The doorbell wasn't due to ring for another forty minutes, but Marcus was already treating the kitchen like a countdown.

"The rolls need to come out at six-fifteen, not six-twenty," he said, tapping the oven timer with a floured knuckle. "Last time they were tough."

"Last time you forgot them entirely," Renée said from the dining room, where she was folding cloth napkins into shapes that had looked easier in the video she'd watched. "I'm blaming the roast for that."

"The roast was excellent."

"The roast was fine. The rolls were rubber."

She came in to steal a carrot from the cutting board, and he moved the knife aside without looking up. Twenty-two years of marriage had taught them how to occupy a small kitchen without collisions. Outside, the November dark had come down early over their street in Cedar Rapids, and someone's kid was still shooting hoops in a driveway, the sound carrying flat and hollow through the cold.

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

"She's fine with shrimp. It's scallops that get her." Renée pulled the wine from the fridge, then put it back, deciding it was too cold. "Danny's bringing his new girlfriend."

"Since when?"

"Since he called this afternoon while you were at Menards."

Marcus wiped his hands. "Is she—"

"I don't know anything about her except her name is Wendy and she teaches fourth grade."

"Fourth grade is a lot of information, actually."

Renée laughed and reached past him for the salt, and he leaned back to let her. She lit the two candles on the table, then blew one out because the smell was wrong with the food. Marcus turned the radio down. There was a moment—there usually was, right before people came—when the house sat quiet and finished, smelling like garlic and cold air from the mudroom, and neither of them said anything.

Then the timer went off, and headlights swept the front window.


The Kellers had been married eleven years, and they still argued about the same thing every time they hosted: whether the good napkins were worth ironing.

"Nobody looks at napkins," Marcus said, hauling the leaf out of the closet and wrestling it into the table. Sawdust from a long-ago repair sifted onto the rug.

"Diane looks at napkins," Ellen said. She was at the stove, easing garlic around in butter, her reading glasses pushed up into her hair where she'd forget them for the next forty minutes. "Diane once told me my grout was aspirational."

"That's not a real insult."

"It is if you know Diane."

The oven timer went off for the bread, and Marcus, passing, pulled it out without being asked, which Ellen noticed and didn't mention. Outside, February dark had come down at five-thirty, and the kitchen window held their reflection: two people in socks, moving around each other in a space they'd learned by heart.

He set the table. She tasted the sauce, added salt, tasted again, handed him the spoon. He made a face.

"More salt," he said.

"You always say more salt."

"And I'm always right."

At six-forty she went upstairs to change, came down in the green sweater, and found he'd lit the candles too early — they'd be stubs by dessert. She didn't say that either. He'd swept the entryway and put out the shoe tray, remembering the slush without being reminded, and she thought that was the whole marriage right there, more or less: a running tally of small unmentioned kindnesses that mostly canceled out.

"Wine's breathing," he said.

"Music?"

"Something without lyrics. Diane sings along."

Headlights swung across the front window. Ellen straightened a fork; Marcus wiped his hands on his jeans, then on a towel, then opened the door to the cold and the noise of their friends coming up the walk.


Marisol found Dev in the kitchen at five-fifteen, sleeves shoved up, elbow-deep in a colander of romaine.

"You washed those already," she said.

"I washed the outer leaves. These are the inner leaves. They have secrets."

She let it go. Twenty-two years of marriage had taught her which hills were worth dying on, and lettuce was not one. She took the good tablecloth from the linen closet and shook it out over the dining table, the one they only used when people came. A water ring from Thanksgiving stared up at her before she covered it.

"Rosa's bringing her sister," Dev called out. "The one from Tucson."

"Since when?"

"Since about an hour ago. I said fine because we always make too much."

Marisol counted chairs. Six, plus the wobbly one from the basement, which meant she'd have to bring it up and wipe the cobwebs off the rungs. She went down the stairs, came back up with the chair, and found Dev in front of the oven with the light on, watching the pork shoulder the way other men watch football.

"Is it doing what it's supposed to?"

"It's doing exactly what it's supposed to. I just like to look at it."

She put on music—something with horns, nothing that demanded attention—and started slicing bread. Outside, the November dark came down early, and the kitchen window turned into a mirror showing the two of them moving around each other in the small space, reaching past shoulders, handing off the good knife without being asked.

At six-forty, Dev lit the candles and immediately blew one out because it was smoking. Marisol hid the pile of mail behind the toaster.

Headlights swung across the front window.

"Okay," Dev said, wiping his hands on his jeans. "Here we go."

She kissed him quickly, tasting salt and rosemary, and went to open the door.


Marisol found Dev in the kitchen at four-thirty, sleeves rolled, arguing with a recipe on his phone.

"It says fold," he said. "What does fold mean, exactly? Because I've been stirring."

"Folding is gentler." She took the spatula from him and demonstrated, cutting down through the batter and lifting. "Like that. You're not trying to punish it."

He watched, then took the spatula back and did a passable imitation. The lemon cake went into the oven at four-fifty, which was later than planned but not catastrophically so. Sarah and Terrence never showed up before seven anyway, no matter what time they were told.

Marisol vacuumed the living room while Dev dealt with the bathroom, which meant scrubbing the sink and hiding the laundry basket in the closet. They'd lived in the house eleven years, long enough that neither of them noticed the water stain on the dining room ceiling until they had people over, and then it was all Marisol could see.

"Should we say something about it," she asked, "or just let them wonder?"

"Nobody looks up." Dev was setting the table, and he'd put out the good napkins, the cloth ones from her mother. "How many are we?"

"Six. Seven if Jenny brings the guy."

"Is she bringing the guy?"

"She was vague."

He set a seventh place anyway. Marisol went upstairs to change out of her work clothes and came back down in the green sweater, and Dev whistled at her from the stove without looking up, which he had done for two decades and which still worked on her.

At six-forty the cake came out slightly sunken in the middle. They stood over it, considering.

"Powdered sugar," Marisol said.

"A lot of powdered sugar."

The doorbell rang at six fifty-five. Dev wiped his hands on a dish towel; Marisol turned the music up two notches, then down one, and went to answer it.


The rain had started around four, so Daniel moved the folding chairs from the deck into the dining room while Priya wiped down the table with a dish towel that had seen better decades.

"Six or seven?" she asked.

"Seven. Marcus is bringing his sister." Daniel counted plates out loud, then stopped and counted again. "We have six matching."

"Nobody's grading us." Priya took the mismatched blue plate and set it at her own place. "There. Solved."

The kitchen smelled like cumin and burnt garlic — she'd gotten distracted by a work email and let the first batch scorch. Daniel had scraped the pan without comment, which she noticed and appreciated more than she said. Now the second batch was going better. The chicken was resting. The rice was doing whatever rice did when you left it covered and hoped.

He was on the floor of the living room with the dog, trying to convince her that the guest towel was not a chew toy.

"Bathroom," Priya said.

"I know."

"You said that an hour ago."

"I know." He got up. Somewhere in the process of hanging a fresh towel and hiding the toothpaste tube, he found the wine opener they'd both been looking for since New Year's, wedged behind the sink cleaner. He held it up in the hallway like a trophy.

Priya laughed. "Don't lose it again."

At 6:40 she changed out of the shirt with the flour handprint on it. Daniel put on a record because he thought a house should have sound in it before people arrived. He lit the one candle they owned. She turned on the porch light.

They stood a moment in the doorway of their own dining room, surveying it — the crooked centerpiece, the too-bright overhead they hadn't dimmed yet.

"Good enough," she said.

"Better than good enough."

The first car pulled in. The dog started barking. Priya went to the door still holding a serving spoon.


By six o'clock the kitchen smelled like garlic and rosemary, and Daniel was still arguing with the oven.

"It says three-fifty, but it runs hot," he said, crouched in front of the glass door. "Remember the lasagna in January?"

"I remember you blaming the oven," Marcus said. He was at the counter, slicing a baguette on a diagonal, the way his mother used to. "The oven was innocent."

They had lived in the house on Rowan Street for six years, long enough that Marcus knew without looking that Daniel would move the salt shaker back two inches after Marcus set it down, and long enough that he'd stopped mentioning it.

"Kate's bringing wine," Daniel said, standing and wiping his palms on the dish towel tucked into his waistband. "So we've got the reds covered. Did you put out the sparkling water for Theo?"

"In the fridge. Behind the milk."

"Nobody looks behind the milk."

"Theo will look behind the milk. Theo looks everywhere." Marcus carried the bread basket to the table and stopped. "We're one chair short."

Daniel counted the place settings, mouthing the names. "Six. Kate, Theo, Priya, Jonah, plus us. That's six."

"Priya's sister's in town."

"Since when?"

"Since I told you Tuesday while you were watching the game."

Daniel accepted this without protest and went to the basement for the folding chair, the one with the wobbly leg they always gave to whoever arrived last. Upstairs, Marcus lit the two candles on the sideboard, then changed his shirt, then changed it back.

At 6:38 the doorbell rang. Daniel was still barefoot; Marcus's hair was damp.

"Ready?" Marcus asked.

"No," Daniel said, and opened the door anyway, arms already out, laughing at something Kate said before she'd finished saying it.


Marcus wiped the counter for the third time, though it was already clean.

"You're going to sand through the laminate," Dev said, coming in with two grocery bags. He set them down and started unpacking — a wedge of Parmesan, the good olive oil, a bag of lemons that hadn't been on the list.

"We didn't need lemons."

"We always need lemons." Dev held one up like evidence. "Also, Priya texted. She's bringing her sister. Is that okay?"

Marcus did the math on the table. Six chairs, and the piano bench if someone didn't mind. "It's fine. Did you tell her about the dog?"

"She knows about the dog."

The dog, a shepherd mix named Waffle, was currently asleep across the threshold to the dining room, positioned like a speed bump. Marcus stepped over her and started setting out plates — the real ones, from the wedding, still slightly chipped from the move three years ago.

Dev put on music, something with a lot of horns, and started the sauce. He cooked the way he did everything, loudly and without measuring. Marcus folded napkins beside him and pretended not to watch the oil smoke.

"Lower," Marcus said.

"It's supposed to do that."

"It's supposed to do that a little."

At six-fifteen Dev went to change and came back in the blue shirt Marcus liked, sleeves rolled. Marcus was on his knees looking for the wine opener in the drawer where things went to disappear.

"Left side. Behind the batteries."

It was.

They stood a minute in the kitchen with everything nearly ready — bread warming, salad tossed but undressed, Waffle relocated to the couch where she wasn't allowed. Dev reached over and straightened Marcus's collar, which didn't need straightening.

The doorbell rang. Waffle detonated into barking.

"Here we go," Dev said, and went to answer it.


The Braddocks' kitchen smelled like garlic and browning butter by four-thirty, which meant Renata had started too early again.

"You're going to have cold chicken," Desmond said, coming in from the garage with a folding chair under each arm. He was still in his work clothes, tie loosened, a smear of chalk dust on one sleeve from the seventh-graders he'd spent the day trying to interest in the water cycle.

"It's a braise. It gets better." She wiped her hands on a dish towel that had once been white. "Did you find the extra chair?"

"Found three. One's got a wobbly leg, so that's Marcus's problem."

She laughed. He set up the chairs around the dining table, which they used maybe six times a year, and which currently held a stack of mail, a bicycle pump, and a library book that had been overdue since March. He relocated all of it to the bedroom, closing the door on the evidence.

"Wine's in the fridge," Renata called. "Can you open the red so it breathes?"

"Wine breathes?"

"That's what the internet says."

By five-forty he'd showered and changed and was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, deciding against shaving. She came in behind him, reaching past his shoulder for her earrings.

"Erin's bringing that dessert again," she said.

"The lemon thing?"

"The lemon thing."

"I like the lemon thing."

"Everyone likes the lemon thing. That's the problem." She got one earring in, squinted, gave up on the second. "Do we look like people who have their lives together?"

Desmond considered the two of them in the glass — her flour-dusted forearms, his damp hair, the towels behind them hung crooked.

"We look like people who cook," he said.

The doorbell rang eight minutes early. Renata swore softly, pulled the towel straight, and went to answer it.


The kitchen smelled like garlic and rosemary by five-thirty, which meant Daniel had gotten ahead of schedule for once. He stood at the stove in a dish towel tucked into his belt loop, pushing chicken thighs around a cast-iron pan while the potatoes hissed in the oven below.

"Did you text Marcus about the wine?" he called.

Priya's voice came from the dining room. "I told him red. He'll bring white anyway. He always brings white."

She was setting out the good plates, the ones from her mother that they used maybe four times a year. One had a hairline crack she pretended not to see. She counted forks, recounted them, then went to the linen closet for the napkins nobody had ironed.

"Seven?" she asked, coming back through. "Or eight? Did Jess say if her sister was coming?"

"She said maybe."

"That's a yes." Priya set an extra place.

Daniel turned the heat down and came to look at the table. He moved the candles two inches to the left, which she noticed and let go. Outside, the November dark had already settled over the driveway, and their neighbor's motion light kept clicking on and off as a cat crossed the lawn.

"You should change," Priya said. "You smell like a restaurant."

"That's a compliment."

"It's an observation."

He went upstairs. She stood alone in the dining room for a moment, listening to the water pipes shudder, and adjusted the candles back to where he'd put them. Then she went to the kitchen, tasted the pan sauce, added salt, and tasted it again.

Daniel came down in a clean shirt, hair damp. "Better?"

"Much." She handed him the spoon. "It needs something. I don't know what."

He tasted it, thought, and reached for the lemon.

Headlights swung across the front window. Priya untied her apron and hung it on the pantry door, and they went to answer the bell together.


Marcus wiped the counter for the third time, though it was already clean. It was a habit his mother had drilled into him—that guests notice edges, corners, the small neglected places.

"You've polished that spot down to the laminate," Devon said, coming in from the dining room with an armful of mismatched candlesticks. "Also, we have four chairs and six people."

"The folding ones are in the garage."

"Behind the bikes?"

"Behind the bikes."

Devon sighed and went out through the mudroom. Through the window over the sink, Marcus watched him navigate the mess they'd been meaning to sort since March. Snow was falling, thin and undecided, dusting the driveway. He turned back to the pork loin and checked the thermometer—142. Close.

They'd moved into the house in Grand Rapids eleven months ago, after four years in a Chicago apartment where dinner parties meant eating on the floor. The dining room here was small but real, with a window that faced the street and a radiator that clanked like someone knocking.

Devon came back with two chairs, snow melting on his shoulders. "Kelsey texted. They're bringing that wine you hate."

"I don't hate it."

"You called it 'aggressively fine.'"

"That's a compliment in some cultures." Marcus pulled the pork out to rest. "Did you light the thing in the bathroom?"

"The candle? Yes. Also I hid the laundry basket in our closet, so don't open it."

"Which closet?"

"Ours. Obviously."

They worked around each other in the narrow kitchen, a choreography developed over nine years and three apartments. Devon set the table, arranging the candlesticks in a line down the middle, then rearranged them because they looked like an airport runway. Marcus tore bread into a bowl.

At 6:52, headlights swept across the front window. Devon straightened, smoothed his sweater, and looked at Marcus.

"We're fine," Marcus said.

"I know."

The doorbell rang, and they went to answer it together.


The doorbell would ring at seven, which gave them forty minutes.

Marcus stood at the stove, tasting the sauce off a wooden spoon, then adding a pinch more salt. He'd been simmering it since four, back when the light through the kitchen window was still gold instead of gray. Outside, the November street had gone quiet except for someone's leaf blower two houses down.

"Did you get the good glasses down?" he called.

"Getting them." Diane was on the step stool in the dining room, handing wine glasses to no one in particular, then reconsidering and carrying them four at a time to the sideboard. Two of them had a film of dust; she carried those to the sink. "Rachel's bringing her sister, by the way. The one who doesn't eat dairy."

Marcus stopped stirring. "The sauce has cream in it."

"I know. I'm not saying panic. I'm saying maybe roast some extra vegetables."

He looked at the sauce, then at the refrigerator, then pulled out a bag of carrots and half a head of cauliflower. Diane came up behind him and reached past his elbow for the olive oil, setting it on the counter without comment, then went to deal with the table.

She found the tablecloth wrinkled and decided nobody would care. She lit two candles, blew one out because it smelled like fake vanilla, and put on a record — something instrumental, low. From the kitchen came the sound of a knife on a cutting board, steady, unhurried.

At six-fifty Marcus changed his shirt. At six-fifty-five Diane found a water ring on the coffee table and set a coaster over it. They stood in the living room for a moment, surveying, the smell of garlic and roasting cauliflower thick and homey around them.

"It looks nice," she said.

"It smells like we tried."

The doorbell rang at four minutes past.


The doorbell wouldn't ring for another forty minutes, which meant Dana had exactly forty minutes to make the kitchen look like a place where competent people lived.

"The Bergers are bringing wine," Marcus said, wiping down the counter with a dish towel that had, until recently, been used to dry lettuce. "So we don't need to open the good bottle."

"We're opening the good bottle."

"We've had that bottle since your promotion."

"Which was three years ago, so it's either tonight or never." Dana pulled the tray of roasted vegetables from the oven and made a face. The onions had gone past caramelized into something more archaeological. She picked out the worst of them and pushed the rest toward the center of the tray, artfully, the way food looked in magazines.

Marcus disappeared and came back holding two mismatched candles. "These okay?"

"Are those from the bathroom?"

"They're candles, Dana."

She laughed and took them from him, and he took the opportunity to steal a piece of roasted carrot, which burned his mouth, which he pretended it didn't.

The table got set. The playlist got argued over — Marcus wanted something with horns, Dana wanted something nobody would notice — and they settled on the thing they always settled on, which was Marcus's playlist at a volume low enough that it was basically Dana's.

At 6:52 he came downstairs in a clean shirt and found her standing in the middle of the living room, holding a laundry basket, looking at the couch.

"There's dog hair on everything," she said.

"There's always dog hair on everything. They have a dog."

"They have a *poodle*."

He took the basket from her, carried it upstairs, and shut the bedroom door on it. When he came back she had poured two glasses of the good bottle, and they drank standing up, quickly, before anyone arrived.


The doorbell wouldn't ring for another forty minutes, but Marcus was already worrying about the chairs.

"We're two short," he called from the dining room. "Unless somebody wants to sit on the ottoman."

Priya came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel, a smear of turmeric on her wrist. "The folding ones are in the garage. Behind the Christmas stuff."

"The Christmas stuff we said we'd deal with in January."

"That was aspirational." She kissed his shoulder on her way past and opened the oven. The chicken had another twenty minutes, maybe twenty-five. She'd made her mother's recipe, the one that never came out quite the same twice, and she'd stopped apologizing for that years ago.

Marcus came back dusty, carrying two chairs and a story about a spider. He set them at the table and stood back, counting places. Eight. The Hendersons, Dev, Rosa and her new boyfriend whose name he kept forgetting.

"Andrew," Priya said, reading his face.

"I know it's Andrew. I was going to say Andrew."

She laughed and handed him a bottle of red. "Open this. And put on a real shirt."

He looked down at the T-shirt he'd worn to mow the lawn. "This is a real shirt."

"It says 'World's Okayest Golfer.'"

While he changed, Priya lit the candles on the sideboard, then blew one out because it smelled like a hotel lobby. She turned on music, something instrumental, and turned it down twice until it disappeared into the background the way she liked.

Marcus reappeared in a blue button-down, sleeves rolled. He surveyed the room, the mismatched chairs, the good plates, his wife pushing a wine glass toward him.

"It looks nice," he said.

"It looks lived in."

"Same thing."

They clinked, drank, and had four quiet minutes before the first car pulled into the driveway.


Marisol was elbow-deep in a bowl of cornbread batter when she heard the front door stick and shudder open.

"It's freezing out there," Danielle called, stamping her boots on the mat. She set two paper bags on the counter, wine bottles clinking. "The store was out of the good cheddar, so I got the fancy Vermont stuff. It was eleven dollars, Mari. Eleven."

"Then people better appreciate it." Marisol scraped the batter into the cast-iron skillet. "Ovens are full. Chili's been going since two."

Danielle shrugged out of her coat and started unloading: crackers, a bag of clementines, a small bunch of tulips that had clearly been an impulse. She filled a jar with water and set them on the table, then frowned at the pile of mail heaped at one end.

"I was going to deal with that," Marisol said.

"You say that every week." Danielle swept the whole stack into a drawer, which was, they both knew, the actual system.

They moved around each other in the small kitchen with practiced choreography — Marisol pivoting, Danielle ducking, neither one saying excuse me. Danielle wiped down the counters. Marisol found the good napkins, the ones her mother had given them, and counted out six.

"Jared's bringing his new boyfriend," Danielle said. "So seven."

"Seven. Okay." Marisol pulled out one more.

At six-fifteen the house smelled like cumin and browning butter. Danielle put on a playlist and lowered the lights the way she liked, which Marisol always said made it hard to see the food. Danielle raised them a little. Compromise.

"Do I look like I've been cooking for four hours?" Marisol asked.

Danielle reached over and thumbed a smear of flour off her cheekbone. "Not anymore."

Headlights swung across the front window. Somebody laughed out in the driveway, and the dog started barking, and Danielle went to get the door.


Marisol found Dev in the kitchen at five-fifteen, squinting at a recipe on his phone with flour on his forearm.

"Are we doing the whole thing?" she asked. "The braise takes three hours."

"I started it at two." He tilted the pot lid. Steam rose, smelling of tomato and bay leaf. "I'm just deciding about the bread."

"Store bread is fine. Nobody's grading us."

"Priya grades us."

She laughed and went to deal with the living room, which had accumulated a winter's worth of mail on the coffee table. She sorted it into a pile she carried upstairs and shoved in a drawer, which was, she admitted, the same as not sorting it. Then she pulled the good glasses down from the top shelf and rinsed the dust off them one at a time.

At six, Dev came out with a dish towel over his shoulder. "The bathroom."

"I did it."

"You did?"

"I did it while you were on the phone with your mother."

He kissed her temple. "You're the only reason anyone likes us."

They set the table together, which took longer than it should have because they disagreed about whether to use the cloth napkins. They used the cloth napkins. Marisol lit two candles and then blew one out because it looked like they were trying too hard, and Dev turned the overhead light down and put on a record — something instrumental, low.

At six-forty he changed his shirt. At six-fifty she changed hers, then changed back.

"Wine's open," he said. "Do we have enough chairs?"

"If Tom sits on the piano bench."

"Tom always sits on the piano bench."

Headlights swung across the front window. Marisol looked at the table, the mismatched chairs, the candle burning alone, and decided it was good enough. Dev was already at the door.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, folded beneath a stack of towels that hadn't been there yesterday. She carried it into the dining room and shook it out, the smell of cedar rising off the cotton.

"Did you move the towels?" she called.

"I put them where they go," Dev said from the kitchen. There was a pause, the sound of a knife against a cutting board. "Where they should go, anyway."

"They go in the hall closet."

"They've never gone in the hall closet."

She smoothed the cloth flat and decided not to pursue it. Through the doorway she could see him at the counter, sleeves pushed up, working through a pile of shallots with more force than the shallots required. The chicken was already in the oven. He'd started cooking at four, which meant he was nervous, which meant he wanted the evening to go well.

"Yusuf's bringing his girlfriend," she said.

"I know. That's why there's a fourth chair."

"You've met her?"

"Once. At the thing in March." He scraped the shallots into a pan. "She asked me what I did and then didn't listen to the answer."

"That's not a crime."

"I didn't say it was a crime."

Marisol got the wine glasses down and held one up to the window light. Water spots. She started rinsing them at the sink beside him, and for a while neither of them said anything, just the tap running and the shallots going soft in butter.

"I'm glad we're doing this," he said eventually.

"Me too."

"It's been what, since February?"

"Since the thing in March, apparently."

He laughed. The doorbell rang forty minutes early, because Yusuf was always early, and Marisol dried her hands on Dev's shirt as she passed him, which he'd anticipated and stepped into.


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

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

"Iron's on the shelf above the washer," Danny said. He was standing over a pot of red sauce, tasting it off a wooden spoon, adding pepper, tasting again. The kitchen window had fogged. Outside, a February dusk was settling over the cul-de-sac, and the Delgados' porch light across the street had already flicked on.

She ironed the tablecloth on the dining table itself, which Danny would have said was a bad idea, so she didn't mention it. The scorch mark she left near one corner would face the wall. She set six places with the everyday plates because the good ones were somewhere in the garage, still boxed from the move two years ago.

"Do we have wine?" she asked.

"Two reds. Karen's bringing something."

"Karen brings that awful moscato."

"Then we have two reds and a bottle for the cabinet."

Marisol laughed and went to change out of her work clothes. When she came back down in a sweater, Danny had put on music and was slicing bread badly, tearing more than cutting.

"Move," she said, and took the knife.

He let her. He wiped the counters, then wiped them again, then went around the living room collecting the things that lived there permanently — a hoodie, two library books, a charging cable, a coffee mug with a dried ring inside. He shoved it all in the hall closet.

"Very thorough," she said.

"They're not going in there."

At six-forty the doorbell rang, early, which meant it was Ray, who was always early. Danny turned the burner down. Marisol pushed her hair back and looked at the table for a second — mismatched glasses, scorch mark hidden — and decided it was fine.

"Coming," she called.


The rain had started around four, which meant the patio was out. Dana rearranged the dining table for the third time while Marcus wiped down the counters, both of them moving in the practiced choreography of people who had hosted enough dinners to know the rhythm.

"Do we have enough chairs?" she asked.

"Six, plus the desk chair if Priya brings her brother." Marcus opened the oven and let out a breath of rosemary and garlic. "Twenty more minutes on the chicken."

Dana found the good napkins in the hutch, the linen ones from their wedding that they'd used maybe four times in eleven years. She laid them out, then squinted. "These have a stain."

"Nobody's going to inspect the napkins."

"You say that, and then Tom inspects the napkins."

Marcus laughed. He turned the radio to the classical station, then changed it to something with a bassline when Dana made a face. Outside, the rain drummed on the gutters.

She lit the candles at 6:40. He remembered, at 6:42, that Elena had gone vegetarian in March, and there was a brief, contained crisis at the refrigerator door until Dana produced a package of mushrooms and said she could make something with the leftover risotto rice.

"You're a genius."

"I'm a person who reads group texts," she said.

By 6:55 the kitchen smelled like dinner and the front hall was clear of shoes and the coat rack had been relocated from the corner where it always fell over. Marcus poured two glasses of wine and handed one to Dana, and they stood for a minute in the doorway of the dining room, looking at the table.

"It looks nice," he said.

"It does."

The doorbell rang. Dana set her glass down on the sideboard, straightened the stained napkin so the stain faced down, and went to answer it.


Maya heard the front door before she saw him—Daniel, home late again, shaking rain off his jacket in the entryway.

"Twenty minutes," she called from the kitchen. "Maybe twenty-five if Priya's running behind, which she will be."

"I stopped for the wine." He held up the bag, then set it on the counter and kissed the side of her head. "And bread. The good kind, from the place on Mercer."

Maya was pulling a roast chicken from the oven, the skin crackling and gold. She'd been cooking since three, and the kitchen smelled like lemon and thyme and something faintly burnt she hadn't identified yet. "The rolls," she said suddenly. "Bottom rack."

Daniel grabbed a towel and rescued them—darker than intended, but salvageable. He arranged them in a basket and covered them with a napkin, which was, he'd learned in eleven years of marriage, an entirely acceptable form of concealment.

"Table?" he asked.

"Not set. And I never wiped down the bathroom."

"I'll do the bathroom. You do the table." He was already moving.

Maya laid out the mismatched plates they'd accumulated—two from his grandmother, four from a Target run in 2019—and lit the candles that only came out for company. Through the wall she could hear Daniel humming something tuneless, the faucet running.

He reappeared, sleeves pushed up. "We're out of hand soap in there. I put the lavender one from under the sink."

"That's fine."

"It's very strong."

"It's fine, Daniel."

He looked at the table, then at her, still in the flour-dusted apron she'd forgotten she was wearing. "You should change."

"Oh—" She untied it, laughing. "God."

Headlights swept the front window. Maya smoothed her hair; Daniel opened the wine. Rain drummed the porch roof, and outside, car doors began to slam, one after another, and voices rose in the dark.


Maya heard the garage door rumble at 4:40 and knew Theo had made good on his promise to leave work early. He came into the kitchen carrying two paper bags and the particular expression he wore when he'd bought something extra.

"Don't be mad," he said. "They had the good bread."

"I'm not mad. Chop the shallots."

He set down the bags and kissed the back of her neck first, which was his standard opening move when he wanted to avoid a task. It didn't work; she handed him a knife. For a while they moved around each other in the narrow galley kitchen with the ease of eleven years, one of them stepping back exactly when the other needed the oven door open.

The chicken went in at 5:15. Theo took the recycling out and discovered the front walk still had leaves on it, so he swept while Maya wiped down the bathroom and hid the laundry basket in their closet. She lit a candle in the hallway, thought better of it, and blew it out because Dana was pregnant and sensitive to smells.

"Do we have enough chairs?" she called.

"We have five. We need six."

"The desk chair."

"The desk chair has a broken wheel."

"Then someone gets the ottoman," Maya said, and Theo laughed, because there was always one guest who ended up on the ottoman.

At 6:05 he changed into a shirt that wasn't wrinkled and poured himself a beer. Maya put on earrings, looked at the table, moved the water glasses two inches, and decided she was done fussing. They stood in the living room for a second in the strange lull that comes right before people arrive, the house too clean and too quiet.

"It smells good," Theo said.

"It should. You bought the good bread."

The doorbell rang at 6:14. Dana and Marcus, early as always.


The doorbell wasn't due to ring for another forty minutes, but Nadia was already convinced they were behind.

"The chicken needs twenty more," she said, checking the oven light for the third time. "And I still haven't done anything about the salad."

"I did the salad," Marcus said from the dining room, where he was wrestling a tablecloth into something like symmetry. "It's in the green bowl. I put the dressing on the side because Priya doesn't like vinaigrette."

"Priya likes vinaigrette."

"Priya says she likes vinaigrette and then eats around it."

Nadia laughed and let it go. She wiped down the counter, then wiped it again out of nervous habit. Their apartment in Sacramento was small enough that guests would end up spilling into the kitchen no matter how they arranged the chairs, so she'd stopped fighting it years ago. She stacked the mail into a drawer instead of sorting it, which was its own kind of hosting decision.

Marcus came in and started pulling wineglasses down from the high cabinet, six of them, hooked between his fingers. "Do we have enough ice?"

"Probably not."

"I'll go." He set the glasses on the counter and patted his pockets for keys. "Anything else? Bread?"

"We have bread. Get the ice and come back before the chicken's done, I'm not carving it."

He kissed the side of her head on his way past, and she heard the front door click. Alone for a moment, she turned the music on — something low and unobtrusive — and lit the candle on the windowsill that they only ever lit for company. The kitchen smelled like garlic and rosemary. She surveyed it and decided it was fine, that it would all be fine, that their friends had seen worse.

Marcus was back in eleven minutes, bag of ice sweating in his arms, saying he'd run into Dave in the parking lot and that everyone was running late anyway.


Marcus heard the garage door rumble at 4:40, which meant Dev was home early for once. He wiped his hands on a dish towel and went to meet him.

"They still coming at six?" Dev asked, setting down two bags from the market. He'd bought the wrong kind of bread, the soft sandwich loaf instead of a baguette, and Marcus decided not to say anything about it.

"Six-thirty now. Priya texted. Her sitter's running late."

"Good. That gives me time to shower off this day." Dev pulled off his tie and draped it over a kitchen chair, where it would stay until someone moved it. "How's the chicken?"

"Marinating since noon. I'm more worried about the salad. I couldn't find the good olives."

"Nobody's coming for olives, babe."

Marcus put on a record while Dev showered, something instrumental so it wouldn't compete with conversation later. He set the table for six, then realized they only had five matching napkins and dug an old blue one out of the linen closet for himself. He'd take the odd one.

Dev came down in jeans and a shirt Marcus had bought him for his birthday, hair still damp. He started on the drinks — mixing a pitcher of something with grapefruit juice, tasting it, adding more lime.

"Try this."

Marcus tried it. "More gin."

"That's what I thought." Dev added more gin.

At 6:15 they did the last walk-through. Dev shoved a laundry basket into the hall closet. Marcus lit two candles and turned the overhead lights down to something forgiving. The chicken smelled right. The house smelled right.

"I think we're okay," Dev said, and put his hand flat on Marcus's back for a second.

Headlights swept the front window. Somebody was early. Marcus went to open the door, and Dev turned the music up two clicks.


Marisol found the good tablecloth at the bottom of the linen closet, still creased from last Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the dining table and smoothed the folds with her palms while the oven ticked toward 375.

"Do we own eight matching forks?" Dev called from the kitchen. He had flour on his forearm and a dish towel over his shoulder, which meant the bread was proofing and he was already ahead of schedule.

"We own six. Kayla and Tom won't notice."

"Kayla will notice."

"Kayla will notice and say nothing, which is the same as not noticing."

He laughed. She heard the refrigerator open, the clink of beer bottles being rearranged to make room for the salad. They had lived in the house four years, long enough that the kitchen had become his and the front rooms hers, though neither had ever said so out loud. It had happened the way most things between them happened, by accumulation.

Marisol lit the candles at six-fifteen, blew out the first one because it smelled too much like vanilla, and swapped it for an unscented pillar. Dev came in with two glasses of wine and handed her one without asking.

"The chicken's in," he said. "Forty minutes. Anything left?"

"The bathroom hand towel. The one with the stain."

"On it."

She stood alone a moment, listening to him rummage down the hall, and looked at the table: mismatched forks, cloth napkins she'd ironed badly, the candle throwing light across the wall. It was not a magazine dinner. It was theirs.

Headlights swung across the front window at ten till seven. Marisol set down her glass.

"They're early," she said.

Dev appeared in the hallway, tucking in his shirt with one hand. "They're always early."

He got the door. She got the wine. Voices filled the entryway, and the house, briefly, was loud.


The doorbell wasn't due to ring for another forty minutes, but Marisol had already changed the tablecloth twice.

"The blue one looked fine," Dev said, coming in from the garage with a folding chair under each arm. He set them down and wiped his hands on his jeans.

"The blue one has a wine stain from Thanksgiving."

"Nobody's going to be looking at the tablecloth."

"Rachel looks at everything."

He didn't argue with that. Rachel had once told them, kindly, that their spice rack was organized in a way that suggested a lack of trust in the alphabet.

Dev went back to the kitchen and checked the chicken. It had another twenty minutes, maybe. He turned the oven light on and off, which he knew accomplished nothing, and then started on the salad because it was the one job he could do without being supervised. Marisol had learned years ago not to let him near anything that required timing.

"Did you text Paul about the parking?" she called.

"I told him to use the alley."

"He won't. He'll park in front of the Whitakers' and they'll leave a note."

"Then they'll leave a note."

She appeared in the doorway with a stack of cloth napkins, considered them, and set them on the counter. "You're wearing that?"

He looked down at his shirt. It was a decent shirt. "This is a good shirt."

"It's the shirt you wore when we picked up the mattress."

"That was two years ago."

"I remember it."

He went and changed. When he came back she had lit the candles too early and was already blowing two of them out, muttering that they'd burn down to nothing before dessert. He handed her a glass of wine and took one himself, and they stood for a second in the almost-quiet kitchen, the oven ticking.

Then the doorbell rang, eleven minutes early, and they both said "Paul" at the same time.


The kitchen smelled like garlic and burnt rosemary, which meant Dana had gotten distracted again.

"It's fine," she said, scraping the pan into the sink. "It's supposed to be dark. That's the char."

Marcus didn't look up from the cutting board. "That's the smoke alarm's opinion, not mine."

They'd lived in the house on Fulton Street for six years, long enough to know the oven ran hot and the dining room chairs wobbled unless you set them just so. Dana wiped her hands on a dish towel and started on the salad while Marcus opened the wine to breathe, then went to find the good napkins, which were in the linen closet behind the beach towels, where they always were and where neither of them ever remembered to look first.

"Sam's bringing his sister," Dana called. "The one who doesn't eat dairy."

"You told me that Tuesday."

"I'm telling you again because you forgot the last time."

He conceded the point by not answering. He set the table—five plates, mismatched, because they'd never gotten around to replacing the two that broke during the move—and lit the squat candle Dana's mother had given them, which smelled faintly of nothing.

At six forty, Dana went upstairs to change out of the shirt she'd sweated through. Marcus vacuumed the rug in the front room, mostly for the lines it left. When she came down, she was wearing the green sweater and had put her hair up, and he said, "That's the one," and she said, "I know," and they stood there a second in the hallway, tired in the specific way of people who'd been busy for two hours doing things nobody would notice.

The doorbell rang at seven-oh-four. Dana glanced at the kitchen, at the rosemary pan still soaking, then at Marcus.

"Hide it," she said.

He put it in the oven. She opened the door.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it, which had been Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the dining table and watched the wrinkles refuse to fall.

"It'll relax," Dev said from the kitchen. He was standing over a pot, tasting something off a wooden spoon. "Or nobody will look at it."

"Ellen will look at it."

"Ellen loves you. Ellen would look at a bedsheet and say it was charming."

Marisol pressed the fold flat with her palm and gave up. She counted out six plates, then remembered Priya was bringing her brother, and pulled down a seventh, which meant the mismatched one, the blue-rimmed plate from the set Dev's mother had sent when they got the apartment in Sacramento eleven years ago. She set it at her own place.

The kitchen smelled like cumin and onions going soft. Dev had made too much, the way he always did, and there were three separate cutting boards going, and a dish towel on the floor he hadn't noticed. Marisol picked it up.

"Ice," he said. "Did we—"

"Two bags. In the chest freezer."

"You're a genius."

"I'm a person who remembered ice." She opened the wine, both bottles, and left them on the counter to breathe, though she suspected that was a thing people said rather than a thing that mattered. Then she went to change her shirt, and while she was in the bedroom she heard Dev put on the Talking Heads record, low, the one he always started with.

She came back in a green blouse. He looked up.

"That one," he said.

"Yeah?"

Headlights swung across the front window. Marisol turned on the porch light, and Dev wiped his hands, and the doorbell rang before either of them got there.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, still creased from Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the dining table and pressed the wrinkles with her palms, deciding they'd flatten on their own by seven.

In the kitchen, Danny had the oven fan roaring. He'd started the short ribs at two, and now the whole first floor of their rented duplex smelled like red wine and thyme. He lifted the lid, poked a piece with a fork, and made a face.

"Too tough?" Marisol called.

"Another forty minutes. Maybe an hour."

"They get here at seven."

"Then they'll drink first." He wiped his hands on the dish towel slung over his shoulder and went to find the corkscrew, which was, as always, in the junk drawer under a tangle of phone chargers.

Marisol swept the living room, then hid the pile of unopened mail in the bedroom because there was nowhere else for it to go. She lit the candle her sister had given her, the one that smelled vaguely of a hotel lobby, and set out the cheese Danny had picked up in Fairfield on his way home Thursday.

"Did you text Priya about the peanuts?" she asked.

"She's not allergic to peanuts. That's Rob."

"Rob's not coming."

Danny paused with the corkscrew halfway into the bottle. "Since when?"

"Since Tuesday. His mom's surgery."

"You didn't tell me that."

"I told you in the car."

He shrugged, because arguing about what got said in the car was a losing proposition for both of them. The cork came free with a soft pop.

Marisol changed out of her work clothes into jeans and the green sweater, and when she came back down Danny had put on a record and set six places instead of seven. She straightened a fork. He handed her a glass. Outside, a car door slammed, early.


The doorbell wasn't due to ring for another forty minutes, but Marcus was already sweating.

"The chicken's dry," he announced from the kitchen, prodding a thigh with a fork.

Dana came down the hall carrying a stack of cloth napkins, still barefoot, her hair pulled back with a clip she'd found in the junk drawer. "It's not dry. You said that about the pot roast in February and everyone asked for seconds."

"February was different. February I had gravy."

She set the napkins on the table and came to stand beside him, peering into the oven's amber light. "Ten more minutes and then let it rest. Rest is the whole thing. You never let anything rest."

"I let things rest."

"You reheated the lasagna forty seconds after it came out."

He laughed, which was what she'd been going for. Outside, the November dark had come down early, and the kitchen window held their reflections back at them — Marcus in the apron his sister had given him as a joke, Dana in a sweater with a small hole at the cuff she kept meaning to mend.

She went around the living room turning on lamps, kicking a pair of his running shoes under the console table, straightening the throw on the couch. The Hendersons were bringing wine. Priya was bringing her new boyfriend, whom neither of them had met. Tom was bringing, he'd said, "a surprise," which historically meant a tin of store-bought cookies.

"Should I change?" Marcus called.

"You should change."

"The apron stays on."

"The apron absolutely stays on."

He untied it anyway and went upstairs. Dana lit the candle on the table, blew out the match, and stood for a second in the quiet of the finished room — the smell of rosemary, the lamps, the faint sound of him opening a drawer overhead.

Then headlights swept the front window, early, and she called up the stairs, "They're here."


The apartment smelled like garlic and burnt rosemary, which Dana insisted was the good kind of burnt.

"You said six-thirty," Marcus called from the bedroom, wrestling with a shirt that had seemed less wrinkled on the hanger. "Priya texted. She's bringing her sister."

"That's fine." Dana stood at the counter, scraping the charred bits off the focaccia with a butter knife. "That's four extra minutes of cooking, not a crisis."

"I didn't say crisis."

"Your voice said crisis."

He came out buttoning his cuffs, and she glanced up, then reached over and flattened his collar without comment. He caught her wrist and kissed her knuckles, which was their whole apology system, developed over eleven years and never once discussed.

The table needed setting. Marcus counted out plates — seven now — and discovered they only owned six matching ones, so the seventh became the good china plate from his grandmother, which he set at his own place. Dana moved it to Priya's sister's spot instead.

"She's a guest."

"She's a stranger. Strangers get the nice plate."

"That's a rule?"

"It's a rule now."

He put on music, something low and unobjectionable, and lit the two candles they'd been saving since Christmas. Dana pulled the chicken out, tented it in foil, and stood for a second with her hands on the counter, breathing.

"You okay?"

"Just tired. Long week." She straightened. "Did you get wine?"

He had. Two bottles of red and a white, plus a bottle of sparkling cider because Ben was six months sober and Marcus had remembered without being told, which Dana noticed and filed away, the way she filed away all the small evidence.

At 6:34 the buzzer rang. Dana untied her apron. Marcus wiped his palms on his jeans.

"Ready?"

"No," she said, smiling, and went to open the door.


The doorbell wouldn't ring for another forty minutes, but Marcus was already sweating.

"The lamb needs another twenty," he called from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel that had seen better days. "Which means we eat at eight, not seven-thirty."

Diane came down the stairs still fastening an earring, her hair damp at the temples. "Nobody's going to riot. Jenna's always late anyway." She surveyed the dining room, then began redistributing the mismatched chairs they'd accumulated over eleven years — two from her grandmother, three from a curb in Somerville, one they'd genuinely purchased.

"Did you get wine?" Marcus asked.

"Two reds, one white, and that weird orange thing Pete keeps talking about." She set the bottles on the sideboard. "I also got flowers, which is why I was late, which is why I'm not apologizing for it."

He came out of the kitchen to look. Ranunculus, pale and slightly crushed on one side. "They're good."

"They were half off." She trimmed the stems over the sink while he crouched to find the good serving platter, the one buried behind the slow cooker they used twice a year.

The house smelled like garlic and rosemary now, the windows fogging slightly against the November dark. Diane put on a playlist, then changed it twice. Marcus found a wine stain on the tablecloth and turned it face-down.

"Napkins?" she asked.

"Paper."

"Marcus."

"They're the nice paper."

She laughed and let it go. At 7:12 he opened a beer and handed her one, and they stood in the kitchen together for a minute, not talking, listening to the oven tick. The lamb was resting. The table looked, if not elegant, then warm.

Headlights swung across the front window. Diane straightened the flowers one last time.

"Here we go," Marcus said, and went to get the door.


The Rivera-Chen house smelled like garlic and something faintly burnt.

"I told you the oven runs hot," Daniel said, waving a dish towel at the smoke detector, which chirped once and fell silent, unimpressed.

Marisol didn't look up from the cutting board. "You said that about the last oven too. And the one before it." She slid a mound of chopped cilantro into a bowl. "Maybe it's not the ovens."

"That's a bold accusation from a woman who once set a pot of water on fire."

"That was steam. It looked like fire."

He came up behind her and reached past her hip for the wine opener, and she leaned back into him for a second without either of them commenting on it. Outside, a car door slammed somewhere down the block. Not theirs yet. Twenty minutes, maybe.

Daniel started uncorking bottles. "Did you tell Priya about Kevin?"

"Told her he's bringing someone. I didn't editorialize."

"You editorialized."

"I said 'she seems nice, I guess,' which is a direct quote from you."

He laughed and set out glasses, counting them twice because he always lost track at six. Marisol went to change out of the shirt she'd worn to work, and when she came back down the stairs Daniel had lit the candles and turned the kitchen light down and put on the playlist she liked, the one with too much Al Green on it.

"Showoff," she said.

"You look good."

"I know." She straightened his collar anyway, tugged it flat. "Chairs. We need the two from the office."

He went to get them. She checked the roast, decided it would survive, and stood for one quiet moment in the warm kitchen with everything nearly ready.

The doorbell rang. They looked at each other.

"Showtime," Daniel said.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it, back in March. She shook it out over the dining table and pressed the folds flat with her palms while David chopped shallots at the counter, the knife tapping fast against the board.

"They're coming at seven?" he asked.

"Six-thirty. Which means Kaitlyn shows at six-fifteen and stands in the kitchen asking if she can help."

"She can chop."

"She cannot chop. Remember Thanksgiving."

David laughed and scraped the shallots into the pan, where they hissed and immediately smelled like something worth waiting for. He'd been planning this braise for two weeks, ever since Marisol mentioned that Pete and Rina had never really seen the house — not since the kitchen was finished, anyway. There was a certain pride in it, the kind neither of them would admit out loud.

Marisol went around the living room collecting evidence: a stack of unopened mail, David's reading glasses, the throw blanket that had migrated to the floor sometime Tuesday. She stuffed the mail in a drawer and made a mental note to actually deal with it. Then she lit the candle on the bookshelf, the fig one, and stood back to look at the room the way a stranger might.

"Wine's in the fridge," David called. "Can you pull the reds out to breathe?"

"On it."

She uncorked two bottles and set them on the sideboard. Behind her, David swore mildly — the lid of the Dutch oven had slipped, splashing a little onto the burner. He wiped it with a dish towel, unbothered.

At 6:12, headlights swept across the front window. Marisol looked at David. He wiped his hands on his jeans, tugged his shirt straight, and grinned.

"Kaitlyn," they said together.


The Reyes-Coleman house smelled like garlic by four o'clock.

Marisol had started the braise early, mostly because she knew she'd lose the thread of the afternoon otherwise. She stood at the stove in a flour-dusted apron, tasting from a wooden spoon, adding a pinch more salt, tasting again. On the counter beside her, her phone buzzed with a text from Priya: *Running ten minutes late, is that okay?* It was always okay. Priya had been ten minutes late to everything since college.

"Ten minutes late," she called toward the living room.

"Which means twenty," Devon answered. He was on his knees behind the couch, wrestling the vacuum cord out of a tangle. He'd spent the last hour on things nobody would notice — the smudge on the sliding door, the pile of unopened mail he'd finally sorted into keep and recycle, the burnt-out bulb over the dining table that had been out since February. He noticed those things. Marisol noticed the food.

"Do we have enough chairs?" she asked.

"Five, plus the piano bench."

"The piano bench for Tom? He's six-four."

Devon considered this. "Tom gets a real chair. I'll take the bench."

By five-thirty the table was set with the good plates, the ones from his grandmother, mismatched and heavy. Marisol pulled the bread out and burned two fingers doing it, swearing in Spanish, and Devon handed her a dish towel full of ice without saying anything, then went back to opening the wine.

They stood together for a minute in the kitchen, the oven ticking as it cooled. She leaned into his shoulder. He smelled like lemon cleaner.

"Did we forget anything?" she said.

"Probably. We always do."

The doorbell rang. It was Priya, right on time for once, holding a pie.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, folded beneath a stack of towels she'd meant to donate. She shook it out over the dining table while Danny, in the kitchen, argued with the oven.

"It's preheating," he called. "It says it's preheating. It's been saying that for eleven minutes."

"Did you press start?"

A pause. "I pressed start."

She smoothed a wrinkle with her palm. Six o'clock. The Ortegas were always ten minutes early, and Priya and Jess were always twenty minutes late, which meant the doorbell would start at ten till and continue intermittently for an hour. She counted out plates. One had a chip on the rim, so she put it at her own seat.

Danny came out carrying a bowl of olives, then set it down and went back for napkins. He'd worn the blue shirt without being asked, which she noted and decided not to comment on, because commenting made him self-conscious.

"I forgot bread," he said.

"There's a baguette in the freezer."

"That's not the same."

"It's dinner with people who've seen our bathroom. It's fine."

He put the baguette in the oven anyway, which by then had grudgingly reached temperature. Marisol lit two candles, considered a third, decided against it. The house smelled like garlic and the faint chemical ghost of the bathroom cleaner Danny had used at four o'clock in a burst of panic.

"Did you move my keys?" he asked.

"They're in the bowl."

"They're not."

"Danny, they're in the bowl."

He checked the bowl. They were in the bowl.

At 5:52 the doorbell rang. Marisol looked at him; he looked at her. Some agreement passed between them about who was closer, and he wiped his hands on a dish towel and went, and she heard Ray Ortega's laugh come into the house before he did.


The doorbell would ring at seven, which gave them forty minutes.

Miguel stood at the stove with a wooden spoon, tasting the pozole and adding another pinch of oregano. He'd started the pork at noon, before his shift ended, and the kitchen still smelled like the whole afternoon had happened in it. Behind him, David was hunting through the linen closet.

"Do we own napkins?" David called. "Cloth ones. The blue ones your mother sent."

"Third shelf, under the beach towels."

"There are no beach towels on the third shelf."

Miguel set down the spoon and went to look. The napkins were on the second shelf, exactly where he'd said, and he pulled them out without comment, which was its own kind of comment.

"Don't," David said.

"I didn't say anything."

They moved around each other in the small apartment with the choreography of eleven years. David wiped down the table, then went back over the same spot twice because Priya was coming and Priya noticed things. Miguel found the good bowls, the ones they used maybe four times a year, and rinsed the dust off them.

"Ana's bringing her new boyfriend," David said.

"The one with the podcast?"

"That one."

"Then we should have more wine."

There was a moment near six-fifty when they both stopped — David holding a stack of bowls, Miguel with a lighter in his hand for the candles — and the apartment was clean and warm and smelled like garlic and lime, and nothing else needed doing yet.

"It looks good," David said.

"It does."

David kissed the side of his head on the way past, and then the buzzer went off eight minutes early, which was Priya, who was always early, and Miguel went to let her in while David lit the candles himself.


The doorbell wouldn't ring for another forty minutes, but Marcus was already sweating.

"The chicken's dry," he announced from the kitchen, poking at the thighs with a fork.

Renata came in carrying a stack of mismatched plates, her hair still damp from the shower. "It's not dry. You said that last time and Diane asked for the recipe."

"Diane asks everyone for recipes. It's her love language." He pulled the pan out anyway and tented it with foil, then wiped his hands on the dish towel hanging from the oven handle. "Did you get wine?"

"Two bottles of the Malbec. And that sparkling thing for Priya, since she's not drinking."

Marcus paused. "Right. The pregnancy."

"She hasn't announced it. Don't say anything."

"I wasn't going to say anything."

Renata gave him a look over the top of the plates. Fourteen years of marriage had made the look sufficient.

She set the table while he made the salad, the two of them moving around each other in the narrow galley kitchen with the unconscious choreography of people who had negotiated this exact space thousands of times. He reached for the tongs; she leaned back without looking. She opened the drawer; he stepped left.

"Should we light candles?" she asked. "Or is that too much for a Tuesday?"

"It's Wednesday."

"Is it Wednesday?"

They lit the candles.

At 6:52, Marcus changed his shirt because the first one had olive oil on the cuff. Renata found the good napkins in the linen closet behind the beach towels, where they'd been since the last time anyone came over, which had been longer ago than either of them wanted to calculate.

"It looks nice," she said, standing in the doorway.

Marcus surveyed the room — the crooked candles, the chicken resting, the dog banished to the bedroom. "It looks fine."

The doorbell rang. They looked at each other, and Renata went to answer it.


The doorbell wasn't due to ring for another forty minutes, but Marcus was already sweating.

"The lamb needs to rest," he said, mostly to himself, sliding the roasting pan onto the stovetop. Steam fogged the kitchen window, blurring the maple tree in their Cleveland backyard into a smear of October orange.

Dana came down the stairs with her hair still damp, holding two shirts on hangers. "Blue or the gray one?"

"Blue. The gray makes you look like you're going to a funeral."

"It's charcoal."

"It's a funeral."

She disappeared back upstairs. He heard the closet door, then the particular creak of the floorboard by their bed that they'd been meaning to fix for six years.

The table wasn't set. He'd forgotten the table entirely. He was pulling the good plates down when Dana reappeared in the blue shirt, sleeves rolled, and took them from him without a word. She counted out six settings, then paused.

"Is Reza bringing his sister?"

"He said maybe."

She added a seventh, then a napkin folded the fussy way her mother had taught her. Marcus watched for a second longer than he meant to.

"What?"

"Nothing. You missed a spot." He tapped his own jaw.

She swiped at her chin, found nothing, and threw a napkin at him.

By seven-fifteen the potatoes were done, the wine was open, and Dana had lit the candles twice because the first match went out. Marcus stood in the doorway between kitchen and dining room, surveying it: the mismatched chairs, the good plates, the lamb resting under foil.

"It looks nice," she said.

"It looks like we tried."

"We did try."

Headlights swung across the front window. Dana straightened a fork that was already straight. Marcus wiped his hands on the dish towel, hung it on the oven handle, and went to answer the door.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded in the linen closet, still smelling faintly of the cedar block she'd tossed in there last spring. She shook it out over the dining table while the oven ticked and warmed behind her.

"Did you get the wine?" she called.

Dev came in from the garage with two bottles under one arm and a paper bag of ice under the other. "Red and white. And I got the fancy crackers because you said the last ones tasted like drywall."

"They did taste like drywall."

He set everything on the counter and started emptying the dishwasher, stacking plates with the particular clatter that meant he was moving fast. Marisol counted chairs — six, and they needed seven. She went upstairs and dragged the desk chair down, wheels bumping on each step.

"That thing's going to squeak all night," Dev said.

"Whoever gets it can rock back and forth and be entertained."

The chicken came out at six-fifteen, skin crackling, and Dev tented it with foil while Marisol tossed the salad with her hands, the way her mother did. She wiped them on a dish towel and looked around: the water rings on the coffee table, the pile of mail she'd shoved into a drawer, the hall light with the burnt-out bulb.

"Should I run and get a bulb?"

"Nobody's inspecting the hallway," Dev said. He handed her a glass of the white, poured early on purpose. They stood there a second, drinking, listening to the house be quiet.

Then the doorbell — Amara and Josh, always ten minutes early, holding a pie.

"We brought dessert," Amara announced.

"We brought a chair from the office," Marisol said, and pushed it forward with her foot.

Josh sat in it immediately. It squeaked. Everyone laughed, and Dev went to open the red.


The doorbell wouldn't ring for another forty minutes, but Priya was already convinced they were behind.

"The chicken needs to rest," she said, sliding the pan onto the stove. "Which means we have exactly as long as it takes the chicken to rest."

Daniel came in from the garage carrying two folding chairs, one under each arm. "We're fine. Marcus is always twenty minutes late, and he's driving Tess, so that's two people accounted for."

"Sofia's never late."

"Sofia's never late," he agreed, and set the chairs against the wall. He looked at the dining table, which currently held a stack of unopened mail, a phone charger, and a plastic bin of Halloween decorations neither of them had put away in November, let alone now, in February. He picked up the bin and carried it to the hall closet, where he wedged it in front of the vacuum and shut the door quickly, holding it a second to make sure it stayed.

"I saw that," Priya said, without turning around.

"You did not."

"I heard it. That's the sound of a door that doesn't want to close."

He laughed and started setting out plates. They had six matching ones and two that didn't match, which meant a quiet negotiation every time about who got stuck with the blue ones. He gave the mismatched pair to their own seats, the way they always did.

Priya tasted the sauce, made a face, added salt, tasted again, and handed him the spoon. "Honest opinion."

"Better than last time."

"That's not an opinion, that's a comparison."

"It's good, Pri. It's really good."

She wiped her hands on a towel and looked around the kitchen — flour on the counter, a sink full of bowls, the good candles finally lit. Outside, headlights swung across the front window.

"That's Sofia," she said.

Daniel was already walking to the door.


David heard the front door before he heard the car, which meant Renee had let it slam again, arms full of grocery bags.

"They're out of the good sourdough," she called from the entryway. "I got the ciabatta."

"Ciabatta's fine." He was at the sink, scrubbing potatoes, sleeves pushed to his elbows. Twelve years of marriage had taught him that Renee announced problems mostly to be told they weren't problems.

She came into the kitchen and set the bags down, then stood behind him a moment, looking at the counter. "You started the potatoes without the rosemary."

"There's rosemary."

"There's dried rosemary. Marta brought us that plant."

"Then use the plant."

She went out to the deck in her coat and came back with a fistful of it, smelling like a hardware store, and started stripping the leaves off the stems while he quartered the potatoes. Neither of them said anything for a while. The oven ticked as it heated.

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

"He's bringing red. Jenna's bringing a pie, apparently, which is going to be weird with the flourless thing you made."

"It's not weird. People can have two desserts." Renee wiped her hands on a dish towel and looked at the table, which had four chairs and needed six. "Can you get the folding ones from the basement?"

He went. When he came back up she had changed her shirt and put on earrings, and had moved the mail off the table and into a drawer, the way she did before company. He set up the chairs, which didn't match anything.

"They're fine," she said, before he asked.

At six-forty the potatoes came out, over-rosemaried and good. At six-fifty they heard a car door. Renee turned on the porch light; David turned down the music, then turned it back up two notches, and went to open the door.


The Last Twenty Minutes

Rosa found the good tablecloth wadded in the linen closet behind a stack of beach towels, still creased from the last time they'd used it, Thanksgiving maybe, or Danny's birthday.

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

"They're not coming to inspect the tablecloth," Amelia said. She was standing over a pot of white beans, tasting from a wooden spoon, adding salt with the confidence of someone who had made this dish forty times. Outside, a car door slammed—not theirs, the neighbors'—and Rosa flinched anyway.

"I'll iron it."

"There's no time to iron it."

"There's eighteen minutes."

Amelia turned around, spoon still in hand. "Rosa."

But Rosa was already dragging the ironing board out of the hall closet, and Amelia knew from eleven years of this that arguing would cost more time than the ironing would. So she went back to the beans, then to the bread, sawing it into thick uneven slices while the iron hissed in the other room.

She could hear Rosa muttering at a stubborn fold. She could hear the radiator knocking. February in Providence, the windows fogged at the corners.

"Did you light the candles?" Rosa called.

"Not yet."

"Light them now so the smell burns off."

Amelia lit them. She wiped down the counter, set out the good glasses, the mismatched ones they'd collected from estate sales, and stepped back to look at the table—bare wood, waiting.

Rosa came in holding the cloth like something rescued. Together they shook it out over the table, the fabric ballooning between them, settling.

"See," Rosa said.

"It looks nice," Amelia admitted.

Rosa kissed the side of her head, tasted salt from the steam. "You have flour on your sleeve."

"I know."

The doorbell rang. Neither of them moved for a second—that small held breath before the house filled up with other people's voices—and then Amelia went to answer it, and Rosa stayed a moment longer, straightening a corner that was already straight.


The Fentons' Kitchen, 5:40 PM

Dana pulled the chicken from the oven and swore quietly at the skin, which had gone pale on one side. She rotated the pan, slid it back in, and set the timer for eight more minutes.

"Is that the good salt or the regular salt?" Marcus called from the dining room, where he was arguing with the tablecloth.

"They're both good. One's just more expensive."

He came in holding two forks, examined them under the light, and put one back in the drawer. Then he took it out again. "Six people, and we own four matching forks."

"Nobody counts forks."

"Kelsey counts forks."

"Kelsey does not count forks. Kelsey brought us a bottle of wine in a paper bag with the price still on it." Dana wiped her hands on the towel over her shoulder and looked at the counter — green beans unwashed, a bowl of potatoes half-mashed, the salad she'd started in her head three hours ago and nowhere else. "Can you do the beans?"

Marcus ran water into a colander. He was still in his work shirt, sleeves rolled unevenly. Outside, a car door slammed, then another, and they both froze for a second before realizing it was the neighbors.

"Twenty minutes," she said.

"They'll be late. Rob's always late."

"Rob's always early and pretends he's late so he can apologize."

He laughed at that, snapping the ends off the beans and dropping them in the sink. Dana came up behind him, reached around, and stole one raw.

"That's unsanitary."

"I washed my hands in wine."

The timer went. She pulled the chicken out, and this time it was right — brown, loud, dripping. Marcus said "oh, nice" with real feeling, and she let herself be pleased for about four seconds before remembering the candles were still in the hall closet.

The doorbell rang at 5:58. Rob, apologizing.


The clock read 5:40 when Nadia finally kicked off her work shoes by the door and announced, to no one in particular, that she had failed to buy bread.

"I got some," Theo called from the kitchen. "Sourdough. It was the last one, and a woman gave me a look."

"Did you look back?"

"I looked away. I'm not built for confrontation."

Nadia came in, still in her blazer, and inspected the counter: a roasting pan, four heads of garlic, a bag of green beans she was fairly certain had been in the crisper since before Thanksgiving. She started trimming them anyway.

"Those are old," Theo said.

"They're fine. They're just tired."

They moved around each other in the narrow galley kitchen the way they had for eleven years, a choreography neither of them had ever discussed. He salted; she tasted; he adjusted. At 6:05 she went to change and came back in jeans and a sweater, hair still damp, and found him standing in the dining room holding two candlesticks like he was weighing evidence.

"The tall ones block people's faces," she said.

"That's what I was thinking. But the short ones look sad."

"Then we'll be sad."

He laughed and set them down. The dog got shut in the bedroom, protesting. Nadia stacked mail into a drawer that already couldn't close. Theo found the good napkins, which were just the napkins they never used.

At 6:25 the oven timer went off and the chicken looked, improbably, like the picture. Nadia poured herself half a glass of wine and stood beside him, both of them surveying the table.

"We forgot ice," he said.

"They'll survive."

The doorbell rang four minutes early. Theo wiped his hands on his jeans, Nadia pushed her hair behind her ears, and they went together to open it.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it, back in March. She shook it out over the dining table and smoothed the wrinkles with her palms while Daniel carried in the leaf that made the table seat eight.

"Six people," she said. "Do we need the leaf?"

"Sarah's bringing her sister. And Tom eats like three people." He fitted the leaf into the groove and pushed the halves together until they clicked.

The kitchen smelled like garlic and browning chicken thighs. Daniel had started the braise at four, mostly because he'd read that you couldn't rush it, and now he lifted the lid every ten minutes to check on it anyway. Marisol swatted his hand away the third time.

"You're letting the steam out."

"I'm supervising."

She went to change out of the shirt she'd worn to the hardware store that morning, and came back in a green sweater, still barefoot. Daniel had put on a record, something with horns, and was arranging bread on a cutting board with more care than the bread deserved.

At 6:20 they had a moment of quiet panic about chairs. There were only five matching ones. Daniel dragged the desk chair from the spare room and Marisol draped a throw over it so the difference was less obvious.

"It looks intentional," he said.

"It looks like a desk chair with a blanket on it."

They stood in the doorway and looked at the table together — the mismatched glasses, the candles she'd found in a drawer, the salad she'd made too much of, as always. Somewhere down the block a car door shut.

"That them?"

"Too early," Marisol said, but she checked her reflection in the dark window anyway, and Daniel turned the music down two notches, and they waited.


The doorbell would ring at seven, and it was already six-fifteen.

Marisol stood at the stove, tasting the pozole with a wooden spoon she'd owned since graduate school. Too much salt. She added a splash of water, tasted again, and decided it was fine—nobody at this table would notice, least of all Devon's friend Ray, who put hot sauce on everything including scrambled eggs.

"Where do you want these?" Devon called from the dining room. He was holding four wine glasses by their stems, two in each hand, looking uncertain, the way he always did about table arrangements.

"Right side of each plate. Above the knife."

"Above the knife," he repeated. He'd been setting tables wrong for eleven years and she'd corrected him for eleven years and neither of them minded. He set them down, then stepped back and studied his work with the seriousness he usually reserved for spreadsheets.

Marisol wiped her hands on a dish towel and went to look. The napkins were folded into something ambitious and wrong.

"What are these?"

"Swans."

"They look like they've been hit by cars."

"They're modernist swans." He unfolded one and refolded it into a plain rectangle. "There. Better?"

"Much."

She went back to the kitchen. He followed and started slicing radishes, thin, the way she liked them, arranging them on a small plate with the cabbage and lime wedges. Outside, a car door slammed—not theirs, someone down the block—and they both looked up automatically.

"Did you tell Ray no dogs?" she asked.

"I told him. He'll bring the dog."

"He'll bring the dog." She sighed, but she was smiling.

At six-fifty Devon changed his shirt. At six-fifty-five Marisol lit the candles, and then blew one out because it was smoking. They stood in the quiet dining room for a moment, surveying it together, and then the bell rang, six minutes early, and the dog was barking on the porch.


Marisol found Dave in the garage, wrestling with the folding chairs.

"Six or eight?" he asked.

"Eight. The Hendersons are bringing Grace."

He hauled them inside, banging the doorframe the way he always did, and she winced the way she always did, and neither of them said anything about it because they'd had that argument in 2019 and settled it.

The kitchen smelled like garlic and browning butter. She'd started the risotto too early — a rookie mistake after eleven years of hosting — so she pulled it off the heat and covered it, hoping it wouldn't turn to paste. Dave came in and started rearranging the cheese board she'd built.

"It was fine," she said.

"It was crowded. Nobody wants to excavate for the salami."

She let him. He was better at that kind of thing, the visual part, the way a table should look. She was better at making food that tasted like something. Between them they made a reasonable host.

At six-fifteen he went upstairs to change and came back down in the blue shirt.

"The blue shirt," she said.

"You like the blue shirt."

"I do like the blue shirt. I'm noting that you knew that."

He kissed the side of her head, quick, already reaching past her for the wine opener. She lit the candles on the table — the good ones, from the trip to Portland — and turned the overhead lights down to the setting they'd figured out years ago, the one that made the dining room look like a place people wanted to linger.

"Ice," she said.

"Getting it."

At six-thirty the doorbell rang and they looked at each other for a second, the last quiet second, and Dave said, "Okay," and Marisol wiped her hands on the towel and went to answer it.


The doorbell would ring in forty minutes, and the kitchen still smelled like burnt garlic.

"I can salvage it," Ana said, scraping the pan into the trash. "There's more in the crisper."

Danny came in from the garage carrying the folding chairs, sawdust on his sleeve from the shelving project he'd abandoned in March. "You said that about the risotto."

"The risotto was fine."

"The risotto was a crime." He set the chairs by the table and started wiping them down with a paper towel. They'd bought them for their wedding reception nine years ago, a cheap purchase that had outlasted the marriage of the couple who'd stood up with them.

Ana peeled fresh garlic while Danny put on music, something low and bluesy that he knew she liked. He set out the good glasses, then counted again. "Marcus is bringing his sister?"

"Cousin. The one visiting from Tucson."

"So seven."

"Seven." She glanced at the table. "We only have six chairs that match."

"Nobody's grading us." He pulled the desk chair from the office anyway and rolled it into place, spinning it once. "This is the fun one. Whoever gets it wins."

She laughed despite herself. In the last few minutes before people arrived, the house always felt like this — half-finished, a little frantic, better than it would look later when everything was clean and everyone was gone.

Danny lit the two candles they never used and stood back to look. Ana came up beside him with a dish towel over her shoulder and surveyed the room: the mismatched chairs, the salad she'd assembled from three different half-bags of greens, the sawdust he still hadn't noticed on his sleeve. She brushed it off with her palm.

"Thanks," he said.

The doorbell rang eleven minutes early. Ana swore softly, Danny grinned, and they went to answer it together.


The doorbell wasn't due to ring until seven, but Denise had been checking the clock since five.

"You're hovering," Marcus said, not looking up from the cutting board. He was slicing shallots with the deliberate slowness of a man who'd learned knife skills from YouTube.

"I'm supervising."

"You're hovering while holding a wine glass, which is different from supervising."

She set the glass down on the counter, conceding the point. Their kitchen was small—a Cleveland bungalow built in 1948, with cabinets they'd painted themselves the summer they moved in—and there wasn't really room for two people to cook. They'd developed a system anyway. Marcus handled anything requiring a stove. Denise handled everything else, which tonight meant wrestling the folding table out of the basement and finding the good napkins, which turned out to be in the linen closet behind a broken humidifier neither of them remembered buying.

"Did Priya say she was bringing her sister?" Marcus called.

"She said maybe." Denise counted place settings, then added one more. "I'm assuming yes."

The chicken went in at six-fifteen. Marcus stepped outside to sweep the porch, and Denise took over the salad, tearing lettuce with her hands the way his mother had taught her. Through the window she watched him nudge a dead wasp off the welcome mat with the broom.

At six-forty he came back in smelling like cold air and changed his shirt twice. She told him the first one was better. He put the second one back on anyway, and she let it go.

"Do we have enough chairs?" he asked.

"We have exactly enough chairs if nobody brings a sister."

"So we don't have enough chairs."

"There's the piano bench."

He laughed, and she felt the particular small satisfaction of having made him laugh in their own kitchen, seventeen minutes before anyone arrived to see it.


The doorbell would ring at seven, and it was six-forty.

Marcus stood at the stove, tasting the sauce off a wooden spoon, then adding more red pepper flakes despite knowing Priya would say it was too hot. She always said that. She always went back for seconds.

"Did you get the good napkins?" she called from the dining room, where she was moving the mail off the table in stacks — bills in one pile, catalogs in another, a birthday card from his mother that neither of them had opened.

"Bottom drawer of the hutch."

"They're not in the bottom drawer of the hutch."

He set the spoon down and came through, wiping his hands on the dish towel he'd tucked into his waistband like an apron. He crouched, opened the drawer, and pulled out the linen napkins, still creased in thirds from the last dinner party in March.

"Huh," Priya said.

"I'm not going to say anything."

"Good instinct."

She lit two candles and stepped back to look at the table, then blew one out because it smelled like vanilla and the other one smelled like cedar and together it was too much. Marcus went back to check the bread, which was two minutes from burnt.

At six-fifty-five they stood in the kitchen and drank half a glass of wine each, quickly, like people getting away with something. The house looked good. The bathroom had a folded hand towel that would be crumpled by eight-thirty. Somewhere in the guest room, a laundry basket was hidden behind the door.

"Ellen's bringing that guy," Priya said.

"I know."

"Be nice."

"I'm always nice."

She kissed him, tasted the red pepper on his mouth, and made a face. Then the doorbell rang, and they both went to answer it, arriving at the door at the same time.


Marisol found Danny in the kitchen at five-thirty, sleeves shoved to his elbows, staring into a pot like it had insulted him.

"It's separating," he said.

"It's not separating. It's resting." She leaned past him, dipped a spoon, tasted. "It needs salt. And lemon."

"I put lemon in."

"Put more."

He did, grumbling, while she pulled the good plates down from the high cabinet — the ones from his grandmother, white with a thin gold rim, four of them chipped. They had eight guests coming and only six matching chairs, so Danny had hauled the desk chair up from the basement and Marisol had draped a dish towel over the cracked vinyl seat and declared it charming.

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

"I texted her. She said she's fine as long as it's not in the same pan."

"It's not in the same pan."

"I know. That's what I told her."

Marisol ran a lint roller over the couch, which their dog had claimed as personal territory sometime in 2019. Danny put on a record because he always put on a record, something with horns, and she said it was too loud, and he turned it down two clicks, and she said that was fine.

At six-fifteen she came out of the bedroom in the green dress and he looked up from the cutting board and said, "Hey," in a particular way that made her roll her eyes and feel pleased anyway.

"There's basil on your shirt," she said.

He looked down. "There's basil everywhere."

The doorbell rang eight minutes early — the Hollands, who were always early — and Marisol shot Danny a look, and he shot one back, and she went to answer it while he wiped his hands on a towel and reached for the wine opener.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, wedged behind a stack of towels nobody used. She shook it out over the dining table and pressed the fold lines flat with her palms, which was the only ironing that was going to happen tonight.

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

"We own four matching chairs and two chairs," Dev said from the kitchen. He was standing over a pot of rice, lid tilted, deciding whether it needed another two minutes. He'd made the dal that morning before work, which was the only reason the evening was possible at all. "Nobody's going to audit the chairs."

"Sasha will notice."

"Sasha notices everything and says nothing, which is why she's a good guest."

Marisol dragged the desk chair in from the spare room and decided it looked intentional if she put a cushion on it. Outside, the November dark had come early, and the windows had gone black and reflective. She turned on the lamp in the corner instead of the overhead, because the overhead made everyone look like they were being interrogated.

At 6:20 Dev came out holding two spoons. "Salt check."

She tasted. "More."

"You always say more."

"And I'm always right."

He went back and salted it. She lit the two candles they'd been saving since somebody's wedding, then wiped down the bathroom sink and hid the laundry basket in their bedroom with the door shut. Dev put on a record because he liked the ritual of it, even though nobody would hear it once people started talking.

At 6:41 he found her standing in the middle of the living room, surveying.

"It looks good," he said.

"It looks like us."

"That's what I said."

The doorbell rang. Marisol blew out the match she was still holding, and Dev went to answer it.


The oven timer chirped twice before Dana heard it over the podcast. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and pulled the tray of roasted carrots out, the kitchen filling with the smell of thyme and burnt honey at the edges.

"Too dark?" Marcus asked from the dining room, where he was pushing the leaf into the table.

"They're caramelized," she said. "That's the word we're using."

He came in to look, still in his work shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow. He stole one, burned his tongue, and made a face that meant it was good. "Where's the tablecloth, the blue one?"

"Hall closet, second shelf. Behind the extension cords."

He found it, shook it out over the table, and started counting silverware out loud. Dana listened to him lose track twice and start over. Outside, a car door slammed—not theirs, the neighbors'—and she checked the clock. Forty minutes.

"Did you text Priya about the shellfish thing?"

"She said she's fine as long as it's not in the main dish." Marcus set down a fork. "I put the stuffed mushrooms in the fridge on the bottom shelf, away from the shrimp."

"You're a good man."

"I'm an adequate man who was yelled at once in 2019."

She laughed and went back to the stove, where the sauce needed stirring. Marcus put on music, something low and jazzy that he always chose and she always pretended to be indifferent to. He lit the candles on the windowsill, opened a bottle of red to let it breathe, and then stood behind her for a second, one hand on her shoulder, looking into the pot.

"It's going to be fine," he said.

"I know."

He kissed the side of her head and went to change his shirt. Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang, and they looked at each other across the room—her at the stove, him at the door—before he opened it.


The Meyers Have People Over

Dana got home first, which meant she got the kitchen. She set the grocery bag on the counter and started unpacking: two chickens, a bag of lemons, rosemary in a plastic clamshell that cost four dollars and made her wince every time.

Ray came in twenty minutes later, still in his work boots, and she heard him stop in the entryway to take them off without being asked, which after eleven years still struck her as a small kindness.

"They're coming at seven?" he called.

"Six-thirty. Marisol's bringing her sister."

"The one who doesn't eat gluten."

"That's the other sister."

He came into the kitchen, kissed the back of her neck, and looked at the chickens with mild alarm. "Two?"

"Six people. Seven with Marisol's sister."

Ray took the vacuum out to the living room and ran it over the rug where the dog had been shedding since March. Then he wiped down the bathroom sink, gathered the mail off the coffee table, and shoved it in a drawer, which was the family method. Dana was trussing the birds with kitchen twine when he came back through and asked whether they had ice.

"There's a bag in the deep freeze."

"There's a bag from Thanksgiving in the deep freeze."

"Then get a bag."

He drove to the Kroger on Ferndale and came back with ice, a bottle of red because he never trusted their supply, and a package of paper napkins printed with little lemons, which he presented sheepishly.

"Those are cute," Dana said, and meant it.

At six-twenty they stood in the kitchen with the oven ticking and the house smelling like garlic. Dana had changed her shirt. Ray had put on socks.

"Anything left?" he asked.

"Candles."

He lit the two on the table. Then the doorbell rang, early, the way Marisol always was, and Dana said, "Okay, okay," and went to answer it.


Marisol pinned her hair up while the kitchen filled with the smell of scorched garlic.

"You're supposed to lower the heat when it turns gold," she called.

"It's not burnt," Dave said, scraping the pan into the sink anyway. "It's smoky. Chefs pay extra for smoky."

He started over, this time watching the oil like it might escape. Marisol came in behind him, tugged the dish towel off his shoulder, and wiped a ring of red wine off the counter from last night. She'd meant to get it earlier. She'd meant to do a lot of things earlier, but the vet appointment had eaten the afternoon, and the dog was still sulking under the dining table.

"Chuy, out," she said. The dog didn't move. She left him.

Dave had made the same chicken dish for every dinner party since 2019. Their friends had stopped pretending to be surprised by it, which he found insulting and she found funny. He was better at the parts nobody noticed: he'd already put the extra chairs out, already found the corkscrew, already set the trash bag by the door so he could grab it on the way to the curb.

Marisol lit the candles, then blew two out because it looked like a séance. She checked her phone. Priya was running late, as always; Tom and Ellen were fifteen minutes out.

"Do we have enough ice?" Dave asked.

"We have a freezer full of ice."

"That's not an answer."

She kissed his shoulder on her way past and said, "Yes. We have enough ice."

At 7:04, headlights swung across the front window. Dave untied his apron and hung it on the pantry door. Marisol nudged the dog out from under the table with her foot, and this time he went.

"Ready?" she said.

"No," Dave said, and opened the door.


Miriam heard the oven timer and called down the hall, "Two minutes on the potatoes."

"I'm on it," Dana called back, though she was still wrestling with the tablecloth, trying to get the creases out with the flat of her hand. They'd bought it in Asheville three summers ago and used it maybe four times.

The house smelled like rosemary and garlic. Miriam had been cooking since two, which was probably too early, but she'd wanted to have things done in stages so she wouldn't be sweating over the stove when people arrived. That was the plan, anyway. She was sweating now. She pushed her hair back with her wrist and pulled the tray out—the potatoes were golden at the edges, good.

"Ellen texted," Dana said, coming into the kitchen. "They're bringing wine and something called a galette."

"That's a good thing, right?"

"It's a pie that doesn't try too hard."

Miriam laughed. "Can you check if we have enough chairs? I think we're one short."

Dana counted in her head. Six coming, plus them—eight. They had the four from the table, two from the office, the wicker one from the porch if she hauled it in. "We're fine. The porch chair's a little damp."

"Wipe it down."

"I'm wiping it down."

By six-fifteen the table was set, mismatched napkins and all, and Dana had lit the two candles Miriam liked, the short ones that didn't drip. Miriam changed out of her cooking shirt into a blue button-down and came back with her sleeves rolled up.

"You look nice," Dana said.

"I look damp."

"You look nice and damp."

The doorbell rang, early, the way Ellen always was. Miriam glanced at the room—wine open, music low, one dog shut safely in the bedroom—and nodded once, satisfied, before Dana went to let them in.


The Rosenbergs had forty minutes and a chicken that refused to cooperate.

"It's still pink at the thigh," Maya said, poking the thermometer in again. Steam fogged her glasses. She'd been home from the clinic since four, which had felt like plenty of time until it wasn't.

Daniel came in from the dining room carrying two mismatched chairs from the basement. "Sixty-five, seventy—it'll coast up while it rests. Trust the carryover."

"You read one cookbook."

"I read *most* of one cookbook." He set the chairs at the table's short ends, then stood back, frowning. "This is going to be tight with seven."

They'd invited the Delgados, and then Priya, and then Priya had asked if she could bring her brother who was in town from Sacramento, and Maya had said of course before checking with Daniel, who hadn't minded, exactly, but had pointed out they owned six wine glasses.

"Jelly jar for whoever gets there last," he said now, arranging them anyway.

Maya slid the roasting pan back in and started on the salad. Daniel put on the record his sister had given them, the one they only played for company, and turned it down twice because Maya kept saying *what?* over the running water.

At six-fifteen he swept the mail off the counter into a drawer. She wiped the bathroom sink with a hand towel and then, guiltily, threw the towel in the hamper and hung a clean one. He found the good salt. She found the corkscrew in the junk drawer, under a phone charger for a phone neither of them owned anymore.

At six-twenty-eight, Daniel pulled the chicken out, and it was fine—golden, resting, correct.

Maya looked at him over it. "You were right."

"Write that down."

The doorbell rang. They both went.