The Dinner Party

The apartment smelled like garlic and scorched butter, which Nadia decided was close enough to appetizing.

"You added the wine yet?" Theo called from the bathroom, where he was doing something complicated with a razor.

"I added the wine to me," she said. "The sauce is next."

He came out five minutes later, one cheek nicked, wearing the blue shirt she liked. "How bad?"

"You look like you lost a fight with a paper towel." She handed him a glass. "Table needs setting. And Marcus is bringing his new girlfriend, so we should probably use the actual plates."

"The actual plates are in the box under the bed. We haven't unpacked them since March."

"We've lived here eleven months, Theo."

"I'm aware."

They'd moved in together after her lease ended and his roommate got engaged—practical reasons, they'd told everyone, though neither of them had brought up the practical reasons in a while. The plates turned out to be fine, just dusty, and Theo washed them one by one at the sink while Nadia salvaged the pasta sauce with more cream than she'd admit to.

"Do we have a candle?" she asked.

"We have a candle that smells like cake. Is that going to compete with dinner?"

"Light it in the bathroom."

By seven-fifteen the table looked convincingly adult. Theo put on the record his father had given him, the one that skipped near the end of side one. Nadia stood back and surveyed the room, then moved the ficus eight inches to the left.

"That was important," he said.

"It was."

The buzzer rang. Nadia pressed the button, heard four voices layered over each other in the stairwell, and turned to find Theo already holding the wine opener, sleeves pushed up, looking at her like he was waiting for permission to be happy about it.

"Okay," she said. "We're doing this."

He kissed the top of her head and went to hold the door.


Marisol wiped condensation from the kitchen window with her sleeve and squinted at the driveway. "Still no cars. We're fine."

"You said that twenty minutes ago." Dev was on the floor of the living room, wrestling the extra leaf into the dining table, which had belonged to his grandmother and resisted assembly the way she had resisted most things. "This table hates me."

"It hates everyone. Push down on the left side."

He pushed. Something clicked. He looked up, triumphant, and she gave him a thumbs-up without turning from the stove, where the short ribs had been going since two o'clock and now filled the whole first floor of the rented duplex with a smell that had already made the upstairs neighbor knock and ask, politely, what was happening.

They had lived together three years, which their families in Ohio and New Jersey respectively had stopped commenting on around year two. Tonight was just Priya and Marcus, Tom, and Tom's new girlfriend whose name Dev kept forgetting.

"Ann," Marisol said.

"I didn't ask."

"You were about to."

He set out mismatched wineglasses, four from a thrift store on Fillmore and two survivors of a set his sister had given them. Marisol tasted the sauce, added vinegar, tasted it again, and held the spoon out over her palm for him.

"More salt," he said.

"That's what I thought."

He found the good napkins in the linen closet behind the winter sheets. She changed out of the shirt with the sauce on it. At six-forty, headlights swung across the front window, and they looked at each other across the small room the way people do when the last quiet minute is ending.

"Ready?" she said.

"No." He was already walking to the door.


Marisol was arranging the last of the cloth napkins when she heard Devin swear from the kitchen.

"Don't panic," he called, which meant she should panic.

She found him staring into the oven, where the chicken thighs sat pale and glistening, entirely uncooked. He'd preheated the broiler instead of the bake setting, or maybe he'd never turned it on at all — the timeline was already blurring in his account of things.

"Forty minutes," Marisol said, checking her phone. "They'll be here in forty minutes."

"Yeah." Devin rubbed the back of his neck, the gesture he made when he was calculating. "Okay. What if we crank it to four-twenty-five and I start the potatoes on the stovetop instead of roasting them?"

"Do we have enough butter?"

"We have a concerning amount of butter."

She laughed and went to get it. They'd lived in the apartment on Fillmore for two years now, long enough that she knew the third drawer stuck and he knew she'd hidden the good chocolate behind the oatmeal. Friends still asked, occasionally and with a certain lilt, whether they'd thought about making it official. Marisol had stopped finding the question annoying. It just seemed beside the point, like asking whether they'd considered getting a second toaster.

Devin put on the playlist they'd argued about Tuesday — his selection, her veto power exercised twice. Marisol wiped down the coffee table, moved a stack of his library books to the bedroom, lit the candle that smelled vaguely of cedar.

"Wine's open," Devin said, sliding a glass toward her across the counter. "Breathing. Like we planned it."

The buzzer rang eight minutes early. Ana and Tomás, always early, always apologetic about it.

Marisol looked at Devin. He shrugged, spatula in hand, oven light glowing behind him.

"Let them in," he said. "They can watch me sweat."


Marisol wiped the counter for the third time, though it hadn't gotten dirty since the second. Through the kitchen window, the November light was already going gray at four-thirty, which she still hadn't adjusted to after eleven years in Chicago.

"They're going to notice the couch," Devon said, coming in from the living room with a lint roller in his hand.

"Nobody's going to notice the couch."

"There's a hole. It's not a small hole." He held up the roller like evidence of something. "I put the throw pillow over it."

"Then nobody's going to notice the couch."

He kissed the back of her neck on his way to the fridge, which meant he'd conceded. He pulled out the beer they'd bought at the place on Ashland, arranged the bottles by color, then rearranged them by height, then gave up and shoved them in.

Marisol was making her mother's arroz con gandules, which she hadn't attempted in two years and which she had, she suspected, already slightly ruined by rushing the sofrito. She tasted it. It was fine. It was probably fine.

"Ben's bringing that woman," Devon said.

"Priya. Her name's Priya. You've met her twice."

"I know her name. I'm saying he's bringing her, which is a thing."

"It's dinner."

"It's a thing," he said, but he was smiling, and he took the wooden spoon out of her hand to taste the rice himself. He made a face she'd learned to read as approval.

The doorbell went at six-fifteen, twenty minutes early, which was Ben all over. Marisol swore in Spanish and reached back to untie her apron; Devon caught the strings and undid them for her, then hung it on the pantry hook where it lived.

"Hole in the couch," he reminded her.

"I'm not saying a word about the couch."


Marisol found Dev in the kitchen, elbow-deep in a bowl of ground lamb, breadcrumbs stuck to his forearms like snow.

"They'll be here in forty minutes," she said, pulling her hair back.

"I know. I'm aware. I've been aware since two o'clock." He rolled a meatball, dropped it onto the sheet pan, and it rolled off the other side. He caught it against his hip.

She laughed at him and went to the dining room, where the table was still covered in the mail they hadn't sorted since Tuesday. She swept it into a laundry basket and shoved the basket into the hall closet, which was already full of things shoved into it during previous dinner parties. The door didn't quite close. She leaned on it until it did.

"Did you buy candles?" she called.

"I bought candles. They're in the bag on the chair."

"Which chair?"

"The chair," he said, "that has a bag on it."

She found them — tapers, the wrong size for their holders. She wedged them in with folded pieces of index card and decided nobody would look that closely. From the kitchen came the sound of the oven door and Dev swearing mildly at the heat.

By the time the first knock came, the apartment smelled like cumin and roasting lemon, and Marisol was standing in the bedroom trying to decide between two nearly identical shirts. Dev appeared in the doorway with a dish towel over his shoulder.

"The blue one," he said.

"They're both blue."

"The bluer one."

She threw the other shirt at him. He caught it, folded it badly, set it on the bed, and kissed the side of her head on his way past to answer the door — and then their friends were spilling in with wine and coats and complaints about parking, and the mail in the closet stayed exactly where it was.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, folded beneath a stack of towels that had migrated there sometime in October. She shook it out on the dining table while Danny hauled the extra chairs up from the basement, two at a time, banging one against the doorframe hard enough that they both winced.

"That's Tom's chair now," she said.

"Tom deserves it."

The apartment was too small for six people, technically. They'd known that when they signed the lease in Providence eighteen months ago, and they'd invited everyone anyway. Danny had spent the afternoon on the chicken—thighs, skin-on, the recipe his mother texted him in fragments over three days—and the kitchen smelled like garlic and rendered fat and the burnt edge of something he'd caught just in time.

Marisol counted forks. Eleven. She counted again and got eleven again.

"We have eleven forks," she called.

"Use the salad ones."

"They're tiny."

"Then people can share." He came around the corner with a dish towel over his shoulder, tasting sauce off a wooden spoon, and held it out to her. She took a sip and made a face.

"More lemon."

"You always say more lemon."

"I'm always right about lemon."

He went back and added lemon. She lit the candles they'd bought for a different dinner party that got canceled when Jenna's flight was delayed, and she straightened the stack of mail on the counter, and she moved the laundry basket into the bedroom and shut the door on it, which was the whole of their cleaning philosophy.

At 6:52 Danny changed his shirt. At 6:55 Marisol looked at the table—mismatched plates, wine glasses from a thrift store on Wickenden, eleven forks—and decided it was fine.

The buzzer went off at 6:58. Danny wiped his hands on his jeans.

"Ready?"

"No," she said, and went to let them in.


Marisol pulled the roast from the oven and set it on the stove to rest, the kitchen fogging with the smell of rosemary and garlic. Behind her, Dev was wrestling the leaf into the dining table, a job that had taken them four minutes and one mild argument every Thanksgiving since they'd moved into the duplex.

"It's catching," he said. "There's a screw."

"There's always a screw." She wiped her hands on the dish towel over her shoulder and came to help, and together they got the halves apart and dropped the leaf in with a satisfying thunk.

They'd invited six people, which was two more than the table comfortably held. Dev went to the basement for the folding chairs, the ones with the vinyl seats his mother had passed along, and Marisol found the tablecloth that hid the water ring near the head of the table. She counted out forks. She was one short and used a salad fork instead and put it at her own place.

"Ravi's bringing his girlfriend," Dev called up the stairs.

"I know. I made extra."

"Does she eat meat?"

Marisol stopped. She stood in the middle of the dining room with a fistful of napkins. "You didn't ask?"

"I thought you asked."

She sighed and went to the freezer and pulled out a bag of gnocchi, because there was always something to fall back on, and because it was easier than being annoyed. Dev appeared with the chairs, saw the bag in her hand, and kissed the side of her head on his way past. "You're a genius."

"I'm a person who buys frozen gnocchi."

At six-fifteen he changed his shirt. At six-twenty she lit the candles, blew out the match, and looked at the table—crowded, mismatched, ready. The doorbell rang, and Dev, still buttoning his cuff, went to answer it.


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt sugar. Delia had let the onions sit too long while she was texting Marcus about parking, and now she was scraping the pan into the trash with a wooden spoon, muttering.

"That bad?" Owen asked from the hallway. He was carrying the folding chairs up from the storage unit, one under each arm, his shirt half-tucked.

"It's recoverable." She started over with fresh butter. "Did you find the extra one?"

"There were only three. I texted Marcus—he's bringing a camp chair."

"So one of us sits on a camp chair."

"I'll sit on the camp chair." He set them down by the table, then paused. "Are we doing the tablecloth thing?"

"The tablecloth's got a wine stain."

"From my birthday."

"From your birthday." She smiled without looking up.

He put on a record because he always put on a record, then turned it down when he realized it competed with the range hood. In the bathroom he wiped the sink with a hand towel and then hid the hand towel, which was the extent of his cleaning philosophy. Delia came in behind him to check her hair, and they navigated around each other in the small space with the practiced choreography of four years.

"Your mom called," he said. "She wanted to know if we were coming at Thanksgiving."

"Did you tell her yes?"

"I told her you'd call her."

"Coward."

"Correct."

At six forty the buzzer went off—Priya, always early, holding a bottle of something orange and a bag of clementines nobody had asked for. Then Marcus and Jen, then Owen's coworker Theo, who stood awkwardly in the doorway until Owen took his coat.

The apartment got loud fast. Delia handed Owen the salad tongs without a word, and he started tossing while she opened wine, and someone laughed at something in the other room, and the burnt onions were entirely forgotten.


Nadia found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, still creased from last Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the dining table while Theo hauled the extra chairs up from the basement, one balanced on each shoulder like a man carrying a canoe.

"Four or five?" he called.

"Five. Priya's bringing her sister."

He set them down and stood back, counting places. The apartment always felt smaller when they had people over, though it was a decent two-bedroom in a building near the river, the kind with radiators that clanked all winter. They'd moved in together fourteen months ago, after two years of Theo keeping half his clothes at her old place anyway.

In the kitchen, the chicken had been in for forty minutes and the skin was going gold. Nadia peered through the oven glass, then pulled the door open and basted it with the turkey baster they'd bought specifically for this and used for nothing else. Theo came up behind her with the wine.

"This one or the one Marcus brought in August?"

"That one was awful."

"That's why I'm asking. We could give it back to him."

She laughed and told him to open the good one. He worked the cork out while she scraped potatoes into a bowl, and for a minute neither of them said anything, just moved around each other in the narrow galley the way they'd learned to.

At six-forty he swept the hallway. At six-fifty she lit two candles and turned off the overhead light, then turned it back on because it was too dark to see the food. Theo changed his shirt. Nadia found the salt she'd been looking for behind the flour.

The buzzer went at seven-oh-five. She looked at him, and he shrugged, and they both went to the door.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, the one her mother had sent from Albuquerque, and shook it out over the dining table while Danny wrestled with the oven.

"It's preheating," he called. "Says three-fifty but I think it runs cold."

"It runs cold," she agreed. "Add ten degrees."

They had lived in the duplex on Ridgeway for two years now, long enough to know the oven's moods, the way the front door stuck in humid weather, which neighbor would complain about parking. Danny slid the tray of chicken thighs onto the middle rack and set a timer on his phone.

Marisol counted out six place settings, then remembered Priya was bringing her sister and went back for two more. The mismatched chairs bothered her — one from the curb, two from Danny's old apartment — but nobody had ever said anything.

"Did you text Kevin about the wine?" she asked.

"He's bringing red. And that pepper jelly thing his mom makes."

She lit the candles she'd bought at the grocery store, unscented because Danny got headaches. He came out of the kitchen wiping his hands on a dish towel and stood in the doorway looking at the table.

"Looks nice," he said.

"It's the tablecloth."

"It's not just the tablecloth."

He put on a record, something instrumental and low, and she went to change out of the shirt with the paint on it. When she came back he had swept the entryway and moved the laundry basket into the bedroom and closed the door on it.

At six-forty the timer went off. At six-fifty they heard car doors. Danny checked the chicken with a fork and Marisol pulled the ice tray from the freezer, cracking it against the counter, and then the doorbell rang and they looked at each other for a second — the last quiet second — before she went to answer it.


Marisol found Dev in the kitchen at four thirty, sleeves shoved to his elbows, arguing with a chicken.

"It's too big," he said. "I bought a twelve-pound bird for six people."

"Seven. Priya's bringing her sister."

He set down the tongs. "Then it's exactly right."

They'd moved into the rental on Ashwood in March, and this was the first time they'd hosted anything more ambitious than a Tuesday beer. The house still had its quirks—the dining room light on a dimmer that only worked at two settings, blinding or funereal, and a radiator that clanked like someone knocking to be let in.

Marisol wiped down the table, then unfolded the tablecloth her mother had mailed from Tucson, still creased into a grid. "It looks like graph paper."

"Nobody's measuring." Dev slid the roasting pan into the oven, checked the clock, and started on potatoes. "Did you text Ben about the wine?"

"He's bringing something called an orange wine. He said it's not orange."

"That's a lie of some kind."

She lit two candles, then blew one out because it smelled like a bath store. The dog, Otis, positioned himself at the exact center of the kitchen floor, where he could be tripped over most efficiently.

At five fifteen Marisol changed her shirt twice and settled on the first one. Dev found her in the bedroom doorway and said, without commentary, "You look good," which was the correct thing, and then, "There's flour on your elbow," which was less correct but true.

They stood a moment in the hallway. From the kitchen came the low tick of the oven, the smell of rosemary and hot skin.

"Do we have enough chairs?" she asked.

"Five. Plus the desk chair and the step stool."

"Somebody's sitting on the step stool."

"It'll be Ben," Dev said. "He deserves it."

The doorbell rang at six. Otis lost his mind. Marisol was still laughing when she opened the door.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, smelling faintly of cedar and last Thanksgiving.

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

"Iron's on the shelf above the washer," Dev said. He was standing over a pot of chili, tasting it off a wooden spoon, adding cumin, tasting again. Their apartment in Cleveland Heights was small enough that they could hold conversations from separate rooms without raising their voices much, which after three years still felt like a small luxury.

She set up the ironing board in the living room and worked the creases out while the radio played something local and forgettable. Through the window, the maples on their street had gone rust-colored. Bethany and Tom were coming, and Priya, and Priya's new boyfriend whose name neither of them could remember with confidence.

"Anand?" Marisol guessed.

"Arvind. I think." Dev came out wiping his hands on a dish towel. "It's Arvind. Ninety percent."

"That's not comforting."

"Just don't say a name and you can't be wrong."

They worked around each other the way people do who've learned the choreography. Dev hauled the folding chairs up from the basement; Marisol found six matching napkins, gave up, and found four matching napkins and two that were close enough. He put on a record. She lit the candle her sister had given them, the one that smelled like a campfire in a way that was slightly alarming.

At six-fifteen, Dev noticed the cornbread was still sitting in its pan, uncut.

"We have eight minutes," he said.

"We have as long as it takes them to park," Marisol said. "Bethany has never been on time in her life."

The buzzer rang at 6:22. Dev was still holding the knife. Marisol pulled her hair back, glanced at him, and he nodded — everything looked fine, more or less — and she went to let them in.


Maya had the oven timer counting down from fourteen minutes when Devon came in from the garage with the folding chairs, one wobbling under his arm.

"Two of these are broken," he said.

"Then we sit on the ottoman. Or Priya can sit on the ottoman, she doesn't care."

He leaned the chairs against the wall and looked at the table, which she'd set with the good plates and the mismatched water glasses. "This looks nice."

"It looks like we're trying." She wiped her palms on the dish towel hanging from the oven handle. "Can you taste the dressing? I think it needs more acid but I've tasted it so many times I can't tell anymore."

He dipped a spinach leaf in the bowl, chewed, considered. "More lemon. Not much."

She squeezed in half a wedge while he moved around behind her to get the wine glasses down, his hand briefly on her hip so she'd know he was passing. The apartment was small enough that they'd learned this choreography years ago, in the first place they'd rented together, when the kitchen had been so narrow only one of them could stand in it at a time.

"Ben's bringing his new girlfriend," Devon said.

"I know. That's why the good plates."

"She's going to think we always eat like this."

"Good."

At six-forty he changed his shirt, and she asked him to zip the back of her dress, and he did, and then stood there a second with his hands on her shoulders looking at both of them in the closet mirror. Neither said anything. Downstairs the buzzer went off, too early, the way Ben always was.

"Chairs," Maya said.

"Chairs," he agreed, and went to get them, and she took the bread out of the oven a minute before the timer, because it was already the right color.


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt sugar, which Mara insisted was intentional.

"It's a caramelized onion tart," she said, angling the pan under the light. "The dark parts are flavor."

Devon didn't argue. He was folding napkins into rectangles, having abandoned the triangle after two attempts. Four place settings on the table, two on the crate they'd covered with a tablecloth because they'd never gotten around to buying more chairs. Six people in a one-bedroom in Providence. It would be tight, but Priya was bringing wine and Tom always sat on the floor anyway.

"Did you text your brother about the thing?" Mara asked.

"What thing?"

"The peanut thing. Jules is allergic."

Devon set down the napkin. "I thought that was tree nuts."

"It's both."

He went to check the satay sauce he'd made that afternoon, standing over it with his phone flashlight like it might confess. Peanut butter, second ingredient. He poured it down the drain while Mara pretended not to watch.

"There's still the tart," she said. "And bread. And I can do rice."

"I can do rice."

"You can do rice."

They moved around each other in the galley kitchen with the choreography of three years of shared square footage. She reached over his shoulder for the colander; he stepped left without looking. At 6:40 he found her in the bathroom, elbow-deep in a drawer.

"Have you seen my—"

"Left side. Behind the sunscreen."

She kissed his jaw and he went to change his shirt, then changed it again because the first one had a stain he'd apparently been wearing all day.

The buzzer went off at 6:58. Priya, early, apologetic, holding two bottles.

Mara looked at Devon. There was flour on his forearm and the rice wasn't done.

"Ready?" she said.

"No."

She pressed the button anyway.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it, which had been Thanksgiving, which had been eleven months ago. She shook it out over the dining table while Daniel stood at the stove doing something aggressive to a pan of onions.

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

"They're supposed to stick. That's the fond. That's where the flavor lives."

"Okay." She was not going to fight about onions. She smoothed the tablecloth and counted chairs. Five, and they needed six, so she went down the hall and got the desk chair from the spare room, wheeled it in, and parked it at the corner where the table's leaf made a seam. Whoever sat there would be a little low. Probably Kevin, who wouldn't notice.

The apartment smelled like garlic and the lemon cleaner she'd used on the bathroom sink an hour ago. Outside, on Delmar, someone was parallel parking badly, backing up and pulling forward, backing up again.

"Did you text Priya about the mushrooms?" Daniel asked.

"She said she'd eat around them."

"That's not a real answer."

"It's the answer she gave me." Marisol found the candles in a drawer with the batteries and the phone chargers, two tapers that had bent slightly in the summer heat. She straightened them as best she could and stuck them in the brass holders his grandmother had left him.

He came out wiping his hands on a dish towel and looked at the table. "It looks nice."

"It looks like we tried."

"That's the same thing." He kissed the top of her head, briefly, the way he did when he was thinking about something else, and went back to the kitchen. She heard the oven door, the rack sliding.

The buzzer went off at 6:52. Nobody was ever early. She looked at him. He shrugged, and she went to answer it.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, smelling faintly of the cedar block she'd bought two winters ago and forgotten about. She shook it out over the dining table, and Dev caught the far corners without being asked, tugging until the creases sat more or less flat.

"It's got a stain," he said, pointing at a rust-colored ghost near the center.

"That's why God invented the bread basket."

He laughed and went back to the kitchen, where the chicken had been braising since four. They'd lived in the duplex on Kensington for three years now, long enough that his mother had stopped asking about weddings and started asking about the water heater instead. Marisol liked it that way.

She set out mismatched wine glasses—two from her old apartment, four from a thrift store on Grand, one lonely survivor of a set Dev's sister had given them. Outside, a neighbor's dog barked at nothing. The February dark had come down early, and the windows had gone black and reflective, so she could see herself moving around the table like someone in a stage play.

"Do we have the thing," Dev called, "the—the little dish, for olives?"

"Behind the mixing bowls."

He found it. He always did, eventually. He'd changed into the green sweater she liked, though he'd deny it was on purpose, and he had flour on one forearm from the biscuits.

At six-fifteen she lit two candles and stepped back. It looked good. It looked like a place where people ate together on purpose.

"Ravi's bringing his new girlfriend," Dev said, appearing in the doorway with a dish towel over his shoulder. "So we have to be normal."

"We're extremely normal."

"You alphabetized the spice rack last night."

"That's a hobby."

The doorbell rang. She blew out the match, and he went to answer it.


Maya wedged the last serving spoon into the drawer and shut it with her hip. Behind her, Dev was scraping candle wax off the dining table with a butter knife, working at it with the focused irritation of someone who had put off a small job for four months.

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

"It's six-fifteen."

"It's six-thirty-two. The stove clock is wrong. I keep telling you."

He looked up. "Then why don't we fix the stove clock?"

They had lived in the apartment for two years, since the lease on her studio in Somerville ran out and it stopped making sense to pay rent in two places. The stove clock had been wrong that whole time.

She checked the chicken. It was doing the thing where the skin browned before the inside was ready, so she tented it with foil and lowered the heat, which she suspected was the wrong move but committed to anyway. Dev came into the kitchen carrying a dust rag he'd found somewhere, wiped down the bar cart, and started counting wine glasses.

"We have six."

"There's seven of us."

"Someone gets a tumbler."

"You get the tumbler," Maya said. "It's your apartment."

"It's our apartment."

"Right. Then someone gets a tumbler and it's a whole conversation."

He laughed and went to put on a shirt with buttons. She heard the closet door, the hangers sliding. When he came back, she was standing over the sink eating a piece of chicken skin off her fingers, and he didn't say anything about it, just reached past her for the corkscrew.

At 6:51 the buzzer went. Priya and Tom were early, the way they always were, standing in the vestibule with a grocery-store bouquet still in its plastic sleeve.

"Almost ready," Dev called down.

Maya turned the oven light on and looked in. "We're ready," she said. "More or less."


Marisol found the good tablecloth at the bottom of the linen closet, wrinkled into a grid of fold lines. She held it up to the kitchen light and sighed.

"Iron's in the hall closet," Dev called from the living room, where he was moving a stack of magazines from the coffee table to a stack somewhere less visible.

"I know where the iron is. I'm deciding whether I care."

He came in, wiping his hands on his jeans, and looked at the cloth. "Candles," he said. "Candles fix everything."

They compromised: she ironed the two panels that would show, and he lit four tea lights and set them in jars along the center. The apartment smelled like garlic and browned butter. On the stove, a pot of white beans had been simmering since two o'clock, and Dev kept lifting the lid to check on them, which Marisol had asked him twice not to do.

"You're letting the steam out."

"I'm bonding with them."

She laughed and handed him a bunch of parsley to chop. They'd lived together fourteen months in this second-floor place on Delaware Avenue, long enough that the arguments about dish soap had settled into a rhythm, short enough that hosting still felt like playing house. Her mother asked about rings; his father asked about the lease. Neither of them had answers, and neither of them minded much.

At six-forty Dev put on a clean shirt and Marisol swept the crumbs off the counter with the side of her hand. She caught him checking his reflection in the microwave door.

"You look fine."

"I look like a man who's been cooking beans for four hours."

"That's what I said."

The buzzer went off at ten to seven — Priya and Tom, always early. Dev pressed the button. Marisol blew out a match, and the two of them stood a moment in the small warm kitchen, listening to footsteps on the stairs.


The first thing Marisol noticed when she got home from her shift was the smell—garlic browning too fast, that sharp edge before it turns bitter. She dropped her keys in the bowl by the door.

"Danny," she called. "Your garlic's dying."

"It's fine," he said, from the kitchen, in the voice of a man who knew it wasn't fine. She found him standing over the skillet with a wooden spoon, still in his work shirt, sleeves shoved up past the elbows. He'd scraped the pan onto a plate to cool.

"Start over," she said, kissing the side of his neck on her way to the stove. "We've got time. Who's coming, six?"

"Six-thirty. Priya texted, she's bringing her cousin. And Rob's running late because Rob."

Marisol pulled out a fresh head of garlic and set it on the cutting board. Danny went to change his shirt and came back in the gray henley she liked, carrying the folding chairs from the hall closet because their table only sat four honestly and six if everyone was friendly.

They moved around each other in the small kitchen the way they had for three years now in the apartment on Fillmore, and then for two more in this rented half-a-duplex with the sticking back door. He washed the good glasses. She salted the water. He asked if they should hide the laundry basket and she said just shut the bedroom door, nobody's going in there.

At six-fifteen she lit the two candles they owned, which didn't match. Danny put on a record and then took it off and put on something else.

"It smells right now," she said.

"It does." He leaned against the counter, looking at the table, the mismatched chairs, the bread in a dish towel. "Think it's enough food?"

"It's plenty."

The doorbell rang at six-twenty. Priya, early, apologizing. Danny wiped his hands on his jeans and went to let her in.


Maya heard the front door stick and unstick, then Dev's keys hitting the ceramic bowl. She didn't look up from the cutting board.

"They had no shallots," he said. "I got the little red onions instead."

"That's fine." She wiped her hands on the dish towel hanging off the oven handle. "Did you get ice?"

He held up the bag, already sweating through the plastic, and shoved it into the freezer, breaking it against the shelf with his palm. Their freezer had never fit a full bag of ice in the four years they'd lived in the apartment, and neither of them had ever addressed this.

"Ravi's bringing his new girlfriend," Maya said.

"I know. Since when do we own a tablecloth?"

"It was my mother's. It was in the hall closet."

Dev looked at it, ironed and slightly too large, hanging past the corners of the table like a bedsheet. He decided not to say anything, which was, he thought, evidence of personal growth.

He put on music, then turned it down when Maya glanced over. He set out the wine glasses, four matching and two not, giving the mismatched ones to himself and to Dev's brother, who wouldn't notice. He found the candles in the drawer with the batteries and takeout menus.

"Twenty minutes," Maya said. "Can you do something about the bathroom?"

He wiped the sink, hung a clean towel, closed the shower curtain over the shampoo bottles. In the mirror he saw a shirt with a wrinkle across the chest and changed it.

When he came out, she'd changed too, and had put her hair up, and was tasting something off a wooden spoon with her eyes narrowed.

"More lemon," she said, holding it toward him.

He tasted it. "More salt."

"Both," she said, and the buzzer went off downstairs, ten minutes early, the way Ravi always was.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, smelling faintly of cedar and the last time they'd used it, Thanksgiving, when Dev's mother had come and criticized the gravy.

"It's wrinkled," she called down the hall.

"Everything's wrinkled," Dev said. He was standing at the stove in an apron he'd owned since college, the strings looped twice around his waist, tasting the braise off a wooden spoon. "It's fine. It's rustic."

"It's rustic when it's linen. This is polyester."

"Then nobody will notice."

She spread it over the table anyway, smoothing the folds with her palms, and set out the mismatched plates—four from his old apartment, three from hers, one they'd bought together at a flea market in Asheville because Dev insisted it looked like a plate a person in a movie would own. Six friends coming at seven. It was six-twenty.

"Did you tell Priya that Ben's bringing the new guy?" she asked.

"I texted her. She sent back a thumbs up, which could mean anything."

Marisol lit the candles, then blew them out because it was still light outside and she didn't want them burned down to nubs by dessert. Dev came out to wipe a ring off the counter and paused behind her, hand briefly on the small of her back, then went to change his shirt.

He came back in the blue one. She said, "That one," and he said, "I know, that's why," and she rolled her eyes.

At six-fifty-two the doorbell rang, ten minutes early, which was Ben, always. Dev shouted from the kitchen, "Can you—" and Marisol was already moving, socks on hardwood, tugging her sleeves down, calling out that the door was open, come in, come in.


Marisol found the good tablecloth wadded in the bottom of the linen closet, creased into a grid like a map of somewhere she'd never been. She shook it out over the dining table anyway, smoothing the folds with her palms, deciding the candles would distract from it.

In the kitchen, Dev was arguing with a chicken. He'd bought it whole because the recipe said whole, and now he was discovering that removing the backbone required either a pair of kitchen shears they did not own or a level of confidence he did not possess.

"We have those scissors in the junk drawer," Marisol called.

"Those are for coupons."

"They're for whatever we need them for."

He found them, wiped them on a dish towel, and got to work. Marisol came in behind him and started washing the wine glasses, which had gone dusty on the top shelf since the last time they'd had anyone over, which had been sometime before the promotion, before the sixty-hour weeks.

"Kayla's bringing that guy," Dev said. "Trevor."

"Travis."

"That's what I said."

"You said Trevor." She set a glass in the rack. "Be nice to him. He does something with insurance."

"I'm always nice."

They worked without talking for a while, the radiator ticking, the oven light casting a small orange square across the floor. Marisol lit the candles at seven-fifteen and turned off the overhead so the room went warm and forgiving. Dev slid the chicken in, set a timer on his phone, and stood there a second, hands on the counter.

"It looks good in here," he said.

She looked at the table, the mismatched chairs, the tablecloth with its stubborn grid. It did look good. It looked like people lived there.

The buzzer went off downstairs. Dev wiped his hands. Marisol went to hold the door.


Marisol had been chopping onions for ten minutes when she realized she was crying and couldn't tell anymore whether it was the onions or just Thursday.

"You okay?" Dev asked, coming in from the dining room with a stack of mismatched plates.

"Fine. These are aggressive onions."

He set the plates down and reached past her for a paper towel, which he handed over without comment. That was the thing about Dev. He didn't ask twice.

They'd been in the house on Bellweather Street for two years now, long enough that the neighbors had stopped asking when the wedding was. The kitchen still had the previous owner's wallpaper, yellow with small blue roosters, which Marisol had hated in June and grown fond of by October.

"Ruthie's bringing her new boyfriend," she said.

"I know."

"You're going to hate him."

"Probably." Dev started setting the table, counting places under his breath. "But I'll be nice."

"You'll be *polite*. There's a difference and Ruthie can tell."

He laughed. He was thirty-four and going gray at the temples in a way he pretended not to notice, though she'd caught him examining it in the bathroom mirror more than once.

The oven timer went off. Marisol pulled out the chicken, which had gone slightly darker than she'd intended, and stood looking at it.

"It's fine," Dev said.

"It's not fine."

"They're going to eat it and drink four bottles of wine and nobody will remember the chicken." He came over and looked at it seriously, the way he looked at things at work, and then said, "Okay, it's a little burned."

"Thank you."

Headlights swung across the front window. Marisol wiped her hands on her jeans, and Dev turned on the porch light, and outside somebody was already laughing at something in the driveway.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded in the linen closet behind the beach towels, still creased from Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the dining table while Dev stood at the stove, tasting the sauce off a wooden spoon and making a face.

"Too much vinegar?" she asked.

"Too much me." He added a pinch of sugar and stirred. "I get nervous and start improvising."

They'd lived in the duplex on Ferndale for two years now, long enough that the neighbors had stopped asking when the wedding was. Tonight it was just Priya and Theo, Marisol's coworker Jean, and Dev's brother, who always arrived twenty minutes early and stood in doorways.

Marisol counted out five plates, realized they needed six, and pulled the mismatched one from the back—the blue one with the chip. She'd give herself that one.

"Did you get bread?" Dev called.

"I got bread. I got two breads, because I couldn't remember if you said sourdough or the seeded thing."

"I said either."

"You said it in a way that meant sourdough."

He laughed, which she took as a confession. She lit the candles on the windowsill, then blew one out because the smell was competing with the garlic. In the bathroom she found his running shorts on the floor and kicked them behind the door, then reconsidered and carried them to the hamper, because Priya was the type to wash her hands and notice things.

Dev put on a record, something with horns, and turned it down until it was just texture. He wiped the counter twice. Marisol changed her shirt, then changed back.

At 6:52 the doorbell rang, early as promised. They looked at each other across the kitchen—the sauce simmering, the table set, the whole small life of it arranged and waiting.

"Ready?" she said.

"No," he said, and went to answer the door.


Maya was chopping shallots when Devon came in with two grocery bags and the smell of cold air on his jacket.

"They were out of the good bread," he said. "I got the sourdough from the bakery counter instead. Nine dollars, by the way."

"For bread?"

"For *artisan* bread." He set the bags down and started unloading. "Also I ran into Priya's husband at the store. He says they're bringing wine, so we don't have to worry about that."

Maya scraped the shallots into the pan. "Did you tell him we already bought wine?"

"I did not, because now we have extra wine, and that's a good problem."

She laughed. The apartment was small enough that they had to move around each other in the kitchen like dancers who'd rehearsed for years — four of them, in this case, since they'd signed the lease together. Devon reached past her for the colander and she leaned back without looking.

"The table only seats six," she said.

"I know. I'm going to bring in the desk chair and the folding one from the closet. Nobody will care."

"Josh will care."

"Josh will comment. That's different."

While the chicken roasted, he set out plates that didn't match and she lit the two candles they'd been saving since her birthday. He put on a playlist, then changed it when she made a face. She wiped the counter twice. He picked up his socks from the living room floor and, after a pause, actually carried them to the hamper instead of stuffing them behind the couch.

At six forty, the buzzer went off.

"Ready?" Maya asked.

Devon looked around at the crowded table, the candles, the mismatched chairs. "It looks like people live here."

"People do live here."

He pressed the button to let them up.


Marisol had the oven at 375 and a timer she'd already reset twice. The chicken was going in late, which meant the potatoes would come out early, which meant she'd be reheating something at the last minute and pretending she hadn't.

"Do we have a serving spoon that isn't the plastic one?" Dev called from the dining room.

"Third drawer. Behind the whisk graveyard."

He came back holding two spoons, examining them like he was choosing a weapon. He'd changed his shirt twice, settling finally on the gray henley she liked, and had been quietly moving the mail pile from the table to the counter to the drawer where mail piles go to be forgotten.

Their apartment in Ravenswood was small enough that hosting six people required strategy. Dev pulled the folding chairs from the closet, wiped the dust off the seats with a paper towel, and arranged them so nobody would be sitting directly under the radiator, which clanked like a haunted ship.

"Cass is bringing wine," Marisol said, checking her phone. "And she says Trevor's running late because of the Kennedy."

"Trevor's always late because of the Kennedy. Trevor lives eleven blocks away."

She laughed, and he took the moment to reach past her for the salt, resting a hand briefly on her hip. The kitchen was too narrow for two people and they'd never once complained about it.

By six-forty the potatoes were out, foil-tented. Dev lit the two candles they owned, both mismatched, and put on a playlist he'd spent an unreasonable amount of the afternoon curating. Marisol untied her apron, hung it on the pantry door, and looked around at the small assembled evening—the crooked chairs, the good napkins, the smell of rosemary.

"It looks nice," she said.

"It looks like we tried."

"We did try."

The buzzer went off downstairs. He got the door; she got the wine glasses.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, folded beneath a stack of towels she kept meaning to donate. She shook it out over the dining table while Dev knelt at the oven, squinting at a thermometer.

"It says three-fifty but it runs hot," he said. "I think it runs hot."

"It runs hot," she confirmed. They'd been in the apartment two years, long enough to know the oven's moods, the way the radiator clanked at four in the morning, which floorboard by the bathroom would wake anyone sleeping on the couch.

He'd made a braised chicken thing from a recipe his mother had emailed him in a document with the font size set to eighteen. Marisol had handled the sides, which meant roasted carrots and a salad she was still deciding about.

"Should I put walnuts in this?"

"Elena's allergic."

"Elena's allergic to pecans."

Dev stood up, wiped his hands on a dish towel. "Are you sure?"

She wasn't. She left the walnuts in the pantry.

At six-fifteen he changed his shirt twice. At six-twenty he came out in the first one again and she didn't say anything. She was lighting candles she'd bought at the grocery store, unscented, because Dev got headaches.

"There's a stack of mail on the chair," he said.

"I know. I'm going to put it in the bedroom and close the door."

"That's what I was going to suggest."

They moved around each other in the narrow kitchen with the unremarkable choreography of people who had figured it out: he reached over her for the colander, she stepped left without looking. Somebody's playlist came on, one of those they'd both added to and neither could remember starting.

The buzzer rang at six-forty. Marisol looked at Dev. He shrugged, tasted the sauce one more time, and went to let them in.


Marisol set the last fork down and stepped back to survey the table. Four places, mismatched plates, a jar of zinnias from the yard doing the work of a centerpiece.

"You moved my speaker," Danny called from the kitchen, where something was hissing in a pan.

"I moved it three inches. It was in the butter dish."

"It was near the butter dish."

She came in and leaned against the counter. He had a dish towel over one shoulder and flour on his forearm, and the chicken was browning unevenly, one thigh darker than the rest. He'd been talking about this recipe for a week, ever since his sister sent it, and had gotten to the stage of the evening where he no longer trusted it.

"It looks good," she said.

"It looks like something."

"It looks good, Danny."

She stole a green bean off the cutting board and he swatted at her without conviction. Outside, a car door slammed, but it was only the neighbor's kid coming home. They'd lived here two years now, in the rented half of a duplex with the porch that sagged toward the street, and they had learned each other's sounds well enough to know which car doors mattered.

"Did you get more wine?" he asked.

"Two bottles. And the seltzer for Priya."

"You're a professional."

"I'm a woman who reads texts."

He wiped his hands and kissed the side of her head, quick, already turning back to the stove. She went to change her shirt, then thought better of it and just rolled the sleeves. In the bedroom mirror she practiced looking like someone who hadn't spent forty minutes arranging zinnias.

At 6:40 the real knock came, three beats and a laugh already audible through the door. Danny yelled that he was coming. Marisol got there first.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled in the linen closet, wrinkled from the last time they'd used it, which had been Thanksgiving, which had been eleven months ago. She shook it out and held it up to the kitchen light.

"It's fine," Dev said from the stove. "Nobody's inspecting the tablecloth."

"Kayla will."

"Kayla will be too busy telling us about her divorce." He tasted the sauce, made a face, and reached for the salt. "Which, by the way, we should have a plan for. A signal. If she starts crying I'm going to need you to ask about her dog."

"She'd cry about the dog too. The dog was Marcus's."

Dev set down the spoon. "God. Okay. New signal."

Marisol laid the cloth over the table anyway and started smoothing it with her palms. Their apartment in Somerville was small enough that the dining table was really just the kitchen table, pushed out from the wall for company. Six chairs, four of them matching, two borrowed permanently from Dev's mother's basement.

"Did you get bread?" she called.

"It's in the car."

"It's been in the car for two hours."

"Then it's room temperature bread. That's a thing people pay for." But he was already wiping his hands on the dish towel, already patting his pockets for keys.

While he was gone she lit the candles, then blew two of them out because it looked like they were trying too hard. She found the wine glasses, six of them, one with a chip on the rim that she set at her own place. Through the window, the maple in the courtyard was down to its last stubborn leaves.

The door banged. Dev came in with the bread and a bunch of grocery-store tulips, orange, slightly bent.

"They were by the register," he said, a little defensively.

Marisol took them and looked around for something to put them in.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, exactly where she'd shoved it after Thanksgiving. She shook it out and held it up to the kitchen light.

"There's a wine stain," she said.

Dev looked over from the stove, where he was tasting the sauce with a wooden spoon. "Put a candle over it."

"It's the size of a dinner plate."

"Put a big candle over it."

She laughed and started ironing it anyway, on the counter, over a dish towel, which she knew was the wrong way to do it and did every time. The apartment smelled like garlic and browning onions. Outside, the November dark had come down at four-thirty and made the windows into mirrors, so she could see herself and Dev doubled against the glass, both of them still in socks.

"Did Priya say six or six-thirty?" he asked.

"Six-thirty. But Tom will come at six because Tom always comes at six."

"Tom is a menace."

They had lived together three years in the second-floor unit on Chestnut, long enough that the negotiations had stopped being negotiations. He cooked; she cleaned and made the playlists. Her mother still asked, every few months, in a tone of studied lightness, whether they'd talked about anything. They had, actually. They just hadn't decided anything, and there was a difference, and Marisol had given up trying to explain it.

She set the table with the mismatched chairs, the good plates, the one candle that would cover the stain. Dev came behind her, wiped his hands on his jeans, and put the pot on a trivet.

"It's good," he said. "You should try it."

She took the spoon from him and tasted it and made a face.

"What?"

"More salt."

He was already reaching for the box. The buzzer went off at 6:04.

"Tom," they said together.


Marisol tasted the sauce and made a face. Too much acid. She reached for the sugar bowl, then stopped—last time she'd overcorrected and Danny had spent twenty minutes pretending the pasta was fine.

"Try this," she said, holding out the wooden spoon.

Danny came in from the dining room with a fistful of mismatched forks. He blew on the spoon, tasted, considered. "More salt. Maybe a little butter at the end."

"That's your answer to everything."

"It's a good answer."

She added salt. He went back to the table, laying out the forks, then rearranging them because they'd only bought six matching plates and now Priya was bringing her sister, which made seven. He found a plate in the back of the cabinet, a survivor from his college apartment, chipped along one edge.

"I'll take the ugly one," he called.

"You always take the ugly one."

"Someone has to."

The apartment was small enough that they kept bumping into each other, the way they had for four years now—her reaching past him for the colander, him stepping back into her, both saying sorry automatically and meaning none of it. There was a rhythm to it by now. The lease had their two names on it. So did the vet bills.

At six-forty Marisol changed her shirt twice and settled on the first one. Danny put on music, then turned it down, then turned it up when she said she couldn't hear it. He lit the one candle they owned, a lavender thing from a wedding they'd been to in Ohio.

"How's it look?" he asked.

She surveyed the table, the crooked napkins, the chipped plate at his place setting.

"Like people live here," she said.

The buzzer went off. Danny wiped his hands on his jeans, and Marisol pressed the button to let them up.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, smelling faintly of cedar and last Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the dining table while Daniel argued with the oven, which had a habit of running forty degrees hot no matter what the dial said.

"Did you take the chicken out at four like I asked?" she called.

"At four-fifteen." He said it defensively, though fifteen minutes hardly mattered. He'd been on a call with his sister in Tucson, listening to her explain, again, why she couldn't come for Christmas.

They had lived in the duplex on Ellwood Street for two years now, long enough that Marisol's mother had stopped asking pointed questions and started simply sending them dish towels. The kitchen was too small for both of them, so they had worked out a choreography: he took the stove, she took the counter by the window, and they passed behind each other with a hand on the small of the back, a warning and an apology at once.

At six-thirty she put on earrings and he changed out of the shirt with the paint on it. Wesley and Anne were bringing wine. Priya was bringing her new boyfriend, whom nobody had met, which Marisol found thrilling and Daniel found exhausting.

"The green beans look sad," he said.

"Add lemon."

"That's your answer to everything."

"It works on everything."

He squeezed half a lemon over the pan and tasted, and she watched him consider it, then nod, and something in her chest loosened the way it did maybe twice a week, unpredictably, when he was just standing there being unremarkable.

The doorbell rang at 6:52. Wesley always came early.

"Ready?" Daniel asked, wiping his hands.

"No," she said, and went to answer it.


Marisol wiped the counter for the third time, though it was already clean. Outside, a gray Tuesday evening was settling over their street in Fort Collins, and the potatoes weren't done.

"They're not done," she said.

Theo looked up from the record crate he was digging through. "They've got twenty minutes. People are always late."

"Dev is never late. Dev arrives eight minutes early and sits in his car so he won't be early."

"Then Dev can help peel." Theo pulled out an old Bill Withers album, considered it, put it back. He'd been trying to build a playlist for two days and had discarded every option as either too obvious or trying too hard.

Marisol crossed the kitchen and moved the stack of mail off the table to the counter, where it would sit until Saturday. The apartment—two bedrooms, one of which held a treadmill neither of them used and a stack of Theo's unframed prints—had a way of collecting evidence of their four years together. The hooks by the door held both their coats. The fridge held her oat milk and his whole milk and a wedding invitation from her cousin, which they had not discussed.

"Wine's open," Theo said. "Do we have enough glasses?"

"We have five real ones and then the jam jars."

"Jam jars are charming."

"Jam jars are what you say when you don't have glasses."

He came up behind her and looked over her shoulder at the roasting pan. "Those look good, actually."

"They look pale."

"They look rustic."

The buzzer went. Marisol swore softly, wiped her hands on a dish towel, and looked at him. Theo grabbed the towel from her, tossed it into the sink, and pressed the button.

"Eight minutes early," she said.

"Told you," he said, and went to prop the door.


The kitchen smelled like garlic and burnt rosemary. Dana pulled the tray of potatoes out and frowned at the edges.

"They're fine," Marcus said, not looking up from the cutting board.

"You haven't even seen them."

"I've seen every potato you've ever made. They're fine."

She set the tray on the stove and started opening windows anyway, because the smoke alarm in the hallway had a personality. Outside, the November air came in cold and smelled like somebody's wood stove. Their apartment was the top floor of a house in Providence, slanted ceilings, radiators that clanked like someone was down there hitting them with a wrench.

Marcus scraped shallots into a bowl. "Did you tell Priya seven or seven-thirty?"

"Seven. But she'll come at seven-forty and apologize for eleven minutes."

"So we have time."

"We do not have time. There's a laundry basket in the bathroom."

He wiped his hands and went to deal with it, which meant shoving it in the closet, which she knew, and which she had decided years ago not to fight. They'd been together six years, in this place for three. His mother still asked about weddings at Thanksgiving. Dana's father had stopped asking, which was somehow worse.

She lit the candles on the table — mismatched, one from a gift set, two from the hardware store. Marcus came back with a stack of plates and started setting them down in the wrong order until she moved two of them, and he let her, and put his hand briefly on the small of her back on the way past.

"Wine's open," he said.

"Pour me a little."

They stood a minute in the doorway with the glasses, looking at the table, the crooked candles, the good tablecloth with the stain they'd stopped noticing. Downstairs, the buzzer went off — 6:52. Someone always came early.

"That's Priya," Marcus said.

"It is absolutely not."

It was Nick, holding a pie.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, exactly where she'd shoved it after Thanksgiving. She shook it out on the dining room floor and frowned at the crease running diagonally across the middle.

"Iron's under the sink," Daniel called from the kitchen. He was standing over a pot of something that had started as a plan and was becoming an improvisation. The recipe had called for chicken stock. They had, it turned out, bouillon cubes of uncertain vintage.

"You put the iron under the sink?"

"You put the iron under the sink. In March. During the thing with the curtains."

She remembered the thing with the curtains. She got the iron.

By six-fifteen the apartment smelled like garlic and burnt sugar—the burnt sugar was a separate incident, involving carrots, which Daniel had decided not to discuss. Marisol set out mismatched wine glasses, four from a set they'd bought at Target and two that had migrated home from a wedding neither of them could place.

"Do we have enough chairs?"

"We have five chairs and one of those folding ones from the closet."

"That's six people and six chairs."

"Unless Priya brings Aaron."

Daniel looked up. "Priya's bringing Aaron?"

"She said 'we.' In the text. I've been thinking about it all day."

He wiped his hands on a dish towel and went to look at the closet, as though a seventh chair might have materialized. It hadn't. He came back with the piano bench from the corner of the living room, which nobody had ever played, and set it at the end of the table like it had always belonged there.

Marisol lit two candles. Daniel turned the overhead light down and the music up. At 6:52 someone buzzed from downstairs, early, and they both said "of course" at the same time and laughed, and she went to press the button.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, exactly where she'd shoved it after Thanksgiving. She shook it out and held it up to the window light, checking for the wine stain she remembered.

"It's fine," Dev said from the kitchen doorway, a wooden spoon in one hand. "Nobody's going to inspect the tablecloth. Ravi eats standing over the sink."

"Ravi's not the one I'm worried about." She meant his sister, who noticed things, but she didn't say it, and Dev knew anyway.

He went back to the stove. The chicken had been braising since four, and the kitchen of their rented half-duplex in Grand Rapids had gone humid and fragrant, windows fogging at the corners. Dev tasted the sauce, added salt, tasted again, and decided it needed twenty more minutes and a little more thyme than the recipe claimed.

Marisol laid the table for six, then moved the extra chair from the bedroom because they only owned five. She lit two candles, blew one out because the pair looked like they were trying too hard, then lit it again.

"You changed shirts," Dev said when she came in for the corkscrew.

"I spilled olive oil on the other one."

"You look nice."

"I look like someone whose apartment smells like garlic."

"House," he said. "We upgraded, remember."

At six-fifteen she vacuumed the living room while he sliced bread. At six-thirty he asked whether they should put music on before people arrived or after, and she said before, obviously, so it seemed casual. He put on something with no lyrics.

The first knock came at 6:52, early, which meant it was Ravi. Marisol looked at Dev; Dev shrugged and wiped his hands on a dish towel. She got the door, and cold March air came in with three people and a bottle of red, and the evening started without either of them deciding it had.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled in the linen closet, wedged behind a stack of towels she'd been meaning to fold since March. She shook it out, held it to the window light, and decided the wine stain near the corner could hide under the bread basket.

"Dev," she called. "Did you get the ice?"

From the kitchen came the sound of a cabinet door closing harder than necessary. "I got ice. I got two bags of ice. We could preserve a body."

She came in to find him standing over the stove, sleeves pushed up, stirring something that had gone thicker than the recipe promised. He'd been at it for an hour and a half, longer than he'd admit, and there was a smear of tomato on his forearm.

"It smells good," she said.

"It smells like it's about to break." He tasted it, made a face, reached for the cream. "Kevin's bringing his girlfriend, right? The one who doesn't eat dairy?"

"That was the last one."

"Great. Great." He added the cream.

Marisol went back out and started setting places. Six, then seven when she remembered Anita was coming after her shift. The apartment was small enough that the table had to be pulled away from the wall, which meant the bookcase was now half-blocked, which meant nobody could get to the bathroom without a small negotiation. It had worked before.

At six-fifteen Dev came out with a glass of wine for each of them and stood in the doorway, surveying. Candles, mismatched chairs, the record player already spinning something low.

"It looks like adults live here," he said.

"Don't jinx it."

He handed her the glass. Downstairs, the buzzer went off — early, someone always came early — and she took one long swallow before going to press the button.


The kitchen smelled like garlic and burning butter, which meant Dana had walked away from the stove again.

"Marcus," she called from the bedroom, "is something on fire?"

"Define fire." He turned the heat down and moved the pan off the burner. The garlic had gone a shade past golden, but not ruined. He scraped it into the bowl with the breadcrumbs and started over with fresh butter, because Renata would notice and say something, and he'd rather not give her the opening.

Dana came out pulling an earring in, still barefoot. She'd changed twice. The first shirt had a stain she'd forgotten about; the second one made her feel like she was trying too hard for people she'd known since college.

"Did you text Priya about the parking?"

"I texted her the thing about the permit zone. She sent back a thumbs up, which could mean anything."

"It means she didn't read it." Dana opened the fridge, moved a container, closed it. "We have enough wine?"

"We have four bottles and Theo's bringing more, so we have too much wine."

"That's not a real category."

He laughed. She took the tongs from the drawer and started tossing the salad he'd left half-assembled, adding vinegar without measuring, the way her mother did. Marcus watched her do it and didn't say anything, because the last time he had, it hadn't gone well, and because she was usually right about the vinegar.

At 6:40 the apartment looked reasonable. Candles on the table they'd bought used and refinished badly. The good napkins, which were just the ones without holes.

"Hey." Dana straightened his collar, then left her hand there a second. "This is going to be fine."

"I know."

"You get weird before people come over."

"I get *attentive*."

The buzzer went off. Neither of them moved for a beat, and then both of them did.


Marisol wiped condensation from the kitchen window and watched the parking lot fill with slush. Snow had started around four, which meant everyone would arrive late and apologetic, stamping their boots on the mat by the door.

"The lasagna needs another twenty minutes," she called.

Dev appeared in the doorway holding two wine glasses up to the light. "These have spots. Do we own anything that isn't spotted?"

"We own a dish towel. Somewhere."

He found it hanging on the oven handle, exactly where it always hung, and started polishing. They'd lived in the apartment for three years now — long enough that Dev knew Marisol would rearrange the cheese board twice before she was satisfied, long enough that Marisol knew Dev would insist on lighting candles that nobody would notice.

"Did you text Priya about the nut thing?"

"Her boyfriend's the nut thing. And yes." Marisol slid the salad bowl toward the center of the table, then pulled it back six inches. "Does this look sad? It looks sad."

"It looks like lettuce."

"Thank you, that's very helpful."

Dev came up behind her and looked at the table over her shoulder — mismatched plates, the good napkins her mother had given them, a jar of ranunculus from the grocery store. "It looks nice," he said. "It looks like people live here."

She let herself lean back against him for a second, then straightened. "The bathroom. Did you—"

"Clean towel, new soap, and I hid the laundry basket in the closet."

"Under the coats?"

"Behind the coats. There's a difference."

The buzzer rang at 7:12. Marisol pulled off her apron and threw it into the same closet. Dev turned the music down two notches, then up one, and went to hold the door open while boots came stamping up the stairwell, voices already talking over each other about the snow.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it—Thanksgiving, when Dev's sister had come through Denver on her way to Salt Lake. She shook it out over the dining table and smoothed the wrinkles with her palms, knowing they wouldn't fully surrender.

"Do we have candles?" she called.

Dev was in the kitchen, halfway through a bag of shallots, eyes stinging. "Under the sink. The ones from the power outage."

"Those are emergency candles. They're white and horrible."

"Then we have horrible candles."

She came in and kissed the back of his neck, which made him flinch and nearly slice his thumb. He'd been cooking since four—a braise that needed three hours, which meant everything else had to happen around it. The kitchen smelled like wine reducing and thyme.

"Karen texted," Marisol said. "She's bringing her new boyfriend."

"The one who does CrossFit?"

"That was two ago."

Dev laughed and slid the shallots into the pot. They had a rhythm in the kitchen after four years—he cooked, she cleaned as he went, wiping counters, running the sponge along the stovetop where oil had spattered. It was the only chore division they'd never had to argue about.

At six-fifteen she vacuumed the living room while he showered. At six-thirty he came out in a shirt she liked, hair still damp, and asked if the record player was set up. It wasn't. He put on something instrumental and low.

They stood a moment in the living room, surveying it. Two mismatched chairs pulled from the bedroom to make six seats. The horrible white candles, lit anyway, in jam jars.

"It looks decent," Dev said.

"It looks like us," said Marisol.

The doorbell rang. She went to answer it. He went to check the oven.


Marisol wiped the counter for the third time, though it was already clean. Outside, the November sky had gone dark by five-thirty, and the kitchen window held her reflection back to her: hair pinned up, flour on her sleeve.

"They're going to be late," Dev said from the living room. "Kyle's always late."

"Kyle's bringing wine, so he's forgiven." She checked the oven. The chicken had another twenty minutes, maybe twenty-five. The apartment smelled like rosemary and hot lemon, which felt like an accomplishment on a Thursday.

Dev came in carrying a stack of mismatched plates, the ones they'd accumulated over four years of moving in together, breaking things, replacing them badly. He set them on the table and started arranging silverware with the seriousness he brought to small tasks.

"Do we have enough chairs?"

"Six. We have six people."

"So no."

Marisol laughed. "Get the desk chair. Put it at the end and let Bao sit in it. He likes to spin."

He went to get it, and she heard the wheels catching on the rug, then a muttered complaint. She pulled the salad from the fridge and dressed it, tasting a leaf, adding salt. Through the wall came the neighbor's television, some crowd cheering at something.

"There's a stain on the tablecloth," Dev called.

"Put the bread basket over it."

"That's not solving the problem."

"It's solving tonight's problem."

He appeared in the doorway, sleeves rolled, looking at her the way he sometimes did when she said something he found funny but wasn't going to admit was funny. He crossed the kitchen, tucked a loose piece of hair behind her ear, and stole a piece of chicken skin from the pan when she opened the oven.

"Hey."

"Quality control."

The buzzer sounded. They looked at each other. Someone was early, which meant it wasn't Kyle.

"Ready?" she said.

"No," he said, and went to answer it.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled in the linen closet, still creased from Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the dining table and pressed the folds flat with her palms, which did almost nothing.

"There's an iron somewhere," Dev called from the kitchen.

"There's a candle somewhere too. Nobody's going to be looking at the table."

He came out wiping his hands on a dish towel, surveyed the situation, and agreed the creases gave it character. Then he went back to the stove, where the braise had been going since two and the whole apartment smelled like garlic and red wine. He'd been nervous about it all week. Ellis was bringing his new girlfriend, and Dev had a theory that you could learn everything about a person by whether they ate the vegetables.

Marisol found four matching wine glasses and two that didn't match, decided it was fine, and started on the ice. In the bedroom she changed twice, settled on the green sweater, and came out to find Dev tasting the sauce with a serious expression.

"Verdict?"

"More salt. Or less salt. I've been smelling it too long."

She tasted it. "More salt."

He added salt. She lit the candle, put on a record because Dev thought a speaker looked lazy, and moved the pile of mail off the counter into a drawer, which was where all the mail lived eventually.

At 7:40 the buzzer went. Dev pulled the pot off the heat; Marisol hit the button and left the door open a crack, then stood there a second longer than she needed to, listening to the footsteps coming up.

"You look nice," Dev said behind her, already reaching past her for the wine opener.

"You said that yesterday."

"It was true yesterday."

Then Ellis's laugh came up the stairwell, and the evening started.


Marcus wiped down the counter for the third time, though it hadn't gotten dirty since the second. Outside the kitchen window, the October light was going amber over the neighbor's fence.

"You're doing the thing," Priya said, coming in with a stack of mismatched plates. She'd changed into the green sweater he liked, the one with the loose thread at the cuff she kept meaning to fix.

"What thing."

"The counter thing. It's clean. It was clean twenty minutes ago."

He set down the sponge. "Dana's mother-in-law is apparently a food writer."

"Dana's mother-in-law lives in Tucson and is not coming to dinner in Columbus." Priya slid the plates onto the table and started counting silverware into piles. "Six. Did Theo say if he's bringing anyone?"

"He said 'maybe,' which means no."

She laughed. From the oven came the smell of chicken thighs and lemon, and beneath it something faintly sharp — the rosemary catching on the pan. Marcus opened the door, poked at a thigh with a fork, and closed it again.

"Twelve more minutes," he said.

"You said twelve minutes twelve minutes ago."

"I'm managing expectations."

Priya went to move the mail off the entry table, then paused in the hallway, looking at the living room the way you look at a room you're about to hand over to other people. The throw blanket folded. The lamp on. Her running shoes still by the door — she nudged them under the bench with her foot.

"Wine's not open," she called.

"On purpose. Theo brings the good stuff and then acts wounded if we've already started."

She came back and leaned against the doorframe, watching him arrange bread in a bowl he'd never once used for anything else. He looked up.

"What?"

"Nothing," she said. "This is nice."

The doorbell rang, four minutes early. They both looked at the oven, then at each other.

"Go," he said. "I'll stall the chicken."


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, smelling faintly of cedar and last Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the dining table while Dev, in the kitchen, argued with a pot of rice.

"It's doing the thing," he called.

"What thing?"

"The gluey thing."

She came in, lifted the lid, and turned the burner down two clicks. "You had it on high."

"I had it on medium-high."

"You had it on high, Dev."

He didn't argue, which she took as a confession. Four years in the same apartment had taught them the shorthand of small surrenders. He went back to slicing scallions with the knife he insisted on sharpening himself, and she wiped down the counters where flour had settled like a light snow.

They'd invited six people, which was two more than the table comfortably held. Marisol dragged in the desk chair from the bedroom and the folding one from behind the coat rack, and mismatched the place settings without apology. Dev put on a record because he thought it made the apartment feel intentional. She thought it made him feel intentional, but she liked him for it.

"Kev's bringing that woman," he said. "The one from his job."

"Priya."

"Right. Should I hide the political books?"

"Should you hide the political books."

"That was a joke."

At six-forty, she changed her shirt twice and settled on the green one. He noticed and said so, and she rolled her eyes and was pleased. He lit two candles, blew out the one that smelled too strongly of vanilla, and stood back to survey the room the way he surveyed everything—like a man checking his work.

The buzzer went off early. It always did.

"Ready?" she said.

"No," he said, and went to press the button anyway.


Maya was elbow-deep in a bowl of ground lamb when Theo came in from the garage with the folding chairs, one of them squeaking like a hurt bird.

"We need to oil that," she said.

"We've needed to oil that since March."

He set the chairs against the dining room wall and started wiping down the table, which had accumulated the usual sediment of their life together: two library books, a phone charger, a coupon for gutter cleaning neither of them would ever use. He shoveled it all into the basket by the stairs, a system they'd developed sometime in the second year of the lease.

"Rosa's bringing wine," Maya said. "Which means we need the good glasses, which means somebody has to get the box down."

"On it."

He went for the step stool. In the kitchen, Maya shaped the meatballs faster than she needed to, the way she always did when she was nervous about hosting, though she'd never admit that's what it was. Theo came back with four wine glasses and one casualty, a chip along the rim.

"That's the one Ben gave us," she said.

"I know. I'll put it in the back."

The oven timer went off for the potatoes. He pulled them out while she slid the meatballs in, the two of them moving around each other in the narrow galley kitchen with the practiced choreography of people who'd renegotiated the dishwasher-loading question and lost and won in equal measure.

At six twenty, Theo lit the candles. Maya changed her shirt twice and came down in the first one.

"You look good," he said.

"I look like I've been cooking."

"That's the look."

The doorbell rang. They glanced at each other — a quick, wordless check, everything ready enough — and she went to answer it while he turned the music down two notches.


Maya set the last fork down and stepped back from the table, squinting at it the way she used to squint at photographs in her college darkroom. Six place settings, mismatched but deliberate. The tablecloth was one her grandmother had embroidered, and she'd only found it that morning while looking for something else entirely.

"Are we doing candles or is that too much?" she called.

Danny came out of the kitchen with a dish towel over his shoulder and flour on his forearm. "Candles are never too much. Candles are the whole point."

"The whole point is that Renata's finally back from Portland."

"Then candles for Renata." He kissed the side of her head as he passed, and she smelled onion and butter on him, which she found weirdly comforting after eleven years.

The apartment was small, a second-floor walk-up in a part of Providence that had gotten expensive without getting nicer. They'd talked about buying somewhere, half-seriously, the way you talk about moving to Spain. Neither of them had ever brought up getting married, not since a conversation in 2016 that ended with both of them relieved.

"The chicken's going to be twenty minutes late," Danny said. "I misread the recipe."

"So we'll drink first."

"I like this plan." He went back for the wine.

Maya lit the candles, then went to change out of the shirt she'd worn to work. When she came back Danny had put on a record, something with horns, and was standing at the window watching the street, glass in hand. She took the other one off the counter.

"They're going to ask about the roof again," he said.

"Let them ask."

Downstairs, the buzzer went off, too early, which meant Renata. Danny set his glass down and went to hit the button, and Maya heard him laughing before the door even opened.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, wedged behind a beach towel they'd never returned to her sister. She shook it out on the dining table and frowned at the crease running down the middle.

"Iron's under the sink," Dev called from the kitchen, not looking up. He was pulling the skin off a chicken thigh with more force than necessary.

"I know where the iron is. I'm deciding if I care."

"You care."

She got the iron.

By six-fifteen the apartment smelled like garlic and browning butter, and the windows had fogged at the corners. Dev had his sleeves pushed to the elbow, a dish towel over one shoulder, and a spot of tomato on his collar that Marisol pointed out and he ignored.

"Ben's bringing his new girlfriend," she said, setting out mismatched wine glasses. Six of them; they only owned four that matched.

"I know. What's her name again?"

"Priya. Don't ask her what she does for a living first thing. You always do that."

"That's a normal question."

"It's your only question."

He laughed and slid the pan into the oven. Marisol went to change, came back in the green sweater, and Dev told her it looked good without really turning around, then turned around and said it again like he meant it.

At six-fifty they did the last sweep: shoes into the closet, mail off the counter, the pile of unopened boxes shoved behind the couch. Dev lit the candle Marisol's mother had given them at Christmas, the one that smelled faintly like a hotel lobby.

"Do we have enough chairs?" he asked.

"We'll bring in the desk chair. Somebody always ends up on the desk chair."

The buzzer went off, too early, the way Ben always was. Marisol pressed the button and Dev wiped his hands, and for a second, in the small quiet before footsteps on the stairs, they just stood there in the warm room together.


Maya was scrubbing the last of the burnt cheese off the baking dish when Devon came through the back door with two bags of ice and a bottle of wine he'd forgotten they already had.

"We have wine," she said.

"Now we have more wine." He shouldered the freezer door open and dumped the ice in, then stood there a second letting the cold hit his face. It had been eighty-nine degrees in the parking lot of the Kroger on Delaware Avenue, and the air conditioning in the Corolla had been dying since April.

The apartment smelled like garlic and rosemary. She'd started the chicken at four, which meant it would be done at six-thirty, which meant Priya and Tom would arrive at six-forty and stand around apologizing while the chicken sat. That was fine. That was how it always went.

"Did you move the laundry?" Maya asked.

Devon looked at the armchair, where a mountain of clean towels had been living for three days. "I'm moving it now."

"Just put it in our room and shut the door."

"That's what I was going to do."

He carried the pile down the hall, one sock escaping onto the floorboards. In the bathroom he wiped the sink with a hand towel and hid the toothpaste tube, the one Maya squeezed from the middle and he squeezed from the bottom, a difference they had negotiated for six years without resolution.

Back in the kitchen she was tasting the sauce. She held out the spoon and he leaned down and took it.

"More salt," he said.

"That's what I thought."

She added salt. He got the good glasses down from the high cabinet, the ones from her grandmother, and set six on the counter, and then the buzzer rang twenty minutes early, and they looked at each other and laughed.


Maya was elbow-deep in the sink, scrubbing the roasting pan she'd forgotten to soak, when Daniel came in from the garage with two folding chairs under one arm.

"We're short one seat," he said. "Unless someone wants the piano bench."

"Rachel will take the piano bench. She likes to be dramatic about it."

He set the chairs against the wall and looked at the counter, which had reached the stage of dinner prep that resembles a crime scene. Onion skins, a torn recipe printout, three lemons rolling toward the edge. He caught one before it fell.

"What can I do?"

"Salad. And the bread's in the oven, so don't put anything in there."

He washed his hands and started tearing romaine into the wooden bowl his mother had given them when they moved in together, two Novembers ago in the rain, when the U-Haul got stuck on the hill on Cedar Street and a neighbor came out with a bag of kitty litter for traction. Maya still told that story at parties. She was telling it in her head now, deciding whether it had gotten old.

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

"Pesto's out. I made the vinaigrette instead."

"You're the best."

"I know it."

She flicked water at him. He didn't dodge.

By seven the apartment smelled like garlic and rosemary. Maya changed into the green sweater and came out barefoot, still fastening an earring. Daniel had lit the candles in the mismatched holders and put on something instrumental, low.

"How's it look?" she said.

He glanced around: the chairs, the crowded table, the counter he had wiped down twice.

"Like people live here," he said.

The buzzer went off. Maya pressed the button, held the door with her hip, and Rachel came up the stairs already talking.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it, back in October for her mother's birthday. She shook it out over the dining table and pressed the wrinkles flat with her palms while Teddy carried in the chairs from the back porch, one under each arm.

"Four or six?" he asked.

"Six. Dana's bringing her sister."

He set them down and went back for the last two, tracking a little March mud that Marisol noticed and decided not to mention. They'd been in the house eleven months now, long enough that she'd stopped narrating the small annoyances out loud.

The kitchen smelled like garlic and browning butter. Teddy checked the chicken, basting it with the pan juices, then started on the salad while Marisol looked for candles in the junk drawer and found only birthday candles and a tangle of twist ties.

"There's tealights in the bathroom," Teddy said without turning around.

"Those are the ones that smell like cucumber."

"So people will think we're clean."

She laughed and went to get them anyway. When she came back he'd put on a record, something with horns, and turned the volume low enough that they'd still hear the doorbell. She arranged the tealights down the center of the table and stepped back to look at it.

"It looks like a real house," she said.

"It is a real house."

"You know what I mean."

He came over, wiping his hands on a dish towel, and stood beside her, considering the table like a painting they'd both worked on. Then he kissed the side of her head and went back for the wine glasses, and the doorbell rang while he was still counting them out, and Marisol pushed her hair behind her ears and went to answer it.


Maya found Danny in the kitchen at five-fifteen, sleeves shoved to his elbows, arguing with a chicken.

"It's not going to fit," he said.

"It fit last Thanksgiving."

"Last Thanksgiving we had the small roasting pan and I cut it in half."

She leaned against the counter and watched him wrestle the bird into the dish, wings splayed. Outside, the September light had gone gold across the neighbor's fence. Somewhere down the block a leaf blower started up and quit.

"Rosa's bringing her boyfriend," Maya said.

"The one with the podcast?"

"Be nice."

"I'm always nice. I'll ask him about it. He'll talk for forty minutes and I'll nod and everyone will think I'm generous."

She swatted his shoulder with a dish towel and went to deal with the living room, which had accumulated three weeks of unopened mail, two of his running shoes, and a throw blanket that had never once been folded. She stacked the mail on the bookshelf, kicked the shoes toward the hall closet, and stood in the middle of the rug assessing.

"Do we own six matching chairs?" she called.

"We own four. There's the piano bench."

"Nobody's sitting on the piano bench."

"I'll sit on the piano bench."

They moved around each other in the narrow kitchen with the unthinking choreography of four years — he stepped back, she slid past with the salad bowl, he reached over her head for the good olive oil. At six she put on music. At six-ten he opened wine and poured two glasses, and they stood for a minute by the window, not talking, the chicken hissing behind them.

"House looks good," he said.

"House looks like we shoved everything in the closet."

"That's what good looks like."

The doorbell rang at six-thirty. Maya wiped her hands, glanced at him, and went to answer it.


Maya found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it—Thanksgiving, when her mother had come and criticized the salt level in everything.

"It smells incredible," she called toward the kitchen.

Devon didn't answer right away. She heard the oven door, then a low swear.

"What?"

"The bread's fine. I just grabbed the pan wrong." He appeared in the doorway, shaking his hand, a red stripe across two fingers. "It's fine."

"Run it under cold water."

"It's *fine*, Maya."

But he went, and she heard the tap running, and she smiled a little because he always did what she said eventually, just never immediately.

She set out six places. Their apartment in Somerville was too small for six, technically—they'd have to pull the desk chair from the bedroom and someone would end up on the piano bench—but the Kowalskis were bringing wine and Priya always brought too much dessert, and nobody had complained yet in three years of this.

Devon came back with his hand wrapped in a paper towel and started chopping parsley. "Did you tell Ben seven or seven-thirty?"

"Seven."

"So seven-forty."

"So seven-forty," she agreed.

She lit the candles, then blew them out, deciding it was too early. Devon was humming something off-key, and the radiator was clanking, and outside a car alarm went briefly insane and then stopped.

"Hey." He held out a spoon. "Too much lemon?"

She tasted it. "More salt."

"You always say more salt."

"And I'm always right."

He added salt. She straightened a fork that didn't need straightening. At 6:52 the buzzer went off, early, which meant Priya, who was always early and always apologized for it.

Devon wiped his hands. Maya relit the candles.


The Guests Arrive at Seven

Maya found the good tablecloth folded in the linen closet behind the beach towels, wrinkled from eight months of neglect. She shook it out over the dining table anyway.

"There's a crease down the middle," Daniel said from the kitchen doorway, holding a colander of rinsed green beans.

"There's a crease down the middle of everything." She smoothed it with her palm. "Nobody's measuring."

He went back to the stove. The apartment smelled like garlic and the lemon cleaner she'd used on the bathroom counter an hour ago, when they'd argued briefly about whether to hide the laundry basket in the closet or just leave it in the bedroom with the door shut. The door was shut. The basket was still full.

At six-fifteen he asked her to taste the sauce. She came in with a wine glass in each hand, set one beside him, and took the spoon.

"More salt."

"You always say more salt."

"And I'm always right." She kissed his shoulder through his T-shirt, which had a small hole near the collar. "Are you changing?"

"Is this bad?"

"It's fine. It's Priya and Tom and the Ellises. They've seen worse."

He changed anyway, into the blue button-down, and she noticed and didn't say anything, just moved the candles from the coffee table to the dining table and then back to the coffee table, because the dining table already had flowers, grocery-store carnations she'd dyed a better opinion of by trimming the stems short and cramming them into a water glass.

At six-fifty they stood in the living room and looked at it: the sofa cushions straightened, the coasters out, the record player on but the volume low, still the faint dent in the rug where a chair used to be.

"It looks like people live here," Daniel said.

"People do live here."

The buzzer rang at 7:04.


Maya heard the timer go off from the hallway and shouted, "Bread!" before Daniel could get to it. He was already there, oven mitt half-on, pulling the loaf out and knocking it against the counter to check the sound.

"Hollow enough?" he asked.

"That's your department." She was setting the table, counting forks twice because she'd forgotten Priya was bringing her brother. Seven now. She pulled another chair from the bedroom, the one with the wobbly leg, and gave it to Daniel's spot because he'd notice least.

They'd lived in the apartment two years, long enough that the rhythm of preparing for company had worn a groove. He cooked; she cleaned and arranged. It had never been negotiated. Once, early on, she'd tried making a curry and set off the smoke alarm, and he'd laughed so hard he had to sit down on the kitchen floor. That story got told at dinner parties. It would probably get told tonight.

"Did you text Aaron about the parking?" he asked, stirring something.

"Twice. He'll still circle for twenty minutes."

Daniel wiped his hands on the dish towel over his shoulder and came to look at the table. He moved the candles two inches to the left. She let him.

"It's crooked," he said.

"It was fine."

"It's better now."

She rolled her eyes and went to change out of the shirt she'd been wearing since Thursday. When she came back, he'd put music on, something low and instrumental, and lit the candles too early — they'd burn down before dessert. She didn't say anything.

The buzzer went off at 7:04. Daniel looked at her, checking, the way he did.

"Okay," she said. "We're good."

He hit the button and propped the door open with his foot, and the stairwell filled with voices.


Maya set the last fork down and stepped back to look at the table. Six places, mismatched plates, the good napkins her mother had given them two Christmases ago and which they'd used exactly twice.

"The chicken needs another twenty minutes," Deion called from the kitchen. He came out wiping his hands on a dish towel that had once been white. "Also I think I put too much rosemary in it."

"There's no such thing."

"There is absolutely such a thing."

She followed him back in. The kitchen of their apartment was narrow enough that they'd learned to move around each other like dancers, or like people who'd been sharing a small space for three years. He opened the oven and a wave of heat rolled out, smelling of garlic and lemon and, yes, quite a lot of rosemary.

"It smells incredible," she said.

"You have to say that."

"I don't, actually. We're not married. I could just leave."

He laughed and shut the oven. On the counter, her phone buzzed—Priya, saying they were running fifteen minutes late because of the bridge. Maya relayed it.

"Good," Deion said. "That's the chicken sorted."

She poured wine into two glasses and handed him one, then went to change the record because the album had ended and the silence had gotten loud. Outside, the November dark had come down at five o'clock like it always did, and the windows had gone black and reflective, showing the two of them moving around the lamplight.

"Did you hide the laundry?" she asked.

"Under the bed. Nobody looks under the bed."

"Bea looks under the bed."

"Then Bea will find our laundry and know the truth about us."

The buzzer sounded. Deion turned down the oven. Maya set her glass on the table, smoothed her sweater, and went to let them in.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, wedged behind a stack of towels that hadn't been folded since March. She shook it out over the dining table, and a fine dust of lint rose in the lamplight.

"It has a wine stain," Dev called from the kitchen.

"Everything has a wine stain. That's what makes it ours." She turned the fabric so the faded pink blotch sat under where the bread basket would go.

Dev was doing the thing he always did before people came over, which was cooking too much. He'd made the braise the night before, which was smart, but now he was also blanching green beans and had opened a bag of shallots with vague intentions.

"Nobody needs three sides," Marisol said, passing behind him with a stack of mismatched plates.

"Priya doesn't eat pork."

"Priya eats pork. She just says she doesn't in front of her mother."

He considered this, then kept slicing shallots anyway. She kissed the back of his neck on the second pass and he leaned into it without looking up.

They'd been in the apartment two years — a third-floor walk-up in a building where the radiators clanked like someone was trapped in them. His records, her plants. A junk drawer that had become a junk cabinet. They'd talked about marriage the way people talk about visiting Portugal: warmly, seriously, without booking anything.

At six-fifteen Marisol swept the hallway, then hid the broom in the bedroom because it looked worse leaning in a corner than the dust had looked on the floor. Dev put on a record, took it off, put on a different one.

"Candles?" he asked.

"Candles."

The buzzer went off at six-forty, ten minutes early, which was Tomás, who was always early and always apologized for it.

Marisol looked at Dev. Dev wiped his hands on a dish towel.

"Ready," he said, and pressed the button.