The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Danielle came through the door, shaking rain off her jacket. She hung it on the hook by the closet, the one that had been loose for three months and would probably stay loose for three more.

"You beat me," she said.

"Barely." Marcus was at the counter, sleeves pushed up, cutting broccoli into pieces that were not quite the same size. "There was construction on Ferndale again. They've got it down to one lane."

"They've had it down to one lane since April."

"I'm aware. I sat in it." He slid the broccoli into a bowl. "There's a beer in the fridge if you want. I got the one you like, the grapefruit one."

Danielle opened the fridge and stood in the cold light for a moment, the way she always did, looking at everything before taking what she'd come for. "Do we still have that hoisin?"

"Back left. Behind the pickles."

She found it, wiped the sticky ring off the bottom with her thumb, and set it on the counter. Marcus moved over without being asked. She got the chicken out and started trimming it while he heated the pan, and the kitchen filled with the smell of oil and garlic and the sound of the exhaust fan, which rattled.

"Your mom called me," she said.

"Oh no."

"It was fine. She wanted to know if we're coming for Thanksgiving. I said probably, I'd have to check with you."

"We're coming for Thanksgiving," Marcus said. "I already told her that. Twice."

"Well, now she's heard it three times."

He laughed. The chicken hit the pan and hissed, and Danielle stepped back from the spatter, and outside the rain kept on against the window over the sink. They ate at the table, because they'd made a rule about it in January, and mostly they still kept it.


The rain had started around four, and by the time Marisol got home the kitchen windows were fogged at the corners. Dev was already there, still in his work shirt with the sleeves shoved up, standing over a cutting board with his phone propped against the toaster.

"You're home early," she said, hanging her coat on the hook that always threatened to pull out of the drywall.

"Meeting got canceled. I started the rice." He didn't look up. "There's like three carrots left. I don't know what happened to the rest of them."

"I put them in that soup on Sunday." She kicked off her shoes and left them by the door, which she knew he hated, and then, because she knew, she nudged them into the line with her toe. "Are we doing the stir-fry thing?"

"That was the plan. Unless you want to order."

"No, I have to stop doing that." She washed her hands and took over the carrots so he could get the chicken out of the fridge. The knife was dull. It had been dull for a year. Neither of them had bought a sharpener.

"Your mom called the house phone," Dev said.

"We have a house phone?"

"Apparently. It rang. I didn't answer it."

She laughed. The oil hit the pan and started spitting, and she stepped back, and he reached past her for the soy sauce, one hand briefly on her hip as he went by, not really thinking about it.

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had mail on it. On the TV, a show they'd seen before played at low volume. He put his feet up. She told him about her coworker's divorce, and he said the right things at the right times, and outside the rain kept going, steady and unremarkable, into the dark.


Tuesday, 6:40 p.m. Renée got home first and had already changed into sweatpants by the time Marcus came through the door, dropping his keys in the ceramic dish they'd bought at a street fair two summers ago.

"There's a chicken thawed," she said from the couch, not looking up from her phone. "I've been staring at it since five."

"Very productive."

"I answered a work email. From the couch. That counts."

He washed his hands at the kitchen sink, which had a slow drain they kept meaning to call someone about. The chicken sat in a shallow dish on the counter, pale and unpromising. Marcus opened the fridge, assessed. Half a lemon, hardening. A bag of green beans. Most of a jar of Dijon.

"Sheet pan?" he called.

"Sure." Renée got up, pulled the oven open to check that nobody had left a pizza stone in there. Somebody had. She wrestled it out and set it on the stovetop with a clang.

"Sorry," Marcus said.

"You always do that."

"I know. I'll get better."

"You won't."

He laughed, because she was right, and started cutting the chicken into pieces while she trimmed beans, tossing the ends into the compost bin that needed emptying. They talked about small things: his coworker Dev who'd taken a job in Denver, her mother's cataract surgery scheduled for the eleventh, whether they should go to the wedding in Asheville or send a nice gift and stay home. The oven beeped that it was preheated.

"Wine?" Marcus asked.

"Half a glass."

He poured her more than half. She noticed and didn't say anything. The pan went in, the timer went on, and they stood in the kitchen with the fan running, leaning against opposite counters, the way they did most nights, waiting for the smell to change.


The kitchen light flickered once before settling, the way it had for three months now, and Dana made a note to buy a new bulb she would probably forget again.

"Did you thaw the chicken?" she called.

Marcus was still in the hallway, toeing off his work boots. "It's been in the fridge since this morning. Bottom shelf, behind the milk."

She found it, pressed a thumb against the plastic. Still cold, but soft enough. She set the package on the counter and started digging for the good cutting board, the one that hadn't warped.

Marcus came in smelling like the outside — cold air and the diesel from the lot. He kissed the side of her head, then went straight for the sink to wash his hands, elbowing the faucet on because his palms were dirty.

"Long one?"

"Bergstrom's truck came in with a bad alternator and then the guy wanted to argue about the estimate." He dried his hands on the towel hanging from the oven handle. "What are we doing with this?"

"I thought that lemon thing. With the rice."

"Do we have rice?"

She opened the pantry, moved a box of pasta aside. "We have rice."

He got the pot down and filled it, and she started cutting the chicken into strips, and for a while it was just the sounds — water, the knife on the board, the click-click-whoosh of the burner catching.

"Your mom called," he said. "She left a voicemail on the house phone."

"We still have a house phone?"

"Apparently. She wants to know about Thanksgiving."

Dana scraped the chicken into the skillet, and it hissed. "Tell her we'll come Thursday and leave Friday."

"You tell her. She likes you better."

"She likes you better. She thinks I don't feed you."

Marcus opened the fridge, looked at nothing in particular, closed it. "Should we do a vegetable?"

"There's broccoli."

"Frozen broccoli."

"It's still broccoli."

He got out the bag.


The kitchen light flickered once before settling, the way it had for three months now, and Dana made the same note in her head she made every night: buy a new bulb, or maybe it was the fixture.

"It's the ballast," Marcus said, hanging his jacket on the chair back instead of the hook by the door. "I looked it up."

"Then fix the ballast."

"That involves the breaker box." He said it like the breaker box was a distant relative he owed money to.

She had rice going already, and a package of chicken thighs sweating on the counter. He washed his hands, took the cutting board down, and started on the onion without being asked, which was one of the small mercies of living with someone for four years.

"How was the thing with Prasad?"

"Moved to Thursday." He scraped the onion into the pan and it hissed. "Which means I'm doing the deck on Saturday instead. Unless your mom's still coming."

"She said Sunday. She'll say Saturday on Friday."

"Yeah."

The chicken went in. He was heavy-handed with the paprika and she let him be, mostly. The dog, an old shepherd mix named Bunt, arranged himself directly in the traffic lane between stove and sink, and they stepped over him in turns.

"There's half a bag of that spinach," Dana said. "It's borderline."

He opened it, sniffed, made a face that meant it was fine, and dumped it in.

They ate at the counter because the table had mail on it, and neither of them mentioned the mail. He told her about a guy at work who'd started bringing a hard-boiled egg every day and peeling it at his desk. She laughed with her mouth full.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and she said, "Get the bulb tomorrow. Just try the bulb."

"It's not the bulb."

"Try it anyway."

He said he would. He probably meant it.


The rice cooker clicked over to "warm" just as Danielle came through the door, shaking rain off her jacket. She hung it on the hook by the closet, the one that had been loose since March.

"It's coming down out there," she said.

"I know. I got the mail before it started." Marcus was at the counter, sleeves pushed up, working a knife through a bell pepper with more force than necessary. "Something for you from the dentist. And a coupon book."

"Recycling."

"Already did."

She kicked off her shoes and came into the kitchen, resting a hand briefly on his back as she passed to the fridge. "Did you thaw the chicken?"

"This morning. It's in the colander." He tilted his head toward the sink. "I was going to do the thing with the soy sauce and the honey, but we're almost out of honey."

"There's a backup. Behind the vinegar."

He opened the cabinet, moved two things, and found it. "How does that get back there."

"You put it back there."

"I doubt that." He was smiling a little.

She washed her hands and started on the chicken, cutting it into strips on the plastic board while he got the oil heating. The window over the sink had fogged at the corners. Somewhere down the block a car alarm went off and stopped.

"Karen asked if we're coming Saturday," Danielle said.

"To the thing at her sister's?"

"The birthday."

He considered it, scraping the peppers into the pan, where they hissed. "I told Owen I'd help him with his fence."

"So that's a no."

"That's a maybe. Fences don't take all day."

"Yours did."

"Our fence had a tree on it."

She laughed and passed him the chicken. He stirred, and the kitchen filled up with the smell of garlic, and outside it kept raining.


Marisol got home first, which meant she got to pick the music. She put on the playlist Devon claimed to hate—early 2000s R&B—and started pulling things out of the fridge before she'd even taken off her work shoes.

By the time he came through the door at six-forty, she had chicken thighs patting dry on a paper towel and the oven preheating.

"You started without me," he said, dropping his bag by the coat hooks.

"You were late."

"There was a wreck on 35." He kissed the side of her head on his way to the sink. "Also I stopped for tortillas because you texted me about tortillas."

"I texted you three hours ago."

"And I remembered. That's the impressive part."

He washed his hands and took over the cutting board, dicing an onion badly, the way he always did—chunks too big, one of them practically a wedge. She didn't say anything. She'd said something about it in year one and it hadn't taken.

"Your mom called me," he said.

"Why does she call you?"

"Because you don't answer. She wants to know if we're coming for Easter."

Marisol slid the pan into the oven and set a timer on her phone. "Did you commit us?"

"I said I'd talk to you. See how diplomatic that is?"

"Very." She leaned against the counter. "We should go. She'll make the thing with the potatoes."

The rice cooker clicked over. Devon found the good knife, then couldn't find the colander, and Marisol pointed at the dish rack without looking up from her phone. Somebody's neighbor was running a leaf blower.

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had a laptop and a stack of unopened mail on it, and neither of them had felt like moving it. He put on a show they'd both seen. She fell asleep during the second episode, and he let the credits run a while before he woke her up.


The rice cooker clicked over to "warm" just as Dana got home, hauling a canvas bag of groceries she'd forgotten she needed until she was already at the store.

"You bought more garlic," Marcus said from the stove, not turning around. "We have garlic."

"We have one clove and it's soft."

"That's still garlic."

She set the bag on the counter and started unloading. Two heads of garlic, a bag of spinach that would probably rot, a lime because the recipe on her phone had said lime. Marcus was pushing chicken thighs around a cast-iron pan with a pair of tongs, and the kitchen smelled like paprika and something faintly burning.

"Is the fan on?"

"It doesn't do anything."

"It does a little."

He reached over and flipped the switch, and the vent hood rattled to life, doing very little. Dana leaned against the counter and pulled off her shoes, one heel against the other, and left them where they landed. Marcus glanced at them but said nothing, which she noticed, and appreciated.

"How was the thing with Priya?"

"Moved to Thursday. Which is fine, except now Thursday is insane." She found a knife and started on the spinach, trimming stems she probably didn't need to trim. "Did you call about the water heater?"

"I left a message. The guy said he'd call back and then didn't."

"That's not calling about the water heater."

"It's the first half of calling about the water heater."

She laughed, and he grinned at the pan. The chicken hissed. Outside, someone's car alarm went off for four seconds and stopped.

They ate at the coffee table with the TV on mute because neither of them wanted to decide on a show. Marcus put his feet up on the ottoman. Dana ate the crispy skin first, the way she always did, and he took the piece she left on her plate, the way he always did, and neither of them mentioned it.


The kitchen smelled like garlic before Nadia even took off her shoes. She dropped her bag by the door, heard the exhaust fan running, and found Desmond at the stove in his work polo, sleeves pushed up, poking at a pan of chicken thighs.

"You beat me," she said.

"Only by fifteen minutes. Whitfield canceled the four o'clock." He tilted the pan. "There's wine open, I think from Sunday."

"Sunday's pushing it." She poured herself a glass anyway and leaned against the counter. "Did you take the trash out?"

"I took it to the garage. That counts."

"That does not count. Tomorrow's pickup."

"I'll do it after we eat." He said this the way he always did, and she believed him about seventy percent of the time, which was enough.

She washed a head of romaine and started tearing it into the wooden bowl, the one his mother had given them that neither of them liked but both felt obligated to use. The rice cooker clicked over to warm. Outside, someone's dog barked at the mail truck, three hours late.

"Your sister called me," Desmond said. "She wants to know about Thanksgiving."

"She calls you because she knows I'll say we haven't decided."

"I said we haven't decided."

"Good man." Nadia found the cucumber in the crisper drawer, softening at one end, and cut around the bad part. "I have that thing Thursday, the training. So dinner's on you."

"I'll make the pasta."

"Not the pasta again."

"You like the pasta."

"I liked the pasta in July."

He laughed and turned the chicken, and the oil spat, and he swore softly and reached for the lid. She handed him the tongs without being asked. They ate at the counter, standing part of the time, plates on paper towels because the dishwasher was full and neither of them had run it.


Marisol got home first, which meant she got to pick the music. She put on the playlist Devon called "sad women with guitars" and started pulling things out of the fridge: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans that had maybe two days left in it, the last of the rice from Tuesday's takeout.

Devon came in at 6:20, dropping his backpack by the shoe rack and immediately going to the sink to wash his hands. "The 14 was running like fifteen minutes behind," he said. "Some guy was arguing with the driver about a transfer."

"Did you get the milk?"

He stopped. "I got the milk. It's in my bag." He retrieved it, half a gallon of two percent, and put it in the fridge door where it belonged. "What are we doing?"

"Chicken and rice thing. Can you do the beans? They need trimming."

He took the bag to the cutting board and started snapping the ends off by hand, which Marisol had told him a hundred times was slower than using a knife. She didn't say it this time. She was busy shredding the chicken with two forks, standing over the container so the juice wouldn't get on the counter.

"Sasha texted about Saturday," Devon said. "She wants to know if we're doing the thing at her sister's."

"Are we?"

"I said I'd ask you."

"I don't want to drive to Lakewood."

"That's what I figured." He swept the bean ends into his palm and dumped them in the compost bin under the sink, which was getting full and starting to smell like apples going bad. "I'll tell her next time."

The rice went in the pan with a little oil, then the chicken, then the beans on top with the lid on to steam. Marisol found the soy sauce behind the vinegar. They ate at the coffee table with the TV on, and Devon did the dishes after, badly, and she rewashed two of them in the morning without mentioning it.


Marisol got home first, which meant she got to pick the music. She put on the same jazz playlist she always did, kicked her shoes toward the closet, and started pulling things out of the fridge — half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans, a lemon that had gone slightly soft on one side.

Dev came in around six-fifteen, tie already loosened, holding the mail. "Con Ed again," he said, dropping the envelopes on the counter. "And something for the previous tenant. Still. Two years."

"Just write 'return to sender.'"

"I do. Every time." He washed his hands and stood behind her, looking over her shoulder at the cutting board. "Beans?"

"Beans. And that rice from Tuesday, if it's still good."

He opened the container, sniffed it, made a face that meant it was fine. "You want me to do anything?"

"Trim those. The ends."

He took the paring knife and started snapping ends off the green beans, which was not what she'd asked, but she let it go. They talked about nothing much — his coworker Bryan who kept scheduling meetings at 4:45, her sister's new apartment in Pittsburgh, whether they should finally call someone about the bathroom fan that groaned.

"I keep saying I'll look it up on YouTube," Dev said.

"You've been saying that since March."

"It's a big commitment, a fan."

She laughed and pushed the beans into the skillet, where they hissed. He set the table — two plates, the mismatched forks, the salt in its little ceramic dish his mother had sent. He poured water for her, beer for himself.

"Five minutes," she said.

He leaned against the counter, and for a second neither of them said anything, just the pan and the trumpet on the speaker and the neighbor's dog upstairs. Then he asked if she'd remembered to move the laundry, and she hadn't, and he went to do it.


The kitchen light flickered once before settling, the way it had for the past three months. Dana kicked off her shoes by the door and left them where they landed.

"There's chicken thawed," Marcus called from the living room. "I took it out this morning."

"Bless you." She hung her bag on the hook, then reconsidered and moved it to the chair, because the hook already held two jackets and a tote bag full of returnable cans neither of them had driven to the store.

He came in wearing the gray sweatpants with the hole in the knee, phone in hand. "How was the thing with Priya?"

"Postponed. Again." Dana opened the fridge and stood in the cold light. "We have half a bag of spinach that's questionable."

"Questionable how?"

"Slimy at the bottom. Salvageable at the top."

"Salvage it."

She washed the leaves while he pulled out the cast iron and set it on the burner. He salted the chicken thighs the way his mother did, more than seemed reasonable, and Dana had stopped commenting on it a year ago because he was right.

"Rice or the couscous?" she asked.

"Couscous. It's faster and I'm starving."

"You're always starving."

"I'm a growing boy."

"You're thirty-four."

The chicken hit the pan and the sound filled the room. Marcus turned on the vent fan, which did almost nothing, and cracked the window over the sink. Cold March air came in around Dana's wrists.

"Did the landlord ever email you back?" she asked.

"No. I'll call tomorrow. Or Thursday."

"Thursday's already the fix-the-thing day. You said that about the tire."

"Then I'll do two things Thursday."

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

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had become the mail table sometime in January, and neither of them had made a decision about it yet.


The lock stuck, the way it always did, and Marcus had to lift the doorknob with his shoulder before it turned. He set his laptop bag by the shoe rack and found Priya already in the kitchen, still in her work slacks, scrolling her phone on the counter while a pot of water sat unwatched on the stove.

"There's chicken thawing in the sink," she said. "I forgot to take it out this morning, so it's been under cold water since four."

"How long has it been?"

"Twenty minutes. It's fine. Probably fine."

He rolled up his sleeves and prodded the package. Still cold in the center, but workable. He got the cutting board down while she found the sheet pan under the stack of mismatched lids that never wanted to stay stacked.

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

"Rescheduled. Third time." He trimmed the fat off a thigh and flicked it into the compost bin, which needed emptying. "I've stopped preparing for it."

"That's healthy."

"That's survival."

She halved potatoes while he seasoned, and they moved around each other in the narrow galley the way they had for two years now, an unspoken choreography of hip-checks and reaching over. She turned the burner on under the water she'd forgotten, then remembered they weren't making pasta and turned it off again.

"We have that broccoli," he said. "It's been in there a while."

She opened the crisper drawer, sniffed, made a face. "It's got opinions."

"So no."

"So no."

Everything went in the oven at 425. He wiped the counter; she poured two glasses of the wine that had been open since Sunday and set the timer on the microwave because the oven timer had never worked. They stood there for a minute, not talking, listening to the fan hum.

"I should call my mom," she said, and didn't.


Rosa got home first, which meant the kitchen was already warm when Devon came through the door at six-fifteen, shaking rain off his jacket. The apartment smelled like garlic and something scorching slightly at the edges.

"You started the rice without me," he said, hanging the jacket on the hook that had been threatening to pull out of the drywall since March.

"I started the rice because you said seven o'clock and it's a quarter past six, so clearly one of us is a liar." She was standing at the stove in her work blouse with an apron over it, pushing chicken thighs around a pan with tongs.

"Traffic on Fremont." He washed his hands at the sink, bumping her hip to make room. "There's a water main thing. Guy with a flag stood there for ten minutes doing absolutely nothing."

"Did you get the peppers?"

Devon stopped. He looked at the counter, then at his bag by the door, then at her.

"Devon."

"I got the sour cream."

"I asked for peppers. I texted you a picture of the recipe."

"I read the recipe. I read the part about sour cream." He was already reaching for his keys. "Corner store, four minutes."

"Don't, it's fine. We have that jar of roasted ones from Christmas."

"From *Christmas*?"

"They're pickled. They live forever." She handed him the jar. "You open it, my hands are chicken."

He opened it, sniffed, shrugged, and started slicing them on the cutting board with the crack in it they kept meaning to replace. Rosa turned the burner down. Somewhere behind them the rice cooker clicked to warm.

"How was the thing with your manager?" she asked.

"Rescheduled to Thursday. Which is fine. Which is actually better."

"You said that last week too."

"I did," he admitted, and slid the peppers into the pan, and reached past her for the salt.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Nadia got home, which meant Theo had started dinner at least twenty minutes ago. She dropped her bag by the shoe rack and found him at the stove, sleeves pushed up, poking at a pan of chicken thighs with a pair of tongs.

"You're early," she said.

"Meeting got canceled. Guy's kid has strep." He tilted his cheek toward her without turning from the stove, and she kissed it on her way to the fridge. "There's broccoli in there. I was going to roast it but the oven's still preheating because I forgot to press start."

"Classic." She found the broccoli, a little limp, and started breaking it into florets on the cutting board. "Did you get the mail?"

"On the counter. Something from the dentist, I think a bill."

"I thought insurance covered it."

"They cover, like, an idea of it."

She laughed and swept the stems into the compost bin, which needed emptying, which she noted and immediately decided was a tomorrow problem. The oven beeped. Theo slid the tray in and set a timer on his phone.

"How was Priya?" he asked.

"Fine. Stressed. She's convinced they're restructuring again." Nadia leaned against the counter and watched him spoon pan juices over the chicken. "Do we have any lemon?"

"There's half of one, but it's been in there since the fish."

"So no."

"So probably no."

They ate at the coffee table because the dining table still had a laundry basket on it from Sunday, folded but not put away. Theo put on the show they were both mildly invested in and neither would have watched alone. Nadia got up once to refill their water glasses.

"This is good," she said.

"It's just chicken."

"It's good chicken." She tucked her feet under his thigh, and he shifted to make room without looking away from the screen.


Marisol got home first, which meant she'd already started the rice by the time Dev came through the door with his laptop bag and a plastic sack from the corner market.

"They were out of cilantro," he said, toeing off his shoes. "I got parsley. I know, I know."

"Parsley's fine." She was standing at the stove in her work clothes, sleeves pushed up, a dish towel over her shoulder. "There's a package in the hall, by the way. I think it's your thing from eBay."

"The bike pump?"

"I didn't open it. It's your mail."

He set the bag on the counter and started unpacking it — parsley, a lime, a can of black beans he swore they were out of and she swore they weren't. She pointed to the cabinet without looking. He opened it, found two cans, and made a small noise of defeat.

"Now we have three."

"Now we have three," she agreed.

He changed out of his work shirt and came back in a t-shirt, took over the cutting board while she checked the rice. The kitchen was narrow enough that they had a whole choreography for it, stepping around each other, one saying *behind you* when the other was at the stove. The window over the sink had gone dark and their reflections moved in it.

"How was the thing with Karen?"

"Fine. She rescheduled again." Marisol lifted the lid, put it back. "So really it was nothing."

"That's the third time."

"I'm aware."

Dev scraped the onions into the pan and they hissed. The smoke detector in the hallway had opinions about this, so he grabbed a magazine off the table and started fanning at it preemptively, which he did every time, and which she found unreasonably endearing and had never once told him.

They ate on the couch with the TV on low, plates on their knees, arguing mildly about whether the parsley had been a crime.


The kitchen light flickered when Dana flipped it on, the way it had for three months now.

"I'll call the guy tomorrow," Marcus said from the doorway, unbuttoning his cuffs. He'd said the same thing last Tuesday.

"You said that Tuesday."

"I said I'd call. I didn't say I'd get through." He set his keys in the bowl by the toaster and looked in the fridge. "Did we decide on the chicken thighs or are those still hopeful?"

"They're still hopeful. Use them or lose them." Dana was already rinsing rice, watching the water go cloudy and then clear. Her feet hurt. She'd worn the shoes she liked instead of the shoes that made sense.

Marcus pulled out the package and peeled the plastic back, wincing at the smell — not bad, just chicken. "Sheet pan? I don't want to babysit a skillet."

"Sheet pan. There's broccoli in the crisper but I think it's got the yellow thing happening."

"The yellow thing is fine. It's the slime thing you have to watch for." He held up the head, inspecting it like a jeweler. "This is fine."

They worked around each other in the narrow galley, a choreography they'd never discussed and never had to. He salted the chicken heavily, the way his mother did. She measured the rice water with her finger, the way hers did.

"Your sister called me," Dana said. "About the twenty-eighth."

"She called you? She didn't call me."

"She knows you don't answer."

"I answer." He slid the pan into the oven, set the timer with the heel of his hand. "Sometimes."

"I told her probably. Is it probably?"

"It's probably." He leaned against the counter and pulled the elastic out of her hair without asking, then put it back, looser. "Did you eat lunch today?"

"A granola bar."

"Dana."

"I know." She turned the burner down and let the lid go on. "Twenty minutes."


The kitchen smelled like burnt garlic before Danielle even got her coat off.

"I know," Peter said, waving a dish towel at the smoke detector. "I know. I got distracted."

"By what?"

"Ross called about the truck." He scraped the pan into the trash and started over, oil hissing. "He wants to borrow it Saturday to move his mom's couch. I said fine, but she lives in Frederick, so that's most of the day."

Danielle set her bag on the chair that had become, over four years, the bag chair. She toed off her shoes and left them by the radiator, then picked them up again because Peter had asked her twice that month. "Did you get the chicken out this morning?"

"It's been thawing since noon."

"Noon isn't morning."

"It's thawed. Feel it." He held out the package, and she pressed a thumb into it and shrugged, conceding.

She washed her hands and started on the broccoli, cutting florets away from the stalk while Peter minced fresh garlic more carefully this time. The window over the sink had fogged. Somewhere upstairs the neighbor's kid was practicing scales on a keyboard, the same eight notes.

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

"He moved it to Thursday. Which is fine, except now I'm presenting the same week as the audit." She swept the broccoli into a colander. "Do we have lemons?"

"We have half a lemon that might be older than the relationship."

"Then no."

"Then no."

They worked around each other in the narrow galley, one stepping back as the other reached, a choreography neither of them noticed anymore. Peter put on a record because he insisted it was better than a speaker, and Danielle said nothing about the scratch in the second track.

They ate at the coffee table with the TV off, plates on their knees. The chicken was slightly overdone. Neither mentioned it.

"Saturday's fine," she said finally. "I've got laundry anyway."


The kitchen light flickered once before settling, the way it had for three months now. Dana dropped her keys in the ceramic bowl by the door and toed off her shoes.

"Is that you?" Marcus called from somewhere upstairs.

"No, it's a burglar who happens to have a key."

He came down in sweatpants and a faded college t-shirt, hair still flat on one side from the nap he'd probably deny taking. "How was the thing with Ruth?"

"She wants the report by Thursday now." Dana opened the fridge and stared into it. "We have chicken thighs and something in a Tupperware I'm afraid of."

"That's the chili. It's fine. It's from Sunday."

"It's Wednesday."

"Sunday to Wednesday is fine."

She pulled out the chicken anyway and set it on the counter. Marcus turned on the oven without being asked and started rooting through the pantry, moving cans aside with a clatter.

"We're out of rice," he said.

"We're not out of rice. It's behind the—no, the other side. The bag with the elephant."

"Huh." He held it up. "Why is it behind the pasta?"

"Because you put it there."

He didn't argue, which meant she was right. She rinsed the chicken and patted it dry while he filled a pot, and for a while there was just the sound of water and the oven ticking as it heated.

"Your mom called me," he said.

"Called you?"

"On my phone. She wanted to know if we're coming for Easter."

Dana scraped garlic off the cutting board with the flat of the knife. "What'd you say?"

"I said I'd ask you and then never get back to her, which is our tradition."

She laughed, and he bumped her hip with his to get to the drawer for the wooden spoon, and the oven beeped that it was ready.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Devon got the door open, one arm hooked through two grocery bags and his laptop bag sliding down his shoulder. Maya looked up from the cutting board.

"You got the cilantro?"

"I got the cilantro. They were out of limes, though. I got the little bottle of juice."

"That's basically green vinegar."

"Then you can drive to Kroger next time." He set the bags on the counter and started unloading. "How was the call?"

"Long. Brenda's doing that thing again where she asks a question and then answers it herself before anyone can talk." Maya swept the diced onion off the board into the skillet, and the sound of it hitting the oil filled the kitchen. "Can you get the black beans? Second shelf."

He found them behind a can of pumpkin they'd bought in November and never used. "Should I throw this out?"

"It doesn't expire until, like, 2027."

"Are we ever making pie?"

"We might make pie."

He put it back and handed her the beans, then leaned against the counter and started peeling the sticker off an avocado. Their cat, Ruth, wound between his ankles and then gave up on him and went to sit under the table.

"The landlord emailed," Maya said. "They're doing the water heater Thursday, sometime between eight and four."

"That's not a time. That's a workday."

"I know. I said I'd work from home." She tasted the skillet, made a face, and reached past him for the cumin. "Can you set the table? And the good hot sauce, not the one your brother left."

He got out two plates, the mismatched forks, the folded paper towels they used instead of napkins. Outside the window over the sink it had gotten dark without either of them noticing, the way it did in February.

"Five more minutes," she said.

"Okay." He sat down anyway.


Marisol got home first, which meant she had the fridge open before she'd even taken off her coat. Half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of spinach going soft at the edges, three eggs. She was still standing there when Dev came in, shaking rain off his jacket.

"Don't say it," she said.

"I'm not saying anything." He hung the jacket on the hook that had been coming loose from the wall since March. "I'm just observing that the chicken has been in there since Sunday."

"It's Thursday."

"I know what day it is."

She pulled the chicken out anyway and set it on the counter. Dev filled a pot with water and put it on the back burner, then went looking for pasta and found only orzo, which neither of them remembered buying.

"Orzo's fine," Marisol said. "Orzo with chicken and spinach. That's a dish."

"That's a dish people order in restaurants."

"That's what I'm saying."

He started pulling meat off the bone while she rinsed the spinach in the colander, and for a while there was just the sound of water and the little tick of the burner. The radio in the other room was doing a story about a bridge closure.

"Your mom called me," Dev said.

"She called you?"

"She wanted to know if we were coming to Diane's thing. I said I'd ask you. I've asked you."

"That's the twentieth?"

"Twenty-first."

Marisol shook the colander over the sink. "Tell her yes. I'll drive."

He dumped the orzo in when the water rolled. She salted it after, which he pretended not to see, the same as always. The windows had fogged. Somebody's car alarm went off down the block and stopped again.

"Butter?" she asked.

"Obviously butter."

They ate on the couch, plates on their knees, because the table had mail on it.


Renee got home first, which meant she got to pick the music. She put on something with a lot of bass while she pulled the chicken thighs out of the fridge, and by the time Marcus came through the door twenty minutes later, the kitchen smelled like garlic and the sink was already full of the day's dishes.

"You started without me," he said, dropping his bag by the closet.

"You said seven. It's seven-fifteen."

"Traffic on Cermak. There's construction now, apparently. Forever." He washed his hands, dried them on the towel hanging from the oven handle, and looked over her shoulder at the pan. "Are we doing rice or the couscous?"

"There's like a quarter cup of rice left in the bag."

"So couscous."

"So couscous," she agreed.

He filled the kettle and got out the smaller pot. They'd lived together two years and had worked out most of the choreography — she took the stove, he took the counter, and neither of them opened the dishwasher while the other was standing in front of it. He chopped a cucumber and half a red onion for a salad, then went digging in the fridge for the feta.

"Did you call about the water heater?"

"I left a message. They said someone would call back and no one called back."

"Shocking."

"I'll call again tomorrow." He shook the container. "This feta's kind of old."

"Smell it."

He smelled it. "It's fine. It's brine."

They ate at the little table by the window because the coffee table had a stack of unopened mail on it that neither of them wanted to deal with. Renee told him about her coworker who kept microwaving fish. Marcus said his sister had texted about Thanksgiving, way too early, and Renee said they should probably decide something soon, and he said probably, and they left it there for the night.


The kitchen light flickered once before settling, the way it had for three months now, and Dana made a mental note to buy a new bulb, the same mental note she'd made yesterday.

"Onions or no onions?" she called.

Marcus was still in the entryway, wrestling off his work boots, one hand braced against the wall. "Onions. Always onions. Who are you asking?"

"Somebody who complained about heartburn last Tuesday."

"That was the salsa." He came in socked-footed, dropped his keys in the ceramic bowl by the microwave — a bowl Dana's sister had made in a pottery class and which neither of them particularly liked but which had become, unaccountably, essential. He kissed the back of her neck and looked over her shoulder at the cutting board. "That's a lot of onion."

"It cooks down."

"That's what you said about the spinach and we ate three leaves."

She elbowed him gently and he went to the fridge, standing in its open door in the way that made her crazy, scanning shelves he already knew the contents of. He pulled out a beer and held it up in question. She shook her head, then reconsidered and nodded, and he opened two.

"The dishwasher's still doing the thing," he said.

"The grinding thing?"

"The grinding, and now a smell."

"Great. Wonderful."

"I'll look at it Saturday."

"You'll look at it and then we'll call somebody."

"Probably," he admitted.

He rinsed the chicken while she got the oil going, and they moved around each other with the particular choreography of people who had lived in a small kitchen for four years — she stepped left, he ducked right, neither of them looking. The radio was on low, some station that played too many commercials.

"Your mom called me," he said.

"About Thanksgiving?"

"About Thanksgiving."

Dana scraped the onions into the pan and they hissed. "We'll talk about it after we eat."

"That's what I told her."


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Deven got home, which meant Priya had beaten him by at least twenty minutes. He found her at the counter, still in her work slacks, slicing scallions with the radio murmuring something about a city council vote.

"Traffic?" she asked.

"There was a stalled truck on Grand. I sat behind a school bus for ten minutes watching a kid do his homework through the window." He set down his bag, kissed the side of her head, and went to wash his hands. "What are we doing?"

"That chicken thing. The one with the yogurt marinade, except I forgot to marinate it, so now it's the chicken thing where you just cook chicken."

"Ambitious."

"Chop the peppers and don't be smug."

He got the cutting board, the green one, because she had opinions about which board was for which. Behind him the pan started hissing. They moved around each other the way people do after four years in a small kitchen—he stepped left, she reached past his elbow for the salt, neither of them looked up.

"Your mom called the landline," she said. "I didn't know we had a landline."

"It came with the internet package. What'd she want?"

"To know if we're coming for Thanksgiving, and to tell me about her neighbor's hip replacement. In that order, but not by much."

"Did you commit us?"

"I said I'd ask you, so consider yourself asked."

He scraped the peppers into the pan. "We should go. She'll make the good stuffing."

"Then we're going." She turned the burner down. "Can you do the dishes tonight? I've got that thing at seven."

"The book club you don't like."

"The book club I love and the people I tolerate."

They ate at the coffee table because the dining table had mail on it, again, and neither of them had gotten around to it.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Delia came through the door, shaking rain off her jacket. She hung it on the hook that had been loose since March and still hadn't been fixed.

"You're home early," Marcus said from the kitchen. He had a dish towel over one shoulder and was doing something aggressive to a bunch of scallions.

"Meeting got canceled. Whitney's kid has strep." She set her bag on the chair by the door instead of carrying it upstairs. "What are we doing?"

"That chicken from Sunday. It needs to get used or thrown out."

"It's fine, right?"

"It's fine. I smelled it." He slid the scallions off the board with the flat of the knife. "Can you deal with the broccoli? It's in the crisper."

She washed her hands and found the broccoli behind a bag of carrots that had gone rubbery. She held them up. "These are done."

"Compost bucket's full."

"Everything in this house is full." But she said it without heat, and dumped them in anyway, pressing down with her palm.

They worked around each other in the narrow galley, a choreography they'd developed over three years and two apartments. He reached past her for the soy sauce; she leaned back without looking.

"Your mom called me," he said.

"Called you?"

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

Delia cut the broccoli into pieces that were roughly, but not entirely, the same size. "What'd you say?"

"That I'd ask you. Which I'm doing now."

"Driving's eleven hours."

"Flying's four hundred dollars each."

"So driving," she said, and he laughed, and the chicken hit the pan with a sound that made further conversation briefly impossible.

They ate on the couch, plates on their knees, the television on but muted, while outside the rain kept up its steady, unremarkable noise against the windows.


Marisol got home first, which meant she got to pick the music. She put on the playlist Devin called "sad women with guitars" and started pulling things out of the fridge: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of spinach that needed using, the last two eggs.

Devin came in at 6:20, dropped his backpack by the shoe rack, and immediately went to change out of his work pants. When he came back to the kitchen in sweatpants and a Bulls shirt older than their relationship, she handed him a knife and pointed at the onion.

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

"She rescheduled. Again." He started cutting, badly, the way he always did — too thick, uneven. She didn't correct him anymore. "So I sat there for forty minutes rewriting the deck nobody's going to read."

"That's basically the whole job."

"That's basically the whole job," he agreed.

She shredded the chicken with two forks while the pan heated. The apartment smelled like garlic almost immediately, which was the point. Devin scraped the onion in and it hissed, and he said "ope" and turned the burner down.

"Did you pay the electric?"

"Saturday. It's on the thing." He gestured vaguely at the fridge, where a Post-it read PAID 3/8 in his handwriting.

"Okay. Because last month —"

"Last month was the water bill and that was your login."

"Mm," she said, which was as close as she came to conceding a point.

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had become a mail table sometime in January and neither of them had done anything about it. The chicken was fine. The spinach had wilted down to almost nothing, like always.

"We should do something Friday," Devin said.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Something."

She leaned into his shoulder, still chewing. "Okay," she said. "Something."


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Danielle came in through the side door, shaking rain off her jacket. She hung it on the hook by the recycling bin, which was overflowing again.

"You didn't take that out," she said.

"I was going to." Marcus was at the counter with a knife, working through a bell pepper with more force than the pepper required. "Then I got home and the cat had knocked over the plant."

"Which plant?"

"The pothos. The dirt's still on the floor, I'll get it after."

Danielle looked at the corner by the bookshelf, where a small archipelago of potting soil had spread across the hardwood. She decided not to say anything and went to wash her hands instead, nudging past him at the sink. The apartment kitchen was narrow enough that they'd developed a whole vocabulary of hip-checks and *behind you*s over the past three years.

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

"It got moved to Thursday. Which is fine, except now I have to redo the numbers because they got new data." She opened the fridge. "Do we have any of that chili garlic sauce?"

"Door. Left side."

She found it behind a jar of pickles neither of them had opened. Marcus scraped the peppers into the pan, and the sizzle filled the kitchen for a second, and he turned the fan on, which barely helped.

"My mom called," he said. "She wants to know if we're coming for Easter."

"Are we?"

"I told her probably. Is that okay?"

"That's okay." Danielle got two plates down. "I have to drive back Sunday night, though. Not Monday."

"I told her that too."

They ate at the small table with the wobbly leg, the TV going quietly in the other room, neither of them really watching it.


Marisol got home first, which meant the kitchen was hers for the twenty minutes before Dev's train got in. She dropped her bag on the chair that had become a bag chair sometime last spring and pulled the chicken thighs out of the fridge, still cold and slick in their package. The rice cooker was already going—she'd set it that morning, one of the few things she managed before coffee.

Dev came in at 6:40 with the mail and a complaint about the guy who eats tuna on the express bus.

"Every day," he said. "Same guy. Same tuna."

"Maybe he's committed."

"He's committed something." He set the mail on the counter, sorted it into a keep pile and a shred pile, and washed his hands. "What can I do?"

"Green beans. There's a bag in the crisper."

He found them behind the celery they'd bought with vague intentions two weeks ago and had never touched. He held it up. "Do we throw this out or keep pretending?"

"Keep pretending."

He rinsed the beans in the colander and started snapping the ends off, standing at the counter beside her while she got the pan hot. The oil spat. She stepped back, swore mildly, and lowered the heat.

"My mom called," he said. "She wants to know if we're coming for Thanksgiving or doing the thing with your sister again."

"Can we decide Saturday?"

"That's what I said. She said fine in the voice."

"The voice." Marisol flipped the chicken. "We'll go. I like your mom."

"She likes you more than me."

"Obviously."

He tossed the beans in the second pan with butter and too much garlic, the way she liked. The kitchen filled up with noise and steam and the smell of it. Somewhere in the living room the radiator knocked twice and went quiet.

"Plates?" he asked.

"Plates," she said.


The kitchen smelled like garlic before Dana even got her shoes off. She dropped her bag by the coat hooks, and from the stove Marcus called out, "Don't panic. I didn't touch the pan you like."

"That's not a comfort. That means you used the good one."

He grinned without turning around. "It heats evenly."

She came up behind him and looked over his shoulder at the chicken thighs going brown, skin down, spitting a little. Someone had left the vent hood off, so the smoke detector was living dangerously. Dana reached past him and clicked the fan on high.

"Thank you," he said. "I keep forgetting that thing exists."

"It's fine. How was the doctor?"

"Rescheduled. They called at ten and said the guy's out until Thursday." He flipped a thigh with tongs. "So I went to the store instead. We were out of everything. Butter, coffee, dish soap. There's a lemon in the fridge that was somehow the last lemon in the county."

Dana pulled the cutting board from the drying rack and started on the green beans, snapping the ends off in a rhythm she didn't think about anymore. The radio on the windowsill was playing something low and forgettable.

"Your mom called the house line," she said.

"There's a house line?"

"Apparently. It rang while I was on my lunch break Tuesday and I didn't know what it was."

He laughed. "God. Okay. I'll call her back tomorrow."

They worked around each other in the narrow space, an old choreography — he stepped left when she opened the drawer, she leaned back when he crossed to the sink. The beans went into a skillet with the last of the butter. Marcus set out two plates, the mismatched ones, because the matched set was still in the dishwasher from Sunday.

"Wine?" he asked.

"Half a glass. I've got that call at seven."

He poured a little more than half and handed it to her anyway, and she didn't argue.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Devon came through the door, shaking rain off his jacket. He hung it on the hook that had been loose since March, the one they kept meaning to re-anchor.

"Traffic?" Maya asked from the kitchen. She had a dish towel over one shoulder and was pressing garlic with the flat of a knife, the way her mother did.

"There was a stalled truck on Grand. I sat behind it for twenty minutes watching a guy eat an entire sandwich in his side mirror." He kissed the top of her head and reached past her for a beer. "What are we doing?"

"Whatever's in the fridge. There's that chicken from Sunday and half a bag of green beans that are going soft."

"Ambitious."

"You're welcome to order something."

"No, no. Green beans are good." He set his bottle down and started trimming the ends, flicking them into the compost bin under the sink, which needed emptying and which they both noticed and neither mentioned.

They worked around each other in the small galley kitchen, a choreography built over four years of two leases. She asked about his sister's move; he said it was happening, probably, in August. He asked whether she'd heard back about the interview. Not yet. She said it too quickly, and he let it go, sliding the beans into the hot pan so they hissed.

"Do we have soy sauce?"

"Behind the vinegar."

He found it. She shredded the chicken with two forks and dumped it in. The window over the sink fogged at the corners. Somewhere upstairs, their neighbor's dog trotted across the floor.

"Table or couch?" she asked.

"Couch. It's a couch night."

She handed him two bowls without looking, already reaching for the rice paddle, and he carried them out to where the lamp was on.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Dana got the front door open with her elbow, a grocery bag hanging from each wrist.

"I got the cilantro," she called. "They were out of the little clamshells so I got the bunch, which means we're going to be throwing out cilantro in nine days like we always do."

Marcus came out of the bedroom pulling a t-shirt over his head, work slacks still on. "We could make that green sauce again."

"We say that every time."

"And someday we'll mean it." He took the bags from her and set them on the counter, which was already crowded with the mail, a phone charger, and the lid to a container neither of them could find the bottom of.

She washed her hands and started on the peppers while he got the chicken out of the fridge. The pan was already heating, a little too hot — he could tell by the way the oil moved.

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

"Moved to Thursday. Which is fine, except now Thursday's got three things on it." She scraped the peppers off the cutting board with the flat of the knife. "How was your day?"

"Long. Kevin sent a forty-minute meeting invite for something that was a paragraph."

"You should tell him that."

"I'm going to say it in the meeting. With everyone there. Very casually."

"No, you won't."

"No," he agreed. "I won't."

The chicken went in and hissed. Dana reached past him for the soy sauce and put a hand briefly on his back to let him know she was there, so he wouldn't turn into her with the tongs.

"Is that rice from Sunday?" she asked.

"It's from Monday."

"That's Sunday's rice, Marcus."

He looked at it. "It's fine."

She got out two plates anyway, and the good forks, and they ate standing up at the counter because neither of them felt like clearing the table.


Marcy got home first, which meant the kitchen was already warm when Dev came through the door at six-forty, shaking rain off his jacket.

"There's a leak in the hall ceiling again," he said, hanging it on the hook that had been loose since March.

"I know. I put the bucket out." She was standing at the counter with a chicken breast under her palm, sawing it into cutlets with the knife they both agreed needed sharpening. "Also the landlord texted back. He said Thursday."

"He said Thursday last week."

"I'm aware." She wiped her hands on a dish towel. "Can you do the potatoes? They're in the mesh bag."

Dev washed his hands and started peeling over the trash can, the way she hated, so he moved to the cutting board without being asked. The radio was on low, a station that played too many commercials for car dealerships.

"Your mom called the landline," Marcy said. "I don't know how she still has that number."

"She's the only reason we have that number."

"She wanted to know if we're coming for Easter."

Dev quartered a potato. "Are we?"

"I have that conference the following Monday. But I could fly back Sunday night."

"You'd be a wreck."

"I'd be a wreck either way."

He didn't argue. The chicken hit the pan and hissed, and Marcy stepped back, one hand up. The overhead fan made a rattling sound they had both stopped hearing years ago.

They ate at the small table by the window because the dining room had become where the laundry lived. Dev had made too many potatoes. Marcy salted hers twice and said the chicken was good, and meant it, and Dev said he'd bought the fancy salt on purpose.

Afterward he washed and she dried, and neither of them mentioned Thursday, or Easter, or the bucket in the hall filling one slow drop at a time.


The rice cooker clicked to warm just as Dana got her coat off. Marcus was already at the counter, sleeves shoved up, working through a bag of green beans with the paring knife they kept meaning to replace.

"You're home early," she said.

"Meeting got canceled. Twenty-two people on a call and nobody had anything to say, so Priya just ended it." He snapped a bean and tossed the ends into the compost bin. "There's chicken thighs thawed. I was thinking that lemon thing."

"With the capers?"

"We're out of capers."

"Then it's just the lemon thing." She dropped her bag by the stairs, which he would move later without mentioning it, and washed her hands at the sink. The window over it had fogged a little at the corners. Outside, their neighbor's motion light kept flicking on for nothing—a cat, probably, or the wind moving the hedge.

She took the cutting board and started on an onion while he got the pan going. For a while there was just the sound of oil, the knife, the refrigerator humming its uneven hum.

"Your mom called the house phone," he said.

"We have a house phone?"

"Apparently. It's in the basement, plugged in behind the dehumidifier. I heard it ringing and thought something was dying."

Dana laughed and scraped the onion off the board with the flat of the blade. "What did she want?"

"I didn't answer it. I couldn't find it in time."

"She'll call my cell. She always does." She reached past him for the tongs, her hip bumping his. "Move a little."

He moved. The chicken went in loud, and he stepped back from the spitting oil, wiping his hands on the dish towel slung over his shoulder.

"Salad?" she asked.

"There's that arugula, but it's questionable."

"Everything in that drawer is questionable."

They ate at the counter, standing, because neither of them felt like clearing the table.


Nadia got home first, which meant she got the good half of the kitchen. She dropped her bag on the chair by the door, kicked off her shoes without untying them, and stood in front of the open refrigerator for a full thirty seconds, the way her mother always yelled at her for doing.

"There's chicken," she called out when she heard Wes's key in the lock. "From Sunday. Is it still good?"

"Sunday's four days." He came in shrugging out of his jacket, hair flattened from his bike helmet. "Smell it."

"You smell it. You're the one with opinions about food safety."

He smelled it, made a face that wasn't quite a no, and set it on the counter anyway. "Fine. Rice and that chicken and the broccoli before it goes rubbery. Do we have soy sauce?"

"We have three soy sauces. You bought two by accident."

"One's tamari."

"Sure." She filled the rice cooker cup at the sink and dumped it into the pot, sloshing water over her wrist. "How was the thing with Dwyer?"

"Rescheduled. Again." He was chopping broccoli badly, into pieces of wildly different sizes, and she decided not to say anything. "Third time. At this point I think he just likes putting it on the calendar."

"You could stop accepting."

"I could." He scraped the broccoli into the pan and it hissed. "Did you call the landlord about the window?"

"I left a message. I hate leaving messages. I always say 'um' twice and then thank him too much."

The kitchen got warm. Nadia set two plates on the counter, then remembered they'd eaten on the couch the last four nights and put them there anyway, deliberately, like a small resolution. Wes shook the pan.

"Ten minutes," he said.

"I'm going to change out of these pants."

"Take your time. It'll be lukewarm either way."


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Danielle got her boots off. She left them by the door, next to Marcus's sneakers, which he never put on the mat no matter how many times she mentioned it.

"You beat me home," she called.

"Barely." He was at the counter in his work polo, sleeves pushed up, cutting chicken thighs into strips on the plastic board they'd designated for meat after a minor argument about cross-contamination last spring. "There was a wreck on Halsted. I sat behind a school bus for like fifteen minutes."

She dropped her bag on a kitchen chair and looked in the pan. "Are we doing the ginger thing?"

"That was the plan. Unless you want it plain."

"No, the ginger thing's good." She washed her hands, then opened the fridge and stood there with the door hanging. "We have a lot of scallions."

"I bought scallions Tuesday."

"So did I."

He laughed. "Okay. Scallion week."

She started trimming them at the sink while he got the oil going. The pan spat, and he stepped back, wiping his hand on the dish towel that hung off the oven handle.

"How was Lauren?" he asked.

"Fine. Stressed. She asked if we were coming to the thing in October."

"Are we?"

"I said probably. Is that a no?"

"It's a probably." He shook the pan. "Can you grab the soy sauce? Low sodium one, not the—yeah."

They worked around each other in the narrow space, a choreography of ten months in this apartment. She set two plates on the counter, then a third, smaller one for leftovers, because he always made too much.

"Do we have any of that chili crisp left?" she asked.

"Back of the fridge. Behind the pickles."

She found it. Outside, someone's car alarm went off and stopped. He turned the burner down, and they ate standing up, because neither of them felt like moving to the table.


The kitchen light flickered once before settling, the way it had for three months now, and Devon made a mental note to change the bulb, the same note he'd made yesterday.

"There's chicken thawed," Priya called from the bedroom, still peeling off her work clothes. "The package from Sunday."

"Is it still good?"

"It's Thursday."

"That's four days."

"Three and a half." She came out in sweatpants and one of his old college shirts, hair up in a clip. "Smell it."

He did. It smelled like nothing, like cold and plastic. "Fine."

She put water on for rice while he found the cutting board under a stack of mail neither of them had opened. There was a coupon circular, a notice about the water bill, something from her dentist.

"Your mom called me," she said.

"Today?"

"At lunch. She wanted to know if we're coming for Easter."

Devon slid chicken pieces into the pan and they hissed. "What'd you say?"

"I said I'd talk to you. Which is what I'm doing." She was cutting an onion badly, the way she always did, chunks of wildly uneven size. He'd stopped mentioning it around year two.

"We could go Saturday and leave Sunday night."

"That's a lot of driving for one day."

"It's my mother."

"I'm not saying no." She scraped the onion into the pan with the flat of the knife. "I'm saying it's a lot of driving."

The rice boiled over and she caught it, lifting the lid, turning the burner down. The window over the sink had gone dark and reflected them both back, two shapes moving around each other in a small space.

"There's that spinach," he said. "Should use it."

"It's slimy."

"Some of it."

She got it out anyway and started picking through the leaves, keeping what was good, dropping the rest in the trash under the sink.


Marisol got home first, which meant she got the good part—the quiet kitchen, the radio low, the onions already sweating in the pan by the time Dev's key scraped the lock.

"It smells like you're mad at something," he said, dropping his bag by the shoe rack.

"It smells like garlic. Wash your hands."

He did, bumping her hip to get to the sink, and she let him, tipping the cutting board over the pan so the peppers slid in with a hiss. He looked in the fridge the way he always did, like something new might have appeared since morning.

"There's the rotisserie chicken," she said. "I was going to shred it."

"Into what?"

"Into the pan, Dev."

"I'm just asking. Sometimes you have a vision."

He pulled the chicken out, peeled the plastic dome back, and started tearing at the breast meat with his fingers while she stirred. Steam fogged the window over the sink. Outside, someone's car alarm went off for four seconds and stopped.

"Your mom called me," he said.

"Called you?"

"To ask if we're coming Sunday. I said probably. Then she asked about the water heater."

"What did you tell her?"

"That it's fine, because it is fine, and she said her guy could look at it, and I said okay to be polite, and now I think her guy is coming Saturday."

Marisol laughed, scraping the pan. "That's how it works."

He found the tortillas in the back of the fridge behind a jar of pickles neither of them had opened, and set two plates out—the mismatched ones, because the good ones were in the dishwasher, still dirty, because neither of them had run it. She noticed and said nothing. He noticed her noticing and started loading the last two bowls in.

They ate standing up at the counter, half-watching a bird on the fire escape, talking about nothing much—his coworker's divorce, whether to repaint the bedroom, if there was any ice cream left.

There wasn't. He offered to go get some. She said tomorrow.


Maya got home first, which meant she got the good half hour — kitchen to herself, radio on low, the onions already going gold in the pan before Devon's key turned in the lock.

"It smells illegal in here," he said, dropping his bag by the closet instead of in it.

"It's just onions." She tipped the cutting board over the pan. "Did you get the bread?"

He held up the bag. "They were out of the seedy one. I got the sourdough."

"That's fine." She reached past him for the wooden spoon. "There's wine open from Sunday if it hasn't turned."

Devon poured two glasses and tasted his with the wary expression of a man expecting vinegar. "It's alive," he reported. He rinsed the mushrooms, tore off their stems, sliced them badly, and slid them toward her.

"These are all different sizes."

"They'll cook."

"Some of them will cook."

He bumped her hip with his to move her off the drawer he needed. She let herself be moved. Somewhere in the middle of it he told her about the meeting that got moved twice and then canceled, and she told him about the woman on the bus who'd narrated the whole route out loud, and neither of them was really listening in the deep sense, just in the way where the other voice is the point.

The pasta water finally boiled. Maya salted it heavily; Devon set the table, which meant two forks, two plates, and the paper towel roll standing in for napkins because the real ones were in the wash.

"We should get a second dish rack," he said.

"We should get a dishwasher."

"That's a landlord conversation."

"Then we should get a second dish rack."

They ate at the small table with their knees touching underneath, the radio still going, the pan soaking in the sink where it would sit until one of them gave in.


Maya got home first, which meant the radio in the kitchen was already on, tuned to the station that played too many commercials. She'd changed out of her work clothes into sweatpants and one of Devon's old college T-shirts, the collar stretched out from years of washing.

She was halfway through chopping an onion when he came in, keys clattering into the ceramic bowl by the door.

"Traffic on the parkway?" she asked.

"Accident near the exit. Nobody hurt, I don't think, but they had two lanes shut." He set down a plastic grocery bag. "I got the sour cream. They didn't have the low-fat kind you like, so I got the regular."

"That's fine. It's better anyway."

He washed his hands at the sink, bumping her hip with his to make room, and she leaned into it without looking up. "Tacos?"

"Chicken. The ground beef looked weird when I opened it, so I threw it out."

"Weird how?"

"Gray. Just — gray."

"Huh." He pulled the cutting board she wasn't using from the cabinet and started on a tomato. "Did you call about the car thing?"

"I left a voicemail. Nobody called back." She scraped the onion into the pan, and the oil hissed. "I'll try again tomorrow on my lunch."

They worked without much talking for a while, which was one of the things she liked. The radio moved on to a song they both knew and neither commented on. He got out plates, then remembered the tortillas and put them in the oven wrapped in foil, the way his mother did.

"Your sister called me," he said. "Something about July."

"Oh God. The lake house."

"I told her we'd talk about it."

"Good answer." Maya turned off the burner. "Grab the hot sauce? It's behind the pickles."


Nadia got home first, which meant she got to pick the music. She put on the old bossa nova record her father had given her, the one with the scratch in the third track, and started pulling things out of the fridge: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans she'd forgotten about, a lemon going soft at one end.

Theo came in around six-thirty, dropping his keys in the ceramic dish by the door. "There's a whole thing happening on Fremont," he said, shrugging out of his jacket. "They've got it down to one lane."

"Since when?"

"Since today, apparently. Nobody tells me anything." He kissed the back of her neck on his way to the sink, washed his hands, then peered at the beans. "Are those still good?"

"They're fine. They're a little sad but they're fine."

He took over trimming them while she shredded the chicken with two forks. The kitchen was narrow enough that they had a whole choreography worked out — he stepped left, she stepped right, neither of them thought about it anymore.

"Your mom called the house phone," she said. "I don't know why she does that."

"Because she thinks cell phones are a fad." He scraped the bean ends into the compost bin, which needed emptying. "Did you talk to her?"

"For like twenty minutes. She wants to know if we're coming for Thanksgiving."

"What'd you say?"

"I said I'd ask you, which is what I'm doing."

Theo put the beans in the pan with too much butter, the way he always did. "Can we decide Sunday? I don't want to think about November."

"That's fair."

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had a jigsaw puzzle on it, half-finished, a lighthouse. Nadia said the chicken was dry. Theo said it was Sunday's chicken, what did she expect. Neither of them got up for a while afterward.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Dana came through the back door, shaking rain off her jacket. She hung it on the hook that always sagged a little, the one Marcus kept saying he'd re-anchor.

"You beat me," she said.

"Barely. There was a wreck on Ridgeway." Marcus was at the counter with a knife and a cutting board, working through a bell pepper with more enthusiasm than technique. "I got the chicken thighs marinating around four-thirty. They've been sitting in that soy-ginger thing."

Dana kicked off her shoes and left them by the mat, then thought better of it and nudged them into the closet. "Did you use the last of the ginger?"

"There was a nub."

"That nub was ancient."

"It smelled fine." He slid the pepper strips into a bowl. "Can you do the broccoli? I never cut it right."

"You cut it into trees. That's fine. That's how it's supposed to look." But she washed her hands and took over anyway, because he really did cut it into trunks.

The kitchen was small enough that they had a whole choreography for it—she stepped back, he reached past her for the pan, neither of them said excuse me anymore. The exhaust fan rattled when he turned it on. He'd said he'd look at that too.

"Your mom called me," he said, over the sound of the chicken hitting oil.

"She called *you*?"

"About Thanksgiving. She wanted to know if we were coming as, quote, a unit."

Dana laughed and pushed the broccoli toward him. "What'd you say?"

"I said I'd have to check with the unit."

"Very smooth." She got two plates down, the mismatched ones, because the good ones were still in the dishwasher from Sunday. "Tell her yes. Tell her I'll bring the pie so she doesn't make the pecan one again."

"You tell her that."

"I'm not telling her that."

He turned the chicken. It smelled like ginger, ancient or not. Outside, the rain kept on.


The kitchen light had been flickering for three weeks, and neither of them had done anything about it.

"I'll call the guy tomorrow," Dana said, dropping her bag on the chair by the door. She kicked off her flats and left them where they landed, which she knew annoyed Marcus, which was partly why she did it.

He was already at the counter, sleeves pushed up, dicing an onion badly. "You said that last Tuesday."

"I said I'd think about calling the guy last Tuesday. Tomorrow I'm calling."

He slid the onion into the pan and it hissed. The apartment smelled immediately better. Dana came up behind him, looked over his shoulder at the mess of the cutting board, and reached past him for the wine.

"Chicken's been thawing since this morning," he said. "I think it's fine. Smell it."

"You smell it. You're the one who put it out."

He picked up the package, sniffed, made a face that meant nothing conclusive, and set it down. "It's fine."

She poured two glasses and set one by his elbow. "Ray asked about the trip again."

"What'd you tell him?"

"That we hadn't decided."

Marcus scraped the garlic in and the smell sharpened. "We haven't."

"I know. That's why I said it." She hopped up onto the counter, the spot he always told her not to sit, and held her glass against her knee. "His deposit's due Friday, though."

"Then we'll decide by Thursday."

Outside, someone's car alarm went off and stopped. Dana got down, found the colander in the cabinet under the sink where it didn't belong, and ran cold water over the green beans. Marcus put on the small radio he'd bought at a yard sale, tuned to whatever came in clearest.

"There's no rice," she said, opening the pantry.

"There's bread."

"Bread's fine."

They ate at the coffee table, plates on their knees, the light above them buzzing faintly, and neither of them mentioned Friday again.


Marisol got home first, which meant the kitchen smelled like garlic before Danny even parked. She'd been standing at the stove for ten minutes in her work clothes, blazer draped over a chair, stirring the onions with a wooden spoon that had a burn mark on the handle from an incident neither of them brought up anymore.

"You started without me," Danny said, dropping his keys in the bowl by the door.

"You said seven. It's seven-twenty."

"Traffic on Halsted. There's construction." He kissed the top of her head on the way to the sink, washed his hands, and pulled the cutting board down from the cabinet where it never quite fit. "What are we doing?"

"That chicken thing. With the lemon. But we don't have any parsley."

"We have that dried stuff."

"It's not the same and you know it."

He shrugged and started slicing a zucchini into rounds, which he knew she'd say were too thick. She said it. He made them thinner without comment.

The rice cooker clicked. Somewhere upstairs the neighbor's dog scrabbled across hardwood. Marisol turned down the burner and asked how the meeting went, and Danny told her about the client who kept saying "circle back" until it stopped sounding like words. She laughed with her mouth closed, the way she did when she was tired.

"My mom called," she said. "She asked about Thanksgiving again."

"What'd you tell her?"

"That I'd talk to you." She scraped the onions to one side of the pan. "So I'm talking to you."

"We can go. It's fine."

"You say that now."

"I say it now and I'll say it in November."

She handed him two plates, the mismatched ones, because the good ones were still in the dishwasher from Sunday. They ate at the counter, standing, because the table had become a place for mail. It was Tuesday. Neither of them minded.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Daniel came through the door, shaking rain off his jacket. He hung it on the hook that had been holding too much weight for months, the drywall anchor loosening a little more each time.

"You beat me," he said.

"Barely." Nora was standing at the counter with a knife and a red bell pepper, her laptop still open beside the cutting board, an unanswered email glowing on the screen. "I got out at four-thirty. Rachel's kid has a thing, so she covered the rest of my inbox."

"That's suspiciously generous."

"She wants my Thursday shift next week." Nora scraped the pepper strips into a bowl. "There's chicken thawing in the sink."

Daniel washed his hands and took over the chicken, patting it dry with a paper towel while the pan heated. Outside, the neighbor's dog was barking at something, the same three-bark rhythm it used every evening around six.

"Did you call about the car?" Nora asked.

"I called. They can take it Saturday morning. It's the brake pads, probably. He said probably." He laid the chicken down and it hissed. "Also they'll look at the noise."

"The clunking noise or the whining noise?"

"There's two noises?"

"There's been two noises since August."

He laughed. She reached past him for the soy sauce, and her hip bumped his, and neither of them moved for a second. The window over the sink had gone fogged and gray-blue with the rain.

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had a laundry basket on it, folded but not put away, and neither of them wanted to be the one to move it. The TV played something they'd both seen. Nora put her feet in his lap. Later he'd wash the pan, and she'd take out the recycling, and they'd argue mildly about whether the thermostat had already been turned down.


Mara got home first, which meant the kitchen radio was on and the oven was already preheating by the time Devin's key turned in the lock. He came in shaking rain off his jacket, hung it on the hook that had been loose since February, and the hook held, which he took as a good sign.

"There's chicken thighs thawing," Mara said, not looking up from the cutting board. "And I found the rice we thought we ran out of. It was behind the oatmeal."

"Behind the oatmeal." Devin washed his hands at the sink, nudging her aside with his hip. "That's where everything is. I found the good scissors behind the oatmeal in October."

"Then we should look there more often."

He took over the onion because she hated onions and he didn't mind the crying. She moved on to trimming green beans, dropping the ends into the compost bin that needed emptying, a fact neither of them mentioned. The radio played something they both half-knew. Outside, a car alarm started and stopped.

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

"The insurance thing? I called. I was on hold for forty minutes and then a guy named Curtis told me to call back tomorrow."

"So no."

"So, technically, yes. I called."

She laughed, and he liked that he'd earned it. He slid the onions into the pan and the smell filled the kitchen, warm and ordinary. Mara reached past him for the salt and left her hand on his back a second longer than she needed to.

They ate at the coffee table because the dining table had mail on it. Devin said the chicken was good; Mara said it was a little dry; Devin said it was good anyway. Afterward he washed and she dried, and they talked about whether to watch one episode or two, and settled, as they usually did, on two.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Dana came through the door, shaking rain off her jacket. She hung it on the hook by the closet, the one that had been loose for three months, and it held.

"You're early," Marcus said from the kitchen. He was standing at the counter in his work shirt with the sleeves pushed up, slicing a red pepper into strips that were mostly the same width.

"Meeting got canceled. Danielle's kid has strep." Dana came in and looked over his shoulder. "What are we doing?"

"Stir-fry. There was chicken that needed using."

"The chicken from Sunday?"

"Saturday. It's fine, I smelled it."

She made a face but let it go and went to wash her hands at the sink, moving the sponge out of the way. The window above it had fogged at the corners. Outside, the neighbor's motion light kept flicking on and off, probably a cat.

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

"They can't do it till Thursday. They said it's the alternator, probably, but they won't know until they get in there."

"That's what they always say."

"That's what they always say," he agreed. He scraped the peppers off the cutting board into the pan and they hissed. "Can you do the sauce? The recipe's up on my phone."

Dana found his phone on the counter next to a stack of unopened mail and squinted at it. "This wants mirin. We don't have mirin."

"Use the rice vinegar and some sugar. That's what my mom does."

"Your mom does not make stir-fry."

"She makes something."

Dana measured soy sauce into a mug because the small bowls were in the dishwasher, still dirty, and neither of them had run it. She whisked with a fork. Behind her, Marcus turned the burner down and asked whether she'd talked to her sister, and she said no, she'd meant to, and he said Sunday, then. He set two plates by the stove without being asked.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Dana came through the door, shaking rain off her jacket. She hung it on the hook by the closet, the one that had been loose since March.

"You're home early," Marcus said from the kitchen. He had a dish towel over his shoulder and was doing something aggressive to a bell pepper.

"Nobody wanted to stay for the four-thirty meeting, so it became a two-minute email." She dropped her bag on the chair and came over to look. "Stir-fry?"

"Stir-fry. We had the peppers going soft and that half onion from Sunday." He tilted the cutting board and swept everything into a bowl. "Chicken's thawed. Can you check if we have the sesame oil or if I imagined it?"

She opened the cabinet above the stove and moved things aside. A jar of something fermented she'd bought optimistically. Rice vinegar. "Imagined it. There's regular sesame seeds."

"That's fine. It'll be fine." He turned the burner on and the oil started to shimmer. "How was the thing with Priya?"

"Not a thing anymore. She pushed it to next week." Dana filled a glass at the sink and drank half of it standing there. "The upstairs people are moving out, by the way. There were boxes in the hallway."

"Good."

"Marcus."

"I'm not saying anything. I'm saying good."

She laughed and set the table—two plates, the mismatched forks, the paper towels they'd been using instead of napkins for going on a year. The chicken hit the pan and made the sound that always made her a little hungrier than she'd been a second before.

"Soy sauce is behind you," he said. "Can you grab it? And the garlic, I forgot the garlic."

She handed both over, then leaned against the counter while he worked, watching the steam fog the window over the sink.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Devon came through the door, shaking rain off his jacket. He hung it on the hook by the closet, the one that had been loose since February.

"You're wet," Marisol said from the kitchen. She was standing at the counter in the sweatshirt she'd worn since college, sleeves pushed to her elbows, dicing an onion badly.

"It's raining."

"I'm aware. I could hear it in the bathroom vent." She scraped the onion into a pan where oil had already started to shimmer. "Can you get the chicken out? It's been thawing since this morning."

He washed his hands and opened the fridge, moving aside a half-empty jar of pickles and a container of leftover pad thai that neither of them was going to eat. The chicken thighs sat in a bowl, cold and pink. He set them on the cutting board she'd left out.

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

"Fine. She wants me to redo the whole deck by Thursday, which is insane, but fine." He found the tongs in the drawer where they didn't belong. "How was yours?"

"Long." She stirred. "Marcus microwaved fish again."

"In the break room?"

"In the break room. Somebody left a note."

"Passive aggressive note?"

"Deeply."

He laid the thighs in the pan and they hissed. The kitchen was too small for two people, really — they'd learned to move around each other, a kind of choreography. She reached past him for the soy sauce. He stepped back without looking.

"Did you get broccoli?"

"I forgot."

"Devon."

"I know. There's a bag of frozen peas."

She sighed but didn't argue. He found the peas behind a bag of ice from a party in August. Outside, the rain kept on. They ate on the couch, plates on their knees, the TV playing something neither was watching.


Marisol got home first, which meant she got to pick the music. She put on the playlist Devin called "sad girls with guitars" and started pulling things out of the fridge: half a rotisserie chicken from Sunday, a bag of green beans she'd bought with better intentions, a lemon that had gone slightly soft on one side.

Devin came in around six-fifteen, dropped his bag by the shoe rack, and kissed the back of her neck on his way to the sink.

"Wash your hands, you touched the bus," she said.

"I always wash my hands."

"You washed them once in 2019 and you've been coasting."

He flicked water at her. She was trimming the ends off the green beans, tossing them into the compost bin that neither of them had emptied in four days, and which was starting to make itself known.

"That's yours," she said, nodding at it.

"How is that mine?"

"Because I did the litter box Tuesday and Wednesday."

He conceded, tied off the bag, and took it out to the bin in the alley in his socks, which she yelled about through the window. When he came back, he started shredding the chicken with two forks while she got rice going in the little cooker his mother had given them.

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

"She's leaving. March, probably. Going to her sister's in Denver."

"That's a bummer."

"It's mostly a bummer for me," Marisol said. "Which is selfish. But yeah."

They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table had a puzzle on it, one-third finished, a lighthouse. The cat sat on the arm of the couch pretending not to want chicken. Devin said the beans were good, actually, and Marisol said they were just beans, and he said not everything has to be more than it is.


Marisol got home first, which meant the kitchen radio was already on, tuned to the classical station she claimed helped her decompress from the commute down I-35. She'd set a pot of water on to boil before she'd even taken off her shoes, and now they sat by the door, kicked sideways, the way Danny always teased her about.

He came in at six-fifteen carrying a plastic grocery bag. "They were out of the good bread," he said. "So I got the sourdough. The pre-sliced."

"That's fine." She was scraping the ends off a bunch of asparagus, letting them fall onto a folded paper towel. "Did you remember the parmesan?"

He held up the bag, then set it on the counter and started unloading. "I got the wedge, not the shaker. It was two dollars more but you said the shaker tastes like sawdust."

"I said it tastes like feet."

"Right. Feet."

He washed his hands at the sink, bumping her hip with his to make room, and she moved over without looking up. The water started rolling and she dumped in the penne, and steam fogged the window over the sink where a small ceramic frog sat holding a sponge.

"Your mom called me," Danny said, opening the fridge. "On my cell. She wants to know if we're doing Thanksgiving here or there."

"What'd you say?"

"I said I'd ask you and get back to her, which is the correct answer to every question she's ever asked me."

Marisol laughed. "You're learning."

They worked around each other without much talking after that—she stirred, he cut the asparagus into halves and slid them into a skillet with oil and salt. The lid clattered. Somewhere down the block a dog was barking at something.

"Ten minutes," she said.

"I'll set the table."

He got out two plates, the mismatched ones, and the forks from the drawer that always stuck.


The kitchen light flickered once before settling, the way it had for three months now. Priya dropped her bag on the counter and toed off her shoes.

"There's chicken thawing," Marcus called from the living room. "I took it out this morning."

"Did you take it out or did you move it from the freezer to the counter and leave it there all day?"

A pause. "Second one."

She checked the package. Cold enough, room temperature at the edges. "It's fine. Barely." She washed her hands and started hunting for the good knife, which was, predictably, in the dish rack instead of the block.

Marcus came in wearing the sweatpants with the hole in the knee, hair still flattened from his headset. He'd been on calls since seven, some vendor issue he'd complained about over text in fragments all afternoon.

"Rice?" he asked.

"Rice. And there's half a bag of green beans if they haven't turned."

He opened the crisper drawer, sniffed, made a face, then shrugged. "Some of them are okay."

They worked around each other with the choreography of four years and one lease renewal. He measured rice into the cooker, ran water over it until it went milky, poured it off. She cubed chicken, dumped it in the pan with too much garlic, which was the only amount she believed in.

"Your mom called me," he said.

"Called you?"

"Wanted to know if we're coming to Sacramento in June. I said I'd ask you, which is a lie, because I already looked at flights."

Priya laughed. "How bad?"

"Four-fifty each if we go Wednesday."

"We're not going Wednesday. Nobody goes Wednesday."

"That's what I said. Sort of." He trimmed beans with his hands, snapping ends into the compost bin. "I told her we'd figure it out."

The rice cooker clicked. Steam fogged the window over the sink, and outside, someone's dog was barking at nothing.

They ate on the couch, plates on their knees.


Nora got home first, which meant she got to choose the music. She put on the record that had been sitting on the turntable since Sunday, dropped her bag by the stairs, and started pulling things out of the fridge: a bag of green beans, half an onion wrapped in cling film, the chicken thighs she'd remembered to move to the bottom shelf that morning.

Diego came in twenty minutes later, smelling like the outside cold. "The Hendersons' dog got out again," he said, hanging his coat on the hook that was really meant for the broom. "I walked him back. Mrs. Henderson gave me a granola bar, like I'm nine."

"Did you eat it?"

"Obviously."

He washed his hands and took over the beans, snapping the ends off and dropping them into the colander, which he'd have to rinse again because he never rinsed them first. Nora didn't say anything. She'd said it enough times that it had become a bit rather than a complaint.

"Your mom called me," he said.

"About Thanksgiving."

"About Thanksgiving."

"What did you tell her?"

"That we'd talk about it." He shook the colander. "So this is us talking about it."

The chicken hit the pan and hissed. Nora turned it down. "I want to go. I just don't want to drive on Wednesday."

"So we leave Tuesday night."

"You have work Wednesday."

"I have work Wednesday," he agreed, and let that sit, and reached past her for the olive oil.

She salted the beans. He found the good pan lid, the one that always ended up in the wrong cabinet. The record ended and neither of them got up to flip it, and for a while there was just the sound of the stove and the knife on the board and the radiator knocking somewhere behind the wall.

"Tuesday night," she said finally.

"Okay."

They ate on the couch, plates on their knees, because the table had mail on it again.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Dana came through the door, shaking rain off her jacket. She hung it on the hook that had been loose since March and made a mental note, again, to find the right screws.

"You're home early," Marcus said from the kitchen. He was standing at the counter with a knife and a red bell pepper, still in his work pants but barefoot.

"Meeting got canceled. Somebody's kid had a thing." She set her bag down and came to look over his shoulder. "Is that the pepper from Sunday? I thought it went soft."

"Only on one side." He held it up to show her the good half, then went back to slicing. "There's chicken in the pan. Can you flip it? I got distracted."

She washed her hands and lifted the lid. The thighs were browner than intended on the underside, not burned exactly, but committed. She turned them anyway.

"How was it?" he asked.

"Long. Deb's still doing that thing where she asks a question she already knows the answer to." Dana opened the fridge, considered, and pulled out a bag of spinach with three days left on it. "Should I put this in?"

"Sure. It'll cook down to nothing."

"That's why I asked."

They worked around each other in the narrow space, a choreography developed over two and a half years — she reached past him for the soy sauce, he stepped back without looking. The window over the sink fogged at the bottom. Somewhere down the block, a car alarm started and stopped.

"I paid the water bill," he said. "It went up again."

"Of course it did." She dumped the spinach in and watched it collapse. "We should eat at the table tonight."

Marcus glanced at the table, which held mail, a laptop, and a folded laundry pile that had been there since Monday.

"Ambitious," he said, and started clearing.


Marisol got home first, which meant she got to pick the music. She put on the old Motown playlist and set her bag on the chair by the door, the one they kept meaning to move because it blocked the closet.

By the time Dev came in, shaking rain off his jacket, she had the onions going. "That smells like it's already burning," he said, kissing the back of her neck.

"It smells like it's *browning*. There's a difference."

He looked over her shoulder into the pan and made a noise that meant he disagreed but wasn't going to fight about it. Then he opened the fridge, stood there too long, and closed it again. "We're out of the good mustard."

"We're out of a lot of things. I made a list on the whiteboard."

"The whiteboard's a graveyard, Mari. Nobody ever reads the whiteboard."

She handed him a knife and the bell pepper. He took the cutting board to the far end of the counter, where the light was better, and started slicing in the fussy, even way he had, everything the same width. She'd told him once it was unnecessary and he'd said it was the only part of his day he could control, so she let it go.

"Your mom called me," he said.

"Mine? Why does she call *you*?"

"She said you don't pick up. She wants to know about Thanksgiving."

Marisol scraped the peppers in and turned the heat down. "Tell her we're thinking about it."

"I told her we're driving up Wednesday."

She looked at him. He shrugged, not looking back, and reached past her for the salt.

"Fine," she said. "But you're telling your brother."

The rice cooker clicked over. Outside, a car alarm went off and stopped. Dev found the mustard behind the pickles, held it up in triumph, and she laughed despite herself.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Danielle got the door open, arms full of the reusable bags she kept forgetting to bring into the store and then guiltily buying more of.

"I got the wrong tofu," she called out. "The soft one. It was on sale and I panicked."

Marcus was already at the sink, rinsing a colander of broccoli that had gone slightly rubbery in the crisper drawer. He wore the apron his sister had given him as a joke three Christmases ago, the one that said WORLD'S OKAYEST COOK. "Soft's fine. We'll do the peanut thing where it doesn't matter if it falls apart."

"That's every peanut thing."

"Correct."

She set the bags on the counter and started unpacking, sliding the eggs to the back where they wouldn't get knocked. Their kitchen was small enough that they'd learned a choreography without discussing it: he took the stove and the left half of the counter, she took the fridge and the cutting board by the window. When they needed to swap, one of them said *behind you* without looking up.

"How was the thing with Priya?" he asked, tipping the broccoli into a pan.

"Postponed. Again." Danielle pulled a knife from the block and started on a carrot. "She says her manager keeps rescheduling one-on-ones like they're optional."

"They kind of are."

"Not if you want to get promoted, apparently."

The garlic hit hot oil and the whole apartment changed smell. Marcus turned the fan on, which did almost nothing, and cracked the window over the sink. Outside, someone's car alarm went through its cycle and stopped.

"We're out of soy sauce," he said, holding up a bottle with maybe a teaspoon left.

"There's a backup. Behind the vinegar."

"There's a backup," he repeated, impressed, and reached past her shoulder into the cabinet. "This is why I keep you around."

"Set the table," she said. "That's why."


The kitchen light flickered once before settling, the way it had for three months now, and Dana made a mental note to buy a new bulb she would forget to buy.

"Onions or no onions?" she called toward the living room.

"Onions," Ben said. He came in still holding his phone, thumb moving. "My mom texted. She wants to know if we're coming to Thanksgiving or doing the thing with your sister."

"Can we decide Thursday?" Dana set a yellow onion on the cutting board and halved it. "I haven't even done the timesheet thing yet."

"I'll tell her we're figuring it out." He pocketed the phone, opened the fridge, and stood there in the cold light. "We have like four half-used jars of mustard."

"Three of those are yours."

"They're different mustards."

He pulled out the chicken thighs and the package of green beans that had been sitting in the crisper long enough to feel guilty about. Dana slid the onions into a pan, and the sound filled the kitchen for a while, oil ticking against the burner.

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

"He's fine. He's dating someone with a boat, apparently, which is all he wanted to talk about." Ben ran the beans under the tap. "There's a hair tie in the sink again."

"That's not mine."

"Whose would it be?"

"Fine, it's mine." She reached over and took it, snapped it around her wrist. "Did you pay the electric?"

"Sunday. I put it on the whiteboard."

"The whiteboard is a lie. Nothing on the whiteboard is current."

He laughed and started snapping the ends off the beans, tossing them into the compost bin they'd bought in a burst of ambition in March. Steam clouded the window over the sink. Somewhere upstairs the neighbor's dog was walking back and forth.

"Twenty minutes?" he said.

"Twenty-five. Set the table, though. The real plates."

"It's Tuesday."

"So?"

He got the real plates.