The woman ahead of them had coupons. Marcus loaded the belt in the order he thought the bagger would want, heavy things first, bread and eggs last, and Dana watched him do it and said nothing, because he was right and she wasn't going to say so.

At home they put everything away, mostly. The bananas went on the counter. Marcus started laundry — his work shirts, her running clothes, one load, mixed — while Dana wiped down the fridge shelves where something sticky had spread.

By two they were done. Dana sat on the kitchen floor with her back against the dishwasher, eating trail mix out of the bag.

"Told you," Marcus said.

She held it out to him.


The list was Danielle's, written on the back of a receipt in her cramped handwriting, and Marcus had already lost it twice by the time they reached the parking lot.

"Eggs," she said, not looking up from her phone. "Just remember eggs. If we forget eggs again I'm moving out."

"You say that about everything." He pulled the cart out of the corral, the one with the wobbling wheel because he never checked first. "Last week it was the shower drain."

"The shower drain is genuinely a moving-out offense."

Inside, they split up the way they always did, though neither had ever proposed it. He took the produce and the frozen aisle; she took everything that required reading a label. He came back with two bags of clementines because they were on sale, and she looked at him the way she looked at their neighbor's dog.

"We threw half of the last ones out."

"These are different. These are Cuties."

"Those were also Cuties."

They compromised on one bag, which meant she put the other back while he was pretending to consider the yogurt. At checkout she remembered the eggs, and he jogged back for them, and the cashier waited with the patience of someone paid hourly.

The rest of the afternoon dissolved into small tasks. Marcus took two bags of donations to the drop-off bin behind the church, then hit the hardware store for a furnace filter and, unnecessarily, a small can of WD-40. Danielle stayed home and stripped the bed, started a load, paid the water bill on her laptop with the cat sitting on the trackpad.

When he got back she was standing in the kitchen eating a clementine over the sink.

"They're good," she admitted.

"I want that in writing."

She handed him half. Outside, someone was mowing. It was almost four, and neither of them had thought about dinner yet.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus held it, because Dana had a habit of losing paper and Marcus had a habit of not trusting her about it.

They started with the recycling, dragging the blue bin down the driveway before the truck came, then hauling two bags of clothes to the donation bin behind the church on Fillmore. Dana wanted to keep a denim jacket she hadn't worn in three years. Marcus said nothing, just raised his eyebrows, and she put it back in the bag herself.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturday mornings always were, carts angled across aisles, a kid screaming somewhere near the bakery. They split up at the entrance. Marcus took produce and dairy; Dana took the middle aisles and the meat counter. They found each other again by the cereal, comparing carts.

"You got the wrong tortillas," she said.

"These are the ones we always get."

"We always get the ones in the refrigerated case."

He went back for them without arguing, which meant he was in a decent mood. Dana added a bag of gummy worms while he was gone and didn't mention it.

At checkout the total came to ninety-four dollars, more than they'd planned, and Dana paid because Marcus had covered the electric bill. Loading the trunk in the parking lot, he noticed the front left tire looked low.

"We can hit the air pump at the Shell," he said.

"Now?"

"It's on the way."

So they stopped, and Dana sat in the passenger seat with the door open, holding the gauge and reading numbers out while Marcus crouched by the tire with the hose. It took eleven minutes. The ice cream would be fine; it was October.

At home they carried everything in together, two trips each, and Dana started putting things away while Marcus went out to mow before the rain.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added things down the side in his cramped print: *coffee filters, that pasta sauce you like, garbage bags (BIG ones)*. He held it up in the car and squinted.

"You wrote 'onions' twice."

"I did not."

"Line four and line eleven."

Dana glanced over from the driver's seat. "The second one says 'oranges.'"

"That is not an R."

They stopped first at the hardware store, where Marcus stood in the plumbing aisle comparing two nearly identical sink washers while Dana wandered off and came back with a five-dollar houseplant she swore she wouldn't kill. At the register, they discovered the coupon on Marcus's phone had expired in March.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturday mornings always were, everyone moving at half speed, carts nosing into each other near the bakery. Dana took the left side of the aisles, Marcus the right. He was slow in the cereal section, reading boxes he had no intention of buying. She texted him from three aisles over: *deli line is long, get in it now.*

He got in it. A woman ahead of him ordered a quarter pound of six different things.

They met at the eggs. Dana opened the carton, checked for cracks, closed it. Marcus put back the expensive olive oil when he saw the price, then put it in the cart anyway.

At checkout, the total was more than either of them expected, which was also true every week. Marcus paid. Dana loaded the bags.

Back home, they carried everything up in two trips. Dana started the laundry. Marcus fixed the sink, which took forty minutes instead of ten, and involved one trip back out to the garage and some swearing.

By two o'clock the apartment smelled like detergent, the plant sat hopefully on the windowsill, and there were, in fact, two bags of onions.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus had added things in the margins: coffee filters, that hot sauce, batteries?? He drove because she'd driven last week, and because he liked the radio at a volume she tolerated only in the passenger seat.

They hit the hardware store first. The bathroom faucet had been dripping since Thanksgiving, and Marcus had finally looked up a video about replacing the cartridge. He stood in aisle seven holding two small plastic packages, comparing them to a photo on his phone.

"Just buy both," Dana said. "Return the wrong one."

"That's how we ended up with three shower heads."

"We ended up with three shower heads because you're indecisive."

He bought both.

At the grocery store, they split up the way they always did, which mostly meant Dana went to produce and Marcus wandered off toward things not on the list. She found him in the cereal aisle looking at a box of something with a cartoon toucan.

"No," she said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were building an argument."

They negotiated in the middle of the store: yes to the good bread, no to the sixty-dollar cheese, yes to two rotisserie chickens because one was never enough. Dana squeezed avocados while Marcus texted his sister back about Easter. At the register, they bagged their own groceries because the lane was self-checkout and the machine kept insisting there was an unexpected item.

The car got hot in the parking lot. Marcus turned the AC on and let it run while Dana lined the bags up in the trunk so nothing would tip.

"Faucet after lunch," he said.

"Faucet after lunch," she agreed, in a tone that suggested she'd believe it when the dripping stopped.

At home, they put everything away — she handled the fridge, he handled the pantry, both of them stepping around each other in a kitchen too small for two people who had learned exactly how to do it.


The Saturday started slow. Marcus woke first, made coffee, and stood at the kitchen window watching a neighbor drag a recycling bin to the curb. Elena came out twenty minutes later in his old college sweatshirt, hair flattened on one side.

"We have to go to Kroger," she said. "There's nothing here. I ate the last yogurt."

"There's rice."

"I'm not eating plain rice for lunch."

They made a list on the back of an envelope, arguing mildly about whether they needed more olive oil. Marcus said they had half a bottle. Elena said half a bottle was nothing. He wrote it down.

Before the store, they stopped at the hardware place on Ridge Road because the bathroom faucet had been dripping for three weeks. An older man in a green apron listened to Marcus describe the sound and handed him a small package of rubber washers. Elena wandered off and came back with a pack of furnace filters, holding them up.

"When did we last change these?"

"Never, probably."

At the grocery store, Elena pushed the cart and Marcus walked ahead, disappearing down aisles and reappearing with things not on the list — a bag of pretzel thins, a jar of pickled banana peppers. Elena put the peppers back. He got them again on the next pass and she pretended not to notice. In produce, they stood together over the bagged salads, reading dates. The self-checkout froze twice and a teenager with a lanyard came over both times without saying much.

At home they unloaded the car in three trips. Marcus put the cold things away while Elena broke down the boxes for recycling. Then he knelt under the sink with a wrench, and she stood in the bathroom doorway holding his phone with the flashlight on, telling him he had it backwards.

He didn't. The dripping stopped around two.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus held it, because he was the one who lost things less often.

They started with the recycling, which had piled up on the back porch until the raccoons found the bin. Marcus hauled the bags to the car while Dana swept up the shredded cardboard and a flattened yogurt container that had somehow ended up under the grill. It was October and cool enough that neither of them wore a jacket, which felt like getting away with something.

At the recycling center they waited behind a man unloading what looked like a hundred glass bottles, one at a time. Dana made a face. Marcus said, "He's committed," and she laughed, and they sat in the car with the windows down until it was their turn.

The grocery store was the usual Saturday crush. They split up—Dana took produce and dairy, Marcus took the middle aisles—and reconvened near the bread with two carts' worth of disagreement.

"You got the crunchy," Dana said, holding up the peanut butter.

"You said crunchy."

"I said creamy. Last week I said creamy."

"Last week we bought crunchy and you ate it."

She put it in the cart. In the checkout line she remembered they were out of coffee filters, and Marcus jogged back for them while she loaded the belt, and he returned with filters and a bag of the good tortilla chips, which she pretended not to notice.

At home they carried everything in in two trips. Dana put away the cold things; Marcus broke down the boxes because he was better at fitting them in the bin. Then he started the laundry that had been sitting in the washer since Thursday, smelling faintly of mildew, and ran it again with vinegar.

"We should get the oil changed," Dana said, from the couch.

"Next Saturday," Marcus said, and she said, "Sure," and neither of them moved for a while.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus was the one who kept it in his pocket, which meant they argued about it in the cereal aisle.

"It says oatmeal," he said, holding the receipt paper up like evidence.

"It says oatmeal because you ate the oatmeal." Dana pushed the cart forward two feet and stopped again. "I wanted the steel-cut kind. The one in the canister."

"That takes forty minutes."

"It takes thirty."

They compromised the way they always did, which was that both boxes went in the cart and Dana said something about the budget and Marcus said something about how the budget was already ruined by the coffee, which was true. He'd bought the whole beans again, the ones from the roaster on Fifth, because the store brand tasted like a penny.

Before the store they'd gone to the hardware place for a furnace filter and a pack of light bulbs, and Marcus had spent eleven minutes comparing filters while Dana sat on a stack of mulch bags reading her phone. She'd tried, twice, to say that any filter was fine. He'd explained MERV ratings. She'd gone back to her phone.

At checkout, Dana bagged while Marcus loaded the belt, and they did it without talking about it, the way they'd done it for three years in two different apartments. The bagger kid seemed relieved.

In the parking lot the sky had gone gray and low. Marcus fit the paper bags into the trunk around the filter, wedging the eggs against the spare tire cover.

"We forgot dish soap," Dana said.

Marcus looked at her over the open trunk. Neither of them moved toward the doors.

"Tomorrow," he said.

"Tomorrow," she agreed, and got in the car, and turned the heat on before he'd even shut the trunk.


Saturday morning arrived gray and drizzling, which meant the errands could no longer be postponed.

"We're out of coffee," Dana announced from the kitchen doorway, holding the empty canister upside down for emphasis. "Actual crisis."

Marcus was already pulling on his jacket. "Then we should hurry. You're unbearable without it."

They took his car because hers still had the check engine light on, a problem they'd been discussing for three weeks without resolving. Dana rode shotgun with the list on her phone, reading items aloud while Marcus navigated the wet streets toward the shopping center on Fremont.

The pharmacy came first. Marcus's prescription wasn't ready, so they waited fifteen minutes in the little plastic chairs near the blood pressure machine. Dana tested her blood pressure twice and declared herself immortal. Marcus tested his and refused to share the results.

At the bank, they deposited a check from Dana's freelance client and argued mildly about whether to move money into savings this month or wait until after the car repair. They landed on waiting. The teller, a young man with a nose ring, wished them a good weekend.

The grocery store was the main event. Marcus pushed the cart while Dana selected produce with more scrutiny than he thought strictly necessary. She held up two nearly identical bell peppers and asked him to choose. He chose wrong, apparently. In the cereal aisle, he snuck a box of the sugary kind into the cart, and she pretended not to see.

They split up briefly—she for coffee and bread, he for chicken and the cat food Gus preferred—and reunited at the checkout, where the total came in eleven dollars under their usual.

Loading bags into the trunk, Dana said, "Dry cleaning."

Marcus groaned. "Monday."

"Monday," she agreed.

They drove home, and the drizzle stopped somewhere on Elm Street.


Saturday morning arrived gray and mild, the kind of weather that made errands feel less like obligations and more like an excuse to be outside. Dana found her keys under a stack of mail while Marcus rinsed the last of the breakfast dishes.

"Did you write down the thing about the printer paper?" he asked.

"It's on the list." She held up her phone. "Along with your obsession with those crackers."

"They're seasonal. They won't be there in a month."

They took his car because hers was low on gas, and because the passenger seat gave Dana room to sort through the coupons her mother kept mailing them, most of them expired. The first stop was the pharmacy, where Marcus picked up a refill and Dana wandered the aisle of greeting cards, looking for something for her nephew's birthday. She settled on one with a dinosaur wearing a party hat.

At the hardware store they argued pleasantly about light bulb color temperature for eleven minutes before buying the same soft white ones they always bought. Marcus carried the bag. Dana held the door.

The grocery store was crowded. They split the list without discussing it, the way they had for three years now—she took produce and dairy, he took the middle aisles and the meat counter. They reconvened near the bread, comparing carts.

"You got the crackers," she observed.

"Two boxes. Don't judge me."

At checkout, Dana bagged while Marcus loaded the belt. In the parking lot the sun finally broke through, and they stood a moment by the trunk, squinting.

"Dry cleaning," Marcus said.

"Tomorrow. It closes at two and it's already one-forty."

He nodded, closed the trunk, and they drove home with the windows cracked, the crackers riding in Dana's lap because the bag had tipped over on the turn.


The rain had stopped by the time Marisol found her keys under a stack of unopened mail. Dev was already in the car, engine running, defroster clearing a slow arc across the windshield.

"Pharmacy first," she said, buckling in. "They close the drive-through at six on Sundays."

"You always say that and it's never been true."

"It was true once."

They pulled out of the driveway of the little rented house they'd shared for two years now, past the neighbor's inflatable snowman still standing in February. At Walgreens, Dev picked up his inhaler refill while Marisol wandered the seasonal aisle and came back holding a bag of discounted chocolate hearts.

"Seventy percent off," she said, as if defending a thesis.

"I didn't say anything."

The bank was next—a paper check from Dev's aunt that had to be deposited in person because he'd tried the app three times and given up. Marisol waited in the car with the heat on, scrolling through a list she'd made that morning in her phone's notes app: eggs, coffee, the good bread, dish soap, something for Tuesday.

At the grocery store they split up the way they always did, Dev taking produce and dairy, Marisol handling the middle aisles. They reconvened near the frozen food, comparing carts.

"You got the cilantro?"

"I got the cilantro. You got the wrong dish soap."

"It was on sale."

"It smells like a candle store."

They put it back anyway and got the plain kind. In the checkout line Dev leaned on the cart handle and told her about a podcast he'd half-listened to, and she nodded in the places where nodding seemed right.

Outside, the sky had gone a washed-out gold. They loaded the trunk together, arguing mildly about whether the eggs went on top, and drove home with the radio low.


The morning light came through the kitchen window at an angle that meant they'd slept later than planned. Marcus was already dressed, scrolling through the list on his phone.

"Did you add the coffee filters?" Dana asked, pulling her hair back with a band from her wrist.

"Third item down. Also we're out of that mustard you like."

"The whole grain one?"

"Is there another one?"

She laughed and grabbed her keys off the hook by the door. They took her car because his had a check engine light he'd been ignoring since March.

At the credit union, Dana deposited a check from her sister for the concert tickets while Marcus waited in the car with the windows down. He watched a woman try to parallel park a minivan into a spot clearly too small for it, and felt a certain kinship when she gave up and drove off.

The grocery store was crowded for a Saturday. They divided the list without discussing it—Marcus took produce and dairy, Dana took the interior aisles. They found each other again near the frozen section, comparing carts.

"You got the wrong bread," she said.

"They didn't have the seeded one."

"They always have the seeded one."

"Well, today they didn't."

She accepted this. At checkout, they bagged their own groceries because the line for the assisted lane was six people deep.

The last stop was the hardware store, where Marcus needed a replacement washer for the bathroom faucet that had been dripping for two weeks. Dana wandered to the paint chips while he waited at the counter, holding a small plastic ring up to the light.

"What do you think about a green in here?" she said, showing him a card. "For the hallway."

"That's not green. That's gray."

"It's sage."

"It's gray, Dana."

She put it in her pocket anyway.