The doorbell would ring in forty minutes, and Marisol was still elbow-deep in the salad bowl.

"Did you get the good olive oil?" she called toward the living room.

"Define good," Dave said. He was on his knees, wrestling the leaf into the dining table, which had refused to expand properly since they'd moved it from the old apartment. "I got the one in the green bottle."

"That's the good one."

The table finally gave, sliding open with a groan. Dave brushed his hands on his jeans and went to find the extra chairs, which lived in the basement behind the Christmas boxes. He came back up with two of them and a cobweb in his hair.

Marisol laughed and reached up to pull it out. "You're a mess."

"I'm ambiance."

She went back to the kitchen, where the chicken had eight more minutes and the rice was doing whatever rice did when you weren't watching it. Dave started setting places, counting under his breath—Priya and Tom, the Callahans, Nadia, who was bringing someone new named Julian.

"Do we have enough wine glasses?" he asked.

"We have six real ones and those two from the gas station."

"Julian gets a gas station glass."

"Be nice."

He set out the mismatched napkins, then lit the candles they only used for company. Marisol came out with the salad and stopped, looking at the table—the leaf finally in, the chairs crowded close, the candlelight softening the water stain on the ceiling they kept meaning to fix.

"It looks good," she said.

"It looks like people are coming over."

She squeezed his arm on the way back to the oven. He put on a record, something instrumental, low. Outside a car door slammed—too early, someone always came early—and they both looked at each other, and Marisol pulled off her apron, and Dave went to get the door.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, still creased from last Thanksgiving. She shook it out over the dining table while Danny hauled the leaf from the garage, dust webbing one corner.

"It's crooked," she said.

"It's a table, not a runway." He wedged the leaf in anyway, then pressed down until the seam disappeared. "There."

The chicken had been in the oven since four-thirty. Danny had done the brining, which he was quietly proud of, and Marisol had made the salad—fennel and orange, a recipe she'd clipped in March and finally had a reason to try. She sliced the fennel too thick and started over, thinner this time, the knife making a wet whisper against the board.

At six she went upstairs to change and came back down in the green blouse. Danny was on a step stool changing the bulb over the sink, which had been out for three weeks.

"Now?"

"They'll see it."

"Nobody looks at the light."

"You look at the light." He climbed down. "Every night you say, 'we should fix that light.'"

She conceded the point by handing him a beer.

Ellen and Rob would be first, they always were. The Kims would text at 6:40 saying they were leaving, which meant seven-fifteen. Marisol lit the candles anyway, then blew one out because the wick was smoking.

"Do we have enough chairs?"

Danny counted with his finger in the air. "Six. Two from the office."

He went to get them. Marisol stood a moment in the doorway looking at the table—the crooked leaf, the tablecloth, the bowl of fennel gone slightly limp already—and thought it looked nice, actually. Better than nice.

The doorbell rang at 6:04. Danny called from the hallway, "That's Ellen," and Marisol wiped her hands and went to open it.


The lasagna had been in the oven for forty minutes when Dana realized she'd forgotten to buy bread.

"I can go," Marcus said from the living room, where he was moving a stack of unopened mail off the coffee table and into a drawer he'd deal with later. "Kroger's five minutes."

"You'll be gone twenty. You always run into someone."

"That happened one time."

"It happened three times." She was wiping down the counter, moving fast, the way she did when she wanted the kitchen to look like nobody cooked in it. "Take the car. And get the good stuff, not the sandwich loaf."

He grabbed his keys off the hook. On the way out he paused, came back, and adjusted the thermostat down two degrees. "It's going to get warm with everybody in here."

"You always say that."

"And I'm always right."

While he was gone she set the table, six places, using the plates from his mother that they never touched. She found a stain on one of the cloth napkins and swapped it out. She poured herself a small glass of wine and drank half of it standing at the sink, looking out at the backyard where the grill sat under its cover, unused since September.

Marcus came back with a baguette, a bag of ice, and a bottle of wine that wasn't on the list.

"I ran into Ellen Boyd," he said.

Dana laughed. "Of course you did."

He set everything down and looked at the table. "You used the good plates."

"Once a year won't kill them."

He put ice in the bucket. She checked the oven. The doorbell rang eight minutes early — the Petersons, always early — and Dana looked down at her socks, then at Marcus.

"Stall them," she said, and went upstairs.

He was still laughing when he opened the door.


Marcus heard the oven timer before Dana did, which was how it usually went. He was pulling the chicken out when she came down the stairs, still working an earring into place.

"It smells done," she said.

"It is done. Or it's about to be." He set the pan on the stove and checked the thighs with a fork. Juice ran clear. "Yeah. Done."

Dana surveyed the dining room, which she had spent twenty minutes on and which now looked, to her eye, exactly like a dining room. She moved the water glasses a half inch and gave up.

"Did you text Ronnie about the parking?" she asked.

"I told him the driveway. He'll park in the street anyway."

"He always does."

Marcus tented the chicken with foil and started on the green beans, dropping them into a pot he'd left simmering. Dana came up behind him, reached past his arm, and pulled a bottle of wine off the counter to check the label.

"This is the one Priya brought last time," she said.

"Then we're returning it to its rightful owner."

"That's tacky."

"That's efficient."

She laughed and got a corkscrew out of the drawer. Outside, a car door shut somewhere down the block, and both of them paused for a second before deciding it wasn't theirs.

"Napkins," Dana said. "The cloth ones or the paper ones."

"Cloth. It's Saturday."

"That's not a real rule."

"It's a rule in this house."

She got the cloth ones out of the sideboard anyway. Marcus wiped the counter, then wiped it again. The green beans came off the heat. He tasted one, added salt, tasted another.

The doorbell rang at 6:52, eight minutes early, which meant it was Priya. Dana pushed her hair back, glanced at Marcus, and went to answer it.


Marcus heard the oven timer before Dana did. He crossed the kitchen in three strides, pulled out the tray of roasted carrots, and swore softly at the ones that had blackened on the edges.

"They're fine," Dana said from the dining room, not looking up. She was folding cloth napkins into shapes that would collapse the moment anyone touched them. "Nobody's inspecting the carrots."

"Priya inspects everything."

"Priya loves you." Dana came in and stole one from the tray, hissing at the heat, chewing anyway. "See? Good."

It was six-fifteen. The Hendersons would be early, because they always were, and Priya and Tom would be forty minutes late, because they always were. Marcus had learned to time the entrée for the middle.

Dana went to change. Marcus set the table, then rearranged it because he'd put the water glasses on the wrong side, then wiped down the counter for the third time. Through the ceiling he could hear their bedroom floor creak, Dana moving between the closet and the mirror.

She came down in the green dress, earrings in one hand.

"Zip?"

He zipped it, and let his hand rest a second on her back. "You look good."

"I look like someone who's been cleaning a bathroom for an hour."

"Then that's a great look on you."

She laughed and swatted him with the earrings.

At six-forty, Dana lit the candles while Marcus opened wine to breathe. He put on a record because she liked the ritual of it, even though the speakers were bad. She turned the overhead lights down. The kitchen smelled like garlic and rosemary and, faintly, like the carrots he'd almost ruined.

The doorbell rang at six-forty-five.

"Henderson," they said at the same time.

Dana went to answer it. Marcus turned the burner down and followed her, drying his hands on a towel he then remembered to throw over his shoulder instead of carrying to the door.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, folded beneath a stack of towels that shouldn't have been there. She shook it out over the dining table, and the creases stood up like a topographical map.

"It's wrinkled," she called.

"It's fine," Dev said from the kitchen. "Nobody's going to iron-inspect it."

"Kanika will notice."

"Kanika won't notice. Kanika once ate a whole dinner off a laundry basket."

Marisol let it go and set the plates down, the ones with the blue rims that had been Dev's grandmother's. They only came out four or five times a year, which felt like a waste, but every time she suggested using them for a Tuesday, Dev got a look on his face like she'd proposed selling them.

In the kitchen, he was salting the chicken thighs for the second time, worrying at them. The rice was already on. The salad sat undressed in a wooden bowl, and he'd forgotten to buy bread, which he wasn't going to mention.

"You forgot bread," Marisol said, walking past.

"I know."

"There's that half loaf in the freezer."

"It's been in there since March."

"So we toast it. Garlic. Butter." She was already opening the freezer. "Nobody's going to bread-inspect it."

He laughed, which was the point.

At six forty she changed her shirt twice and settled on the green one. He put on music, then turned it down, then turned it up two clicks. She lit the candle in the bathroom, the one that made the whole apartment smell like a hotel.

"Do we have enough chairs?"

"Five, plus the desk chair."

"The desk chair squeaks."

"Then Marcus gets it. He'll think it's funny."

At seven the buzzer went. Marisol hit the button, and Dev wiped his hands on a dish towel, and neither of them thought about the tablecloth again all night.


The Kellerman house smelled like garlic and browning butter by four-thirty. Dana had started the chicken too early, which she always did, and now she stood over the pan turning the pieces with a fork, watching them go from pale to gold.

"You're going to overcook that," Marcus said, passing behind her with a stack of plates.

"I know how long chicken takes."

"I'm just saying. Last time—"

"Last time the oven was broken." She didn't look up, but she was smiling a little. He set the plates down on the counter and started counting silverware out of the drawer, laying forks in a row like he was dealing cards.

They had bought the house four years ago, a narrow two-story in a neighborhood outside Columbus where the trees were older than the mortgage. The dining room table had come from Marcus's grandmother and wobbled unless you wedged a folded receipt under the left leg. He did that now, on his knees, while Dana called out that Priya was bringing wine, so they didn't need to open the good bottle.

"Then what's the good bottle for?"

"For when Priya doesn't bring wine."

He laughed and stood up, cracking his back. Outside, the light was going amber. Dana untied her apron and hung it on the pantry door, then stopped in front of the hallway mirror to fix her hair, decided it was fine, changed her mind, pinned it up.

"You look good," Marcus said, and she rolled her eyes but touched his arm on her way past.

At six-fifteen the doorbell rang, twenty minutes early, which meant it was Ben, who was always early and always apologetic about it. Dana was still lighting the candles. Marcus went to answer, calling back over his shoulder, "You want me to stall him?"

"Just let him in," she said. "Tell him to open the wine."


The rain had started around four, which meant the patio was out. Dana wiped down the dining table instead, shoving aside a stack of mail and two of Theo's field guides.

"They're going to sit on the good chairs," she said. "The one with the wobble."

"I fixed the wobble." Theo came out of the kitchen with a wooden spoon, tasting something off it. "In March."

"You put a coaster under it."

"A coaster is a fix." He held the spoon toward her. "Too much lemon?"

She tasted. "More salt."

The chili had been simmering since two. Theo had wanted to do something more ambitious — he'd bookmarked a braise that required four hours and a Dutch oven they didn't own — but Dana had talked him down on Wednesday, gently, over the sound of him scrolling.

She lit the two candles on the sideboard, then blew one out because the smell was competing with the food. In the bathroom she found a ring of toothpaste in the sink and cleaned it with a wad of tissue. Theo's shirt was on the doorknob. She hung it up.

"Sam's bringing the girlfriend," she called.

"Since when?"

"Since he texted an hour ago."

Theo appeared in the hallway. "Do we have enough?"

"We have a pot of chili the size of a bathtub."

"Chairs, I meant."

They stood a moment, counting silently. Then Theo went to the garage and came back with the folding chair, the aluminum one, and set it at the end of the table like it belonged there.

Dana put on music, something low. She looked at the room — mismatched, slightly damp-smelling, the good bowls out. It was fine. It was better than fine.

Headlights swung across the front window at 6:52.

"They're early," Theo said, wiping his hands on his jeans.

"They're always early." She was already walking to 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, which had been eleven months ago. She shook it out over the dining table and pressed the wrinkles flat with her palms.

"They're not going to notice a tablecloth," Daniel called from the kitchen.

"Bev notices everything." She counted chairs. Six, and they needed seven, so she went to the garage for the folding one with the wobbly leg and put it at the end where their friend Tom, who was tall and never sat still anyway, would probably end up.

In the kitchen Daniel had the chicken out and was arguing with a recipe on his phone. He'd made this dish exactly once, in April, and it had gone well enough that it had become a thing he made, in the way that things became things.

"Do we have paprika?"

"Second shelf. Behind the cinnamon."

He found it, checked the date on the bottom, decided not to mention what he found there.

Marisol came in and pulled wine glasses down, holding each one up to the window light. Two had water spots. She rinsed them and dried them with a dish towel while Daniel worked around her, and for a few minutes neither of them said anything, which was comfortable.

"Did you text Ruth about the parking?"

"I told her the street's fine after six."

At six-fifteen Daniel put the chicken in and Marisol lit the two candles she'd bought at the grocery store, and then she blew one out because it smelled aggressively like vanilla and would fight with the food.

"Better," Daniel said.

She stepped back and looked at the table, and it looked like a table people would sit at. The doorbell rang eight minutes early, which was Bev, who was always early.


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

"I can salvage it," Nadia said, scraping the pan into the trash. "I'm starting over. We have time."

Danny didn't argue. He'd learned in eleven years of marriage that when she said *we have time*, she meant *don't help unless I ask*. He set the table instead, laying out the good plates his mother had shipped from Ohio, the ones they used maybe four times a year. He counted forks twice and still came up one short, then remembered the sixth guest was Rob's new girlfriend, whose name they'd both practiced in the car that morning. Priya. Not Prisha.

"Do we have wine glasses that match?" he called.

"We have wine glasses that exist."

Nadia was chopping shallots now, faster than the recipe called for, her ponytail slipping loose. She'd gotten home at five-forty after a meeting that ran long, and the whole drive she'd rehearsed being relaxed about it. Danny had already vacuumed, hidden the mail pile in the bedroom closet, and lit the candle that made the living room smell like someone else's living room.

He came up behind her and reached past for the pepper grinder. "Butter's out. The good stuff."

"Thank you."

"I put a beer in the freezer for you. Set a timer so it doesn't explode this time."

She laughed, which was the point. The tightness in her shoulders dropped a quarter inch.

At 6:52 they stood in the kitchen doorway surveying it: the table set, the salad dressed, the second attempt at the sauce actually tasting better than the first. Danny straightened a napkin. Nadia pulled her hair back up and wiped her hands on his shirt, on purpose.

"Ready?"

"No," he said. The doorbell rang. They went to answer it together.


The kitchen smelled like garlic and rosemary, and Priya was arguing with the oven.

"It says three seventy-five, but I swear this thing runs cold," she said, adjusting the dial for the third time. Flour dusted the front of her sweater in a pale handprint where she'd wiped her palm.

Marcus came in from the garage carrying a folding chair under each arm. "We're two chairs short. I found these behind the Christmas boxes."

"Are they the ugly ones?"

"They're the only ones." He set them down and wiped his hands on his jeans. "Nobody's going to be looking at the chairs, Priya."

"Dana looks at everything." Priya opened the oven and peered in at the chicken, which had gone a promising gold at the edges. "Did you text her about the parking? The street sweeping thing?"

"I texted everyone." He pulled the good tablecloth from the linen closet, shook it out, and let it settle over the table like a sail coming down. "You want the blue napkins or the white ones?"

"White. The blue ones have that stain."

He found the white ones. While he folded them, Priya cranked open a bottle of wine to let it breathe, then stood for a moment with her hands on the counter, looking at the mess she'd made — bowls, a colander, the cutting board with its wreck of onion skins.

"I always forget how much I like this part," she said.

"The part where you're panicking?"

"The part before people come." She started stacking bowls in the sink. "When it's still just us."

Marcus came up behind her and reached past her shoulder for the corkscrew she'd left on the counter, then didn't move for a second, his chin near her hair.

The doorbell rang. Priya laughed and pushed him toward the hallway with her elbow, and he went, still holding a napkin.


The oven timer chirped twice before Marisol reached it, hands still damp from the sink. She pulled out the pan of roasted carrots, tipped them onto a platter, and slid the chicken back in for another fifteen minutes.

"They said seven, right?" Dev called from the dining room. He was wrestling the extra leaf into the table, the one they only used at Thanksgiving and whenever Priya insisted on bringing her new boyfriend around for inspection.

"Seven, but Priya's never on time and Ken is always ten minutes early. Assume six-fifty."

Dev checked his watch. Six-thirty-one. He got the leaf seated, brushed the dust off, and went looking for the tablecloth in the linen closet, which meant moving a stack of beach towels they hadn't touched since August.

Marisol tasted the sauce, added lemon, tasted it again. She'd made this dish maybe forty times and still didn't trust it. In the living room, the dog had settled onto the couch cushion he was theoretically not allowed on, and she decided not to fight that particular battle tonight.

"Napkins," Dev said, appearing in the kitchen. "Cloth or paper?"

"Cloth. They're in the drawer under the—"

"Found them."

He set the table while she plated. They moved around each other the way people do after eleven years, a hand on a back, a small sidestep, no words needed. At six-forty-five Dev put on music, something instrumental and low. At six-forty-eight Marisol changed out of her flour-dusted shirt.

"You look nice," Dev said.

"You have carrot on your sleeve."

He looked down. He did.

The doorbell rang at six-fifty-two. Ken, holding a bottle of wine and apologizing for being early.

"You're right on time," Marisol said, and meant it, mostly.


The rain had stopped by four, which meant the deck was usable again, and Marcus was outside with a towel wiping down the chairs while Priya stood at the kitchen window watching him miss the same puddle on the seat three times.

"You're missing a spot," she called through the screen.

"I'm aware of the spot."

"Are you though?"

He held up the towel in mock surrender and got the puddle. Inside, Priya went back to the chicken, which was doing something she hadn't planned for—the skin browning faster than the inside cooked, so she dropped the oven to 350 and hoped for the best. The recipe was her mother's, more or less, adjusted over fifteen years of making it in this kitchen and the two apartments before it.

Marcus came in with his shoes off, socks damp at the toes. "Do we have enough chairs?"

"Six. Plus the piano bench."

"Nobody wants the piano bench."

"Then Danny gets the piano bench."

He laughed and went to find the good glasses, the ones from their wedding that lived on the high shelf and came down maybe four times a year. He rinsed the dust off each one and set them upside down on a dish towel. Priya was tasting the sauce and adding salt, then tasting again and adding more.

"Too much?"

He took the spoon. "No. Maybe a little. It's fine."

"That's three different answers."

"It's fine," he said, and meant it, and went to change his shirt.

At six-fifteen the doorbell rang, ten minutes early, which was Danny, who was always ten minutes early and always apologized for it. Priya wiped her hands on a towel. Marcus came down the stairs still buttoning his cuff. They looked at each other in the hallway for a second—the house warm, the food nearly ready—and then he opened the door.


The Second Try at Bolognese

Marcus had the sauce simmering by four, which meant he'd have to guard it against himself for three hours. He kept lifting the lid, adding a pinch of salt, stirring, until Priya finally slid the wooden spoon out of his hand.

"You're going to reduce it into paste," she said. "Go do the bathroom."

He went. The guest bathroom had accumulated the usual sediment of a household that only used it for guests: a dried-out candle, three half-empty bottles of hand soap, a hair tie of unknown origin. He wiped the mirror with a paper towel and it left streaks, so he did it again with the good cloth from under the sink.

Priya was setting the table when he came out, counting silverware. "Did Dev say if Renee's coming?"

"He said probably. She's been working weekends."

"So five or six."

"Set for six. If she doesn't come we look generous."

She laughed and went back for another fork. They'd been in the house eleven months and this was only the fourth time they'd had people over, mostly because Marcus had a theory about how the dining room chairs didn't match and Priya had a theory that nobody looks at chairs. Tonight the chairs still didn't match.

At six-fifteen she was upstairs changing and he heard her call down about whether the green shirt or the blue one, and he said the green without knowing which was which, and she came down in the blue anyway. He'd changed too, into a shirt she'd bought him and he'd never worn.

"It's fine," she said, tasting the sauce. "It's actually really good."

"You sound surprised."

"I'm surprised it's not paste."

The doorbell rang at six-forty, early, which was Dev's whole personality. Marcus reached for the door and Priya reached for the wine opener, and neither of them said anything, because they didn't have to.


The lasagna had been in the oven for forty minutes, and Priya could tell by the smell that the top was already browning. She pulled the door open, let the heat wash over her glasses, and decided it needed five more.

"Do we have wine?" Marcus called from the bedroom.

"You bought wine. Tuesday. It's on the counter."

"That's one bottle."

"There are four people coming, Marcus."

He came out buttoning a shirt she liked, the gray one with the small collar. "Five. Diane's bringing her sister. She texted this morning, I forgot to tell you."

Priya set the oven mitt down and looked at him. Not angry, exactly—more the look of someone recalculating. "Okay. So the salad's small."

"I'll cut more cucumber."

He did, badly, in uneven half-moons, while she wiped down the counter around him. They'd lived in the house eleven years and had a rhythm to the small kitchen, the way she stepped back without looking when he opened the fridge, the way he handed her the trash bag knot-first.

"Napkins," she said.

"Cloth or paper?"

"Cloth. The blue ones. They're in the—"

"Sideboard, I know."

The dog got shut in the back bedroom, protesting. Marcus lit the two candles on the table and then blew one out because the smell competed with the food. Priya changed out of her work pants into jeans, came back, and found he'd put on a record, something low and old.

"Is that too much?" he asked.

"It's fine. It's nice."

At 6:52 the lasagna came out and sat resting under foil. At 6:58 headlights swung across the front window. Priya smoothed her hair; Marcus turned the porch light on and stood there a second with his hand on the knob, waiting for the knock, the way he always did.


The kitchen smelled like garlic and burnt butter, which Rosa insisted was intentional.

"It's called browning," she said, tilting the pan so David could see the flecks going amber. "The recipe says nutty."

"It says nutty, not scorched." He was setting the table, counting forks twice because he'd lost track. Six people. Seven, if Marcus brought the new girlfriend, which he probably would, without warning, the way he always did.

Rosa turned down the burner. Outside, the November dark had come early, and the window over the sink threw back the two of them—her in an apron over the dress she'd changed into an hour ago, him barefoot in jeans, still holding the silverware like a fan of cards.

"Did you put out the good napkins?" she asked.

"We have good napkins?"

She laughed and pointed with a wooden spoon toward the hutch her mother had given them when they bought the house, a heavy ugly thing they both secretly loved. He found the napkins, cloth, still creased from the packaging, and shook them out.

At six-forty the doorbell hadn't rung yet and the salad wasn't dressed and David was vacuuming the living room rug even though nobody would notice. Rosa slid the bread into the oven and stood for a second with her hands on the counter, listening to the vacuum whine in the next room, feeling the small satisfying panic of hosting.

"Your parents called," David shouted over the noise. "I told them we'd call back Sunday."

"Did you say it nicely?"

"I said it in my nicest voice."

She kissed the back of his neck when he came in to put the vacuum away, and he made a face, because he was sweating and knew it. Then the doorbell rang, and Rosa untied the apron, and David went to answer it, and the evening started the way it always did—too early, unready, fine.


The doorbell wasn't due to ring for another forty minutes, but Dana had already changed her shirt twice.

"The blue one," Marcus said from the kitchen, not looking up. He was mincing garlic with the focused inefficiency of a man who had watched three YouTube videos on knife technique and absorbed none of them.

"You didn't even see the other one."

"I saw it. It was fine. The blue one's better."

She came in and leaned against the counter, watching him. Their house in Cedar Rapids was small enough that every room heard every other room, which after eleven years of marriage had stopped being a problem and started being a convenience.

"Did you get the wine?"

"Two reds, one white. And that seltzer stuff for Priya."

"You remembered."

"I write things down now," he said. "It's my whole personality."

Dana pulled the good plates from the top shelf, the ones from his mother, and started counting. Six. Then seven, because Todd was bringing whoever he was seeing this month. She set them on the table and stepped back to look, then moved the candle two inches left.

"It was fine where it was," Marcus said.

"It was not."

He came over with a dish towel over his shoulder and looked at the table like he was appraising a car. "You're right. It was not."

The oven timer went off. The chicken needed another ten minutes, which meant the potatoes needed to come out now, which meant somebody had to deal with the salad, and for a few minutes they moved around each other in the narrow galley kitchen without speaking, hips turning, hands passing over shoulders, an old choreography.

At 6:52, Dana straightened a picture frame in the hallway. Marcus put on a record.

"They're going to be late," he said.

"I know," she said, and sat down to wait with him anyway.


The rice cooker clicked over to warm just as Priya heard the garage door groan.

"You're late," she called, not unkindly, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

Dev came in carrying two paper bags and a bunch of flowers wrapped in cellophane, still wearing his work badge. "The store was a war zone. Somebody bought all the cilantro. All of it." He set the bags on the counter and kissed the side of her head. "I got parsley. We'll lie about it."

"Marcus will know."

"Marcus will be on his third beer and will not know."

She laughed and went back to the stove, where the dal had been simmering long enough that the kitchen smelled like her mother's house. Dev found a vase under the sink, cut the stems too short the way he always did, and set the flowers on the dining table next to the stack of mismatched plates.

"Napkins?" he asked.

"Linen ones. Second drawer. The good ones, not the ones with the stain."

He held one up to the light, squinting, and she said, "That's the stain one," without turning around.

They moved around each other in the small kitchen with the choreography of eleven years — he reached over her shoulder for the salt, she stepped left without looking. He put on a record, something with horns, then turned it down when she made a face.

At 6:40 he vacuumed the living room while she showered. At 6:52 she came out in a green sweater and asked if it was too much, and he said it was exactly enough. He was still in his work clothes.

"Go change," she said. "You smell like the office."

"I smell like ambition."

"Go."

He went. At 7:04, the doorbell rang, and Priya heard the shower shut off upstairs, and she opened the door alone, laughing, holding a towel.


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

"Did you get the good glasses down?" she called from the kitchen, where she was scraping roasted garlic out of its skin with the back of a spoon.

"Getting them now." Diego stood on a step stool in the dining room, easing the wine glasses off the top shelf two at a time. One of them had a water spot he could see even in the dim light, so he carried the whole set to the sink and started polishing them with a dish towel while Marisol worked around him. They'd lived in the house eleven years and had developed a kind of choreography in that kitchen — she reached, he leaned back; he pivoted, she ducked.

"Teresa's bringing her sister," Marisol said. "That's seven."

"We have seven chairs."

"We have six chairs and that thing from the garage."

Diego sighed and went out to get the folding chair, which had a cobweb across its seat and had to be hosed off in the driveway in the November cold. When he came back in, Marisol had put on music, something with horns, and had changed out of her work clothes into a sweater the color of oatmeal. She was tasting the soup, frowning, adding salt.

"Too much cumin?"

He tried it. "No. Maybe more lime."

She squeezed half a lime in and tried again, and her face relaxed. "You're right."

He set the table while she pulled the bread out. At 6:52 they both stopped and looked at the room — candles lit, coats cleared off the bench by the door, the cat shut in the bedroom — and Marisol reached over and straightened his collar without saying anything.

Headlights swept the front window. Diego went to open the door.


Marcus heard the garage door rumble at 4:40, right on schedule, and called out, "Did you get the bread?"

"Two loaves," Daniel answered, shouldering through the kitchen door with grocery bags hanging from both arms. "And they were out of the good olives, so I got the ones you hate."

"I don't hate them. I have standards."

Daniel set the bags on the counter and surveyed the situation. Marcus had been cooking since two — a pot of something red bubbling on the back burner, cutting boards colonizing every surface, a dish towel draped over his shoulder like a badge of office. The kitchen smelled like garlic and browned butter.

"Josh texted," Daniel said, unpacking. "He's bringing his new girlfriend."

"That's four extra minutes on the chicken." Marcus didn't look up. "What's her name?"

"Priya. She's a landscape architect. Josh has mentioned it eleven times."

They fell into the choreography they'd developed over nine years of dinner parties: Marcus at the stove, Daniel wiping counters behind him, reaching around him for the corkscrew, saying "behind you" out of habit even when Marcus knew. Daniel set the table with the plates from Marcus's grandmother, then unset it and started over because he'd forgotten Priya.

At 5:50 Marcus finally turned off the burner and went to change. He came back in the green shirt.

"That one," Daniel said.

"You always say that one."

"Because you always look good in it." Daniel handed him a glass of wine and lit the candles, and for a moment they just stood there in the dining room, the table finally right, the whole house smelling like an occasion.

"Did you sweep the front steps?" Marcus asked.

"Damn it."

He was still out there with the broom when Josh's headlights swung into the driveway, and Marcus watched through the window, laughing, before he went to open the door.


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

Marisol stood at the stove, tasting the sauce off a wooden spoon, then adding more oregano than the recipe called for. She'd been cooking since four, and the kitchen smelled like her grandmother's house in San Antonio — garlic, tomatoes, something browning.

"Do we own napkins?" Dev called from the dining room. "Cloth ones. Not the ones from the taco place."

"Second drawer in the hutch. Under the placemats we never use."

He found them, mustard-yellow and slightly wrinkled, and decided nobody would notice. He'd spent the last hour on the parts of hosting he was good at: sweeping the hallway, hiding the laundry basket in the closet, wiping down the bathroom sink, replacing the burnt-out bulb over the table so the room stopped looking like a police interrogation. Now he set out plates, counted forks twice, and got it wrong both times.

"Six," Marisol said without turning around. "Anna's bringing her sister."

"Right. Six."

He put on a record because he thought it made the house feel considered, then went to shower. When he came back down in a clean shirt, still damp at the collar, she handed him a glass of wine and a knife.

"Bread," she said. "Diagonal. Not too thin."

They worked side by side for a while, not talking much. She burned her thumb on the pan and swore quietly, and he ran it under cold water and held it there longer than necessary.

At 6:52 she looked around the kitchen — the flour on the counter, the pot she hadn't washed — and said, "It's not perfect."

"It's a Tuesday," Dev said. "They're bringing pie."

She laughed. The doorbell rang at 6:58, eight minutes early, which was exactly like Anna, and they went to the door together.


The doorbell wouldn't ring for another forty minutes, but Maya was already convinced the whole evening was doomed.

"The chicken's going to be dry," she said, opening the oven for the fourth time. Steam fogged her glasses.

"It's been in for twenty minutes." Daniel didn't look up from the cutting board, where he was working through a pile of shallots with the slow, deliberate technique of a man who had once nearly lost a fingertip. "You keep opening it, it'll take an hour."

"That's a myth."

"That is thermodynamics."

She let the oven door swing shut and turned to the counter, where three kinds of cheese sat sweating on a wooden board she'd bought specifically for nights like this and used maybe twice a year. Outside, a March rain had started, tapping at the kitchen window over the sink. Their house in Rochester still had the original 1940s windows, drafty and beautiful, which Daniel had been promising to replace since the Obama administration.

"Did you text Priya about the nut allergy?"

"It's her husband, and yes." He slid the shallots into a pan. "No almonds in anything. I checked the crackers."

Maya stopped, holding a wine bottle by the neck. "You checked the crackers?"

"I'm not a monster."

She kissed the back of his shoulder as she passed him, going for the corkscrew. He smelled like olive oil and the sandalwood soap he'd used for eleven years, since before they were married, since the apartment on Alexander Street with the radiator that clanged all winter.

At 6:52 he changed his shirt. At 6:55 she lit the candles, then blew two out because it felt like too much, then relit one.

Headlights swung across the living room wall.

"Okay," Daniel said, wiping his hands on a dish towel. "Okay."

"It's just Priya."

"I know it's just Priya."

She squeezed his hand. He squeezed back, and they went to open the door.


The oven timer had twenty-two minutes left when Marisol finally admitted the dining room table was too small.

"We could put the leaf in," she said, standing in the doorway with a stack of mismatched plates against her hip.

Dennis looked up from the sink, where he was scrubbing the roasting pan he'd meant to soak an hour ago. "The leaf is in the garage. Behind the bikes."

"So it's in the garage behind the bikes."

He dried his hands on the towel hanging from the stove handle and went out through the mudroom. She heard the bikes clatter, then a word he didn't usually say in front of company, then the screen door again. The leaf came in wrapped in an old bedsheet, dusty at the corners, and it took both of them to seat it — Marisol pulling the table halves apart while Dennis fed the panel down into the track.

"It's crooked," she said.

"It's always crooked. Nobody's ever noticed."

"I notice."

They ate a handful of olives standing up, the way they always did before people came, and Dennis put on the playlist he'd made in October and never updated. Marisol folded napkins into rough triangles. Dennis lit the two candles they'd been given as a wedding present eleven years ago and had never quite finished burning.

At 6:52 she went upstairs to change her shirt, and he took the chicken out and covered it with foil to rest. When she came back down he told her she looked nice, and she said the shirt had a stain on the cuff, and he said nobody would notice, and she said she'd notice, and then they stood there a second in the warm kitchen, listening for the sound of a car in the driveway.

The Hendersons were, predictably, seven minutes early.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded at the bottom of the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it, Thanksgiving two years ago. She shook it out over the dining table and pressed the wrinkles flat with her palms while the oven preheated.

"Did you salt the water?" she called.

"Salting it now," Dev answered from the kitchen. He was standing over the pot with the box of kosher salt tilted, and he added a little more than the recipe wanted, because Marisol always said restaurant pasta tasted better and he suspected this was why. The chicken was already in the oven, skin rubbed with lemon and thyme from the pot on the windowsill that had somehow survived the summer.

They had bought this house three years ago in a neighborhood outside Sacramento where the sidewalks buckled from old tree roots. The dining room was the reason. It had a window that faced west and caught the late light, and Marisol had stood in it at the open house and said, *We could have people over*, in a voice that meant she'd already decided.

She counted out six places, then went back for a seventh because Tom was bringing his sister. Dev came through with a stack of bowls, set them down, and put his hand briefly on the back of her neck as he passed.

"Do we have enough wine?"

"There's the two bottles Sarah brought last time. And I got a Chianti."

"Do you think that's enough?"

"For six people?"

"For Sarah," Marisol said, and Dev laughed and admitted she had a point.

At six-forty the light went gold across the table. Dev changed his shirt. Marisol lit the candles even though it wasn't dark yet, because she liked how they looked, and then the doorbell rang and they both moved toward it at once.


Marcus heard the garage door rumble as he pulled the roast from the oven, the kitchen thick with rosemary and browned butter. Dev came in still wearing his work badge, hauling two paper bags.

"They were out of the good bread," Dev said, "so I got the sourdough from the place on Fifth. Traffic was a nightmare."

"You have thirty minutes." Marcus didn't look up from the carving board.

"I have twenty-eight. I'm aware." Dev set the bags down and kissed the back of Marcus's neck as he passed, which was the closest thing to an apology either of them needed.

The house was a 1940s bungalow in Sacramento that they'd been slowly un-ruining for six years. The dining room table still had the water ring from the summer the AC died. Dev threw a cloth over it, then went to change out of his badge and khakis.

Marcus checked the roast's temperature, moved the green beans to the back burner, and realized he'd forgotten to chill the white wine. He shoved two bottles in the freezer and set a timer on his phone so he wouldn't forget them and create a mess later.

"Where's the serving spoon?" Dev called from the hallway. "The big wooden one?"

"Third drawer. Under the tongs."

"It's not—" A pause. "Never mind."

At 6:52 they were both in the kitchen, Dev lighting candles he'd bought and forgotten about in March, Marcus sweeping crumbs off the counter into his hand. Dev straightened a chair, then straightened it back.

"Do we look like people who have their lives together?"

Marcus considered the sink, which was full. "We look like people who cooked."

The doorbell rang at 6:58. Priya was early, as always, holding a pie and apologizing for it. Dev went to let her in, and Marcus untied his apron, folded it over the chair, and followed.


The rain had stopped by four, leaving the driveway slick and the maples dripping onto the porch rail. Inside, Marisol pulled the roasting pan out of the oven and swore softly. The chicken skin had gone pale on one side.

"It's fine," Daniel said from the sink, where he was scrubbing a colander. "Nobody's going to inspect it."

"Ruth inspects it."

"Ruth compliments everything and then goes home and complains to her sister. That's different."

Marisol laughed despite herself and turned the pan around, sliding it back into the heat. She'd been on her feet since noon, and her lower back had that dull ache that meant she'd be asleep by ten no matter how good the conversation got.

Daniel dried his hands and went to deal with the dining room, which had become, over the course of the winter, a place where mail went to die. He gathered the catalogs and unopened bank statements into a stack and stashed them in the office, then found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, the one with the wine stain they'd learned to arrange a serving dish over.

"Six or six-thirty?" he called.

"Peter said six-thirty. Which means seven."

He set out seven places, counted again, and took one away. Kim was bringing her new boyfriend, but the Alvarezes had canceled Tuesday because of their daughter's recital.

In the kitchen, Marisol was tasting the sauce and adding lemon. Daniel came up behind her, took the spoon, tasted it himself, and made a face that meant approval. She elbowed him toward the fridge.

"Open the white so it's not warm."

"It's already cold."

"Open it so it's *breathing*."

"That's red."

"Open it anyway."

He did. Outside, headlights swept the wet driveway, twenty minutes early, and they looked at each other and started laughing.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, wedged behind the beach towels they never used anymore. She shook it out on the dining room table and frowned at the crease running down the center.

"It's fine," Dev said, passing through with a colander of green beans. "Nobody looks at the tablecloth."

"Your mother looks at the tablecloth."

"My mother isn't coming."

Still, Marisol went for the iron. It was four-forty on a Saturday in October, and the Petersons were due at six, the Nguyens a little after, and Ruth whenever Ruth felt like it, which historically meant seven-fifteen with a bottle of something expensive and an apology she didn't mean.

Dev had the chicken thighs going in the cast iron, skin-side down, not touching them the way the internet had taught him. He kept wanting to touch them. He wiped his hands on the dish towel over his shoulder and checked the rice, which was doing nothing yet, and then went to change the bulb in the hallway fixture that had been dead since August.

"Do we have candles?" Marisol called.

"The ones from the power outage."

"Those are emergency candles. They look like emergency candles."

"So it'll look like an emergency dinner party."

She laughed despite herself. She found two tapers in a drawer, mismatched, and decided she didn't care. Then she vacuumed the living room rug, and Dev turned the music up so they could hear it over the noise, and by the time she finished, the kitchen smelled like garlic and thyme and the windows had gone dark blue at the edges.

At five-fifty he asked if his shirt was okay. She straightened his collar and said it was.

The doorbell rang at six-oh-two. The tablecloth still had the crease. Neither of them mentioned it again.


Marcus heard the front door before he heard the car, which meant Dana had parked crooked again and was already halfway up the walk with grocery bags cutting into her forearms.

"They didn't have the good bread," she announced, dropping everything on the counter. "So we're having the mediocre bread and pretending it's rustic."

"Nobody's going to notice." He was on his knees at the oven, squinting at the roast. The meat thermometer had been reading 140 for what felt like twenty minutes.

"Karen notices. Karen notices things about bread." Dana pulled off her coat and started unloading — wine, a bag of salad greens, a wedge of cheese wrapped in butcher paper. "Did you call your mother back?"

"Tomorrow."

"You said that Tuesday."

"And tomorrow it'll be true." He stood, wiped his hands on a dish towel, and kissed the side of her head as he passed. "The dining room's a disaster. There's mail everywhere."

"That's your mail."

"It's *our* mail, technically, in the eyes of the law."

She threw a dish towel at him.

They worked around each other the way people do after eleven years — Dana at the sink rinsing greens, Marcus reaching past her for the colander without asking, both of them doing a small sideways shuffle at the stove that neither noticed anymore. He put on a record. She turned it down four notches. He turned it up two, and she let it go.

At 6:40 the roast came out looking better than it had any right to. Dana lit the candles, then blew one out because it was smoking.

"We forgot dessert," Marcus said.

They stood there a second.

"There's ice cream," she said.

"There's ice cream," he agreed.

The doorbell rang. Dana smoothed her shirt, Marcus turned the music back up, and they went to answer it together.


The doorbell wouldn't ring for another hour, but Marcus was already moving like it might.

He wiped down the counter for the third time while Elena stood at the stove, tasting the sauce off a wooden spoon. She made a face.

"Too much oregano?" he asked.

"Not enough salt. Which is different." She handed him the spoon. He tasted, nodded, reached for the box of kosher salt without being asked.

They'd lived in the house eleven years, long enough that the kitchen had a choreography to it. Elena occupied the stove and the two feet of counter beside it. Marcus took the sink and the island. When one needed to pass behind the other, a hand went briefly to the small of a back — a signal, not affection, though it functioned as both.

"Did you text Dana about the shellfish thing?" Elena asked.

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

"It's not in the same pan."

"I told her that."

Marcus went to the dining room and started setting places. Six of them, which meant the leaf in the table, which meant hunting the mismatched chair from the basement. He came back up with cobwebs on his sleeve and Elena brushed them off without looking up from the salad.

"Your mother called," she said.

"I know. I'll call her Sunday."

At six-forty he changed his shirt. At six-fifty Elena put on earrings and looked at herself in the hallway mirror with the frank, unsentimental assessment of a woman who had stopped expecting surprises there.

"Do we have enough wine?" she said.

"We have enough wine."

"We never have enough wine."

He opened the fridge, counted, and admitted she was right. Then the doorbell rang, ten minutes early, the way it always did with Dana, and Elena said "I'll get it" and Marcus said "I've got the coats," and the evening started.


Marisol found the good tablecloth crumpled at the bottom of the linen closet, which was exactly where she'd shoved it in March.

"Iron's already hot," Danny called from the kitchen. He had the radio on low, some station out of Bloomington that played too many commercials. "I plugged it in when you started swearing at the closet."

"I wasn't swearing."

"You said a word."

She spread the cloth on the dining table and worked the wrinkles out with the iron, watching the steam rise. Through the doorway she could see Danny in his socks, sleeves rolled, scoring the top of a loaf he'd started that morning. He'd been nervous about the bread all week. The Kowalskis were coming, and Peter Kowalski had once, unforgivably, described Danny's focaccia as "interesting."

"Six-thirty?" she asked.

"Kowalskis at six-thirty. Renee said seven but she means seven-twenty."

Marisol laughed and set the iron on its heel. She went upstairs to change, passing the bathroom where she'd hung a fresh towel that nobody would use, and put on the green sweater because it was October and the house got cold near the windows. When she came down Danny had lit the two candles they'd been saving since their anniversary and was standing back from the table with his hands on his hips, evaluating.

"Too much?" he said.

"It's candles, Dan."

"Feels like a lot of candles."

She moved one to the sideboard, and he seemed relieved. Then he opened the oven and the whole first floor filled with the smell of it — rosemary, salt, hot crust — and Marisol put her chin on his shoulder and looked in with him.

"That's a good loaf," she said.

"It's an interesting loaf."

Headlights swung across the front window. Danny straightened, wiped his palms on his jeans, and went to get the door.


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

"You're going to burn the shallots," Priya said, not looking up from the dining table, where she was folding napkins into shapes that were supposed to be fans and were coming out more like crumpled birds.

"I'm not going to burn the shallots." He turned the heat down anyway.

Their house in Sacramento was small enough that the kitchen and dining room were really one room with an optimistic archway between them. This meant that every dinner party involved a kind of negotiated choreography, Priya reaching past him for the wine opener, Marcus stepping back without looking because he knew she'd be there.

"Did you text Danielle about the mushrooms?"

"She said she's fine with mushrooms now. Apparently the allergy was a misunderstanding for six years."

"Six years." Priya laughed. "So all those risottos I made without mushrooms—"

"Wasted vigilance."

She set out the good plates, the ones from his mother, with the small chip on the fourth one that they always gave to whoever seemed least likely to notice. Then she went to change, came back in the green shirt, and Marcus made the face he made.

"What."

"Nothing. That's the one."

The salad still needed dressing. The bathroom still needed a hand towel that wasn't the one with a bleach stain. Priya found candles in the drawer with the batteries and takeout menus, and lit them even though it was still light out, because it made the room look intentional.

At 6:52 Marcus stood in the middle of the kitchen and surveyed everything, and it was fine. It was actually fine.

"Hey," he said. "Nice work."

Priya handed him a glass of wine. "Drink some before they get here. You get weird when you're hosting sober."

The doorbell rang eight minutes early. They looked at each other, and Priya went to answer it.


Marisol found the good tablecloth folded in the linen closet, still creased from the last time they'd used it—Thanksgiving, when her sister had spilled cranberry sauce and cried about it for twenty minutes.

"Do we own eight matching chairs?" Dev called from the dining room.

"We own six matching chairs and two that are close enough."

"Close enough is doing a lot of work in that sentence."

She snapped the cloth open over the table and let it settle. Outside, the October light was going amber, catching the dust that always seemed to live in the front window no matter how often she wiped it. Dev came through with the two mismatched chairs from the office, one under each arm, and set them at the ends where nobody would look too hard.

The chicken had another forty minutes. Marisol had made the same braise for six years, ever since a coworker gave her the recipe on an index card, and she'd stopped measuring anything in it around year three. Dev was in charge of the salad, which meant he was standing at the counter reading the back of a bottle of vinegar with real intensity.

"Priya's bringing wine," he said. "And Tom's bringing whatever Tom brings."

"Hummus. He always brings hummus."

"He brings very good hummus."

She found the candles in the junk drawer, mostly burned down, and put them out anyway. Dev turned on the little speaker in the corner and put on something without lyrics, then adjusted the volume twice, then a third time.

At six-fifteen he leaned against the doorway with a dish towel over his shoulder and looked at the table—the cloth, the stubby candles, the two chairs that didn't match.

"It looks nice," he said.

"It looks like us."

The doorbell rang eight minutes early. Dev went to answer it, and Marisol turned down the oven, and the house filled up with noise.


Marisol found the good tablecloth in the linen closet, folded beneath a stack of towels that had been shoved in there sometime around March. She shook it out, and the smell of the closet came with it—cardboard and cedar.

"It's got a stain," she called toward the kitchen.

"Where?" Dev came out wiping his hands on a dish towel. He was still in the T-shirt he'd worn to Home Depot, a smear of caulk on the hem.

She pointed. He looked at it, then at her, and shrugged. "Put the bread basket there."

That was the whole conversation. Twelve years of marriage had compressed a lot of things down to that size.

He went back to the chicken. She could hear him talking to it, low, the way he did—"okay, okay, you're fine"—the same voice he used with the dog. The oven fan roared. In the dining room, Marisol set out the mismatched plates, five of the blue ones and two white, and decided she didn't care. Anna was bringing wine. Sam and Priya were bringing their four-year-old, who would eat exactly one dinner roll and then ask for the iPad.

At 6:40 she changed out of her work clothes into jeans, and when she came back downstairs Dev had put on a clean shirt and was lighting the candles with a grill lighter, one hand cupped around each flame.

"Do we have ice?" he asked.

"I bought a bag Tuesday."

"That was for the cooler."

"So we have ice."

He laughed, went to check anyway. The dog barked at nothing. Marisol looked at the table—the stain hidden, the candles going, the whole ordinary arrangement of it—and felt the specific pleasure of a house about to be full.

Headlights swung across the front window at 6:58. Dev called, "That's them," and she went to open the door.


Marcus heard the front door before he saw her—the particular rhythm of Priya kicking off her shoes in the entryway, one heel against the other.

"Traffic on the 405 was biblical," she called. "Please tell me you started the rice."

"Rice is resting. Chicken's got twenty minutes." He was standing at the counter with a knife, working through a bunch of cilantro he'd bought that morning because he'd forgotten they still had some in the crisper drawer. Two bunches of cilantro. Their whole marriage in a nutshell.

Priya came in, kissed the back of his neck, and immediately opened the fridge to survey the situation. "You bought more cilantro."

"I bought more cilantro."

"Okay." She pulled out a lime. "Did Dev text? He's bringing his new person, right?"

"Alina. Yes. And Josh said he might be late because of the babysitter."

"Josh is always late because of the babysitter." She started slicing the lime into wedges without being asked, which was one of the small mercies of eleven years together—the way tasks got absorbed. "How's the table?"

"Not set."

She went to do it. He heard the cabinet open, the clink of the good plates that weren't really good, just less chipped. Through the doorway he could see her frowning at the arrangement, moving a chair six inches, moving it back.

"Do we have candles?" she called.

"Junk drawer. Left side."

"That is a lie. That drawer contains chargers and one dead battery."

He wiped his hands and went to look. She was right. They found two candles in the linen closet instead, mismatched, and Priya lit them anyway.

The doorbell rang at 7:04. Marcus turned off the burner. Priya pushed her hair back and looked at him.

"Do I look like a person who has her life together?"

"Completely," he said, and went to answer the door.


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.