The list was Dana's, but Marcus held it, because he had the better handwriting and had added three items in the car: coffee filters, batteries, something for Tuesday.

They'd started the morning with laundry. Dana had sorted while Marcus carried the basket down two flights to the machines in the basement, and by ten they were out the door, the dryer still running, the timer set on Dana's phone so they wouldn't forget and leave their sheets to wrinkle into a knot.

At the hardware store they bought a plunger, which felt like an admission of something, and a package of furnace filters. Marcus wanted to look at paint chips for the bedroom. Dana let him take two, then steered him toward the register.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays always were, carts nosing each other in the produce aisle. Dana pushed. Marcus read the list aloud and disappeared periodically down side aisles, returning with things not on it: a jar of pickled onions, a bag of pretzel thins.

"We have pretzels."

"We have stale pretzels."

She let it go. In the meat case they debated chicken thighs versus breasts for four full minutes, a conversation they'd had probably fifty times, and landed where they always landed. Marcus put back the more expensive olive oil when Dana raised an eyebrow at the shelf tag.

At checkout, the card reader asked for a PIN and Marcus blanked, standing there with his hand hovering, until Dana said the number quietly over his shoulder. The bagger asked if they wanted help out. They said no.

In the parking lot the cart wobbled. Marcus loaded the trunk while Dana returned it to the corral, jogging the last few steps against the wind. On the way home they stopped for gas, and Dana ran in for a lottery ticket, which she did sometimes, for no reason she could explain.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus held it, because Dana always lost paper in her coat pockets.

"Eggs," he read. "We have eggs."

"We have three eggs. That's not eggs, that's a rumor of eggs."

They had already been to the hardware store, where Marcus stood in front of a wall of furnace filters for six full minutes trying to remember whether their unit took a 16x25 or a 20x25. Dana had photographed the old one before they left, which she mentioned twice on the drive to the grocery store, and would probably mention again at dinner.

The store was crowded in the way Saturday mornings always were, carts logjammed at the entrance where the flowers were. Dana peeled off toward produce. Marcus took the cart and went for coffee and the paper towels, and they met again near the deli counter, where Dana was holding two blocks of cheddar and frowning.

"The store brand is four dollars less."

"Then get the store brand."

"But the other one is the good one."

"Then get the good one."

She put the store brand in the cart. Marcus didn't say anything, which was its own kind of comment, and she elbowed him lightly in the ribs.

At checkout they bagged their own to speed things up, Dana handing, Marcus packing, a system refined over three years and two apartments. In the parking lot the cart wanted to pull left. A woman's dog barked at them from an open car window and Dana said hello to it seriously, like a person.

At home they carried everything in two trips. Marcus changed the furnace filter — 16x25, as it turned out, which Dana let go — while Dana started a load of towels and put the milk away.

Later she found the receipt on the counter and did the math on the cheddar. Four dollars and eleven cents.


The list on the fridge had grown all week in two different hands—Dana's tidy print, Marcus's slanted scrawl that only he could read. Saturday morning, he pulled it down and squinted.

"What does this say? 'Cardboard'?"

"Cardamom," Dana said, pouring the last of the coffee. "For the rice thing you liked."

They ran the dishwasher first, then Marcus hauled the recycling bin down two flights while Dana stripped the bed. She found one of his socks under the mattress and left it on his pillow without comment.

The Kroger on Fairview was already crowded. Marcus took the cart because he pushed too fast otherwise and she'd rather control it. They split the list. Dana handled produce, squeezing avocados with a skepticism she'd learned from her mother, while Marcus wandered off toward the cereal and came back with a box of something neon.

"No."

"It's on sale."

"It's ninety percent sugar."

"So is your coffee creamer."

She let him keep it. In the meat department they debated chicken thighs versus breasts for four minutes, longer than the decision deserved. A woman with a toddler edged around them, and Dana apologized. Marcus got the thighs.

At checkout, the total made them both wince. Dana tapped her card; last time had been his. In the parking lot they loaded the trunk, the eggs riding in the front seat like a passenger.

Back home, they carried everything up in two trips. Marcus put away the cold things wrong—yogurt in the door again—and Dana rearranged it after he'd wandered off to deal with the burnt-out bulb in the hallway. She heard him swearing at the ladder.

"You need help?"

"I need a taller apartment."

By one o'clock the groceries were in, the laundry was churning, and the hallway was bright again. They ate leftover pizza standing at the counter, and then Marcus asked whether the oil change could wait until next weekend. Dana said it could.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus had added three things to it in his cramped handwriting: coffee filters, batteries, "the good kind of hot sauce."

They left the apartment at ten, later than they'd meant to. Dana drove because Marcus's car was in the shop again, some issue with the alternator that the mechanic had explained twice and neither of them fully understood. First stop was the hardware store, where Marcus stood in the plumbing aisle comparing two nearly identical rubber gaskets while Dana wandered off and came back with a small pot of basil.

"We don't need that," Marcus said.

"It was four dollars."

"You killed the last one."

"That was July. It was ninety-eight degrees in there."

He didn't argue. He'd forgotten to change the AC filter that month, and they both knew it.

At the grocery store, they split up—Dana taking produce and dairy, Marcus taking the middle aisles—and reconvened near the freezer section, where Marcus was holding two brands of frozen dumplings.

"Get both," Dana said. "They're on sale."

They disagreed briefly about whether they already had enough olive oil at home. Marcus was sure they did; Dana was sure the bottle was nearly empty. They bought it. In the checkout line, Dana scrolled through her phone and read out loud a text from her sister about Thanksgiving plans, and Marcus said they should decide soon, and Dana said she knew, and neither of them decided anything.

The bags took two trips up to the second floor. Marcus put the cold things away while Dana broke down the cardboard for recycling. The basil went on the windowsill above the sink, where the light was best.

Afterward Marcus lay on the couch with his forearm over his eyes, and Dana sat on the floor beside him, sorting a pile of mail into two stacks: things to keep, and everything else.


The list started as a joke on the refrigerator door — Dana had written "BREAD (real bread, not the sad white kind)" in green marker, and Micah had added "sad white kind" underneath with an arrow.

By ten on Saturday they'd worked through most of it. The laundry was churning in the basement of their building, the sheets stripped and bundled. Micah had spent forty minutes on the phone with the internet company, pacing the length of the living room while Dana mouthed *ask about the promotional rate* at him and he waved her off, then asked about the promotional rate.

At the grocery store, Dana pushed the cart and Micah walked ahead, doubling back with things. He brought her a jar of pickled onions.

"We have pickled onions."

"We have half a jar of pickled onions."

"Which is more than zero."

He put them in the cart anyway. She let it go. In the cereal aisle she caught him reading the back of a box of granola with real concentration, and something about it — the seriousness of him, in his old flannel, doing math on grams of sugar — made her want to lean into his shoulder, so she did, briefly, and he said "hm" without looking up.

They disagreed about the chicken. Dana wanted the thighs; Micah said breasts were healthier and Dana said thighs actually taste like something. They bought both. At checkout Micah bagged while Dana paid, and he loaded everything into the trunk in the fine gray drizzle that had started while they were inside.

Back home they carried it all up in two trips. Micah put away the cold things; Dana found space in the cabinet by consolidating three boxes of pasta into two.

"We forgot the bread," she said.

Micah looked at the list on the counter, then at her. "There's a place on Ninth."

They put their shoes back on.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added things in the margins: coffee filters, the good pretzels, a question mark next to "dish soap?" because he wasn't sure if they'd run out or if the bottle was just hiding behind the sink.

They left the apartment at nine-forty, which was later than they'd meant to. Dana drove. Marcus rode with his knees against the glovebox, scrolling through a podcast queue and settling on nothing.

First the hardware store, for a furnace filter and a replacement bulb for the closet light that had burned out on Tuesday and been living as a small inconvenience ever since. Marcus stood in the lighting aisle holding two boxes, comparing wattages with genuine seriousness, while Dana wandered off and came back with a bag of tulip bulbs she said were on clearance and would probably get planted eventually.

The grocery store was crowded the way it always was on Saturdays. They split up near the produce — Dana took the left side of the store, Marcus the right — and reconvened at the dairy case, where Dana pointed out that he'd grabbed the wrong yogurt again, the plain instead of the vanilla.

"It's fine," he said. "I'll eat it."

"You won't. It'll sit there until April."

He put it back. In the cereal aisle they had a brief, low-stakes disagreement about whether they needed another box of granola, which Marcus won by pointing at the cart and saying, "You already put one in."

At the register the total was more than either of them expected. Dana tapped her card. Marcus bagged, badly, putting the bread underneath a carton of orange juice, and she let it go.

Back home they carried everything up in two trips. Marcus changed the closet bulb while Dana put the cold things away. The tulip bulbs went on top of the refrigerator, where they stayed.


The list was Maya's handwriting, but Dev had added things at the bottom in his cramped scrawl: paper towels, that yogurt you like, batteries?? He wasn't sure what the batteries were for anymore. Something had been beeping in the apartment on Wednesday night, and then it had stopped, and neither of them had found it.

They took her car because his had the check-engine light on again. At the Kroger on Baxter, the parking lot was already full at ten in the morning, and Dev circled twice before Maya said, "Just take the far one, it's fine, we're not in a hurry."

Inside, they split up the way they always did. Maya took produce and dairy; Dev took the middle aisles and the frozen section. She texted him a photo of two brands of pasta sauce with the message *which one did your mom use?* and he wrote back *neither, but the left one is $1.20 cheaper.* They met up again near the bread, and she put a bag of pita in the cart without asking, and he didn't object.

At checkout, the total was $137, more than they'd meant to spend, and Maya made a face. "The cheese was eleven dollars," Dev said. "For a small piece of cheese."

"You put it in the cart."

"I'm aware."

They loaded the trunk in the sun, and then drove to the hardware store for a furnace filter and a plunger, because the guest bathroom had been running slow. Dev stood in front of a wall of filter sizes with his phone flashlight on, reading the old one's dimensions off a photo he'd taken.

Home by noon. Maya put the cold things away while Dev carried the rest in from the car, and the ice cream was soft at the edges but not ruined.


The list was written on the back of a receipt, in Dani's handwriting, with three items added later in Marcus's blockier print.

"You put down 'cheese,'" she said in the car. "What kind of cheese?"

"The orange kind. For the pasta thing."

"Cheddar." She wrote it in. "Just say cheddar."

They'd already dropped two bags at the donation bin behind the church on Ellsworth, mostly Marcus's old work shirts and a lamp neither of them liked but had felt obligated to keep because his aunt gave it to them. The trunk still smelled faintly of cardboard.

At the store, Dani took the cart and Marcus took the produce, which was their usual arrangement. He came back with bananas that were too green and a bag of apples she hadn't asked for.

"They were on sale."

"We have apples."

"We have two apples."

She let it go. In the cereal aisle a kid was screaming about something and both of them pretended not to notice, though Marcus caught her eye and made a small face and she pressed her lips together.

At checkout she remembered the coffee filters, and he jogged back for them while she loaded the belt. He returned with the filters and also a bag of pretzels, which she looked at and did not comment on.

Home took eleven minutes. He carried four bags in one trip, which he did every time despite the plastic cutting into his fingers, and she carried the eggs and the bread separately because he'd crushed a loaf in September and she hadn't forgotten.

While she put things away he started the laundry, and then found the sink still full from breakfast and did that too. She came in and stood beside him and dried while he washed, and neither of them said anything for a while, and it was fine.

Around two, he asked if she wanted to go get the oil changed. She said tomorrow.


The list was Nadia's, written on the back of a receipt in her cramped handwriting, but Julian was the one holding it in the cart's little wire basket, squinting.

"You wrote 'cheese,'" he said. "That's it. Just cheese."

"The kind we always get."

"We've bought four kinds of cheese in the last month."

She leaned past him and put a block of sharp cheddar in the cart without breaking stride. They'd been in the store twenty minutes and had already done the loop wrong, starting in produce and doubling back for the yogurt she liked, the one with the fruit on the bottom that Julian claimed tasted like medicine.

They'd gotten up late. Saturdays had a shape by now: coffee, the slow negotiation over who was going to deal with the laundry, a run to the hardware store because the toilet handle in the second bathroom had been rattling since August. Julian had bought a replacement flapper and a new chain, and had spent eleven minutes in the plumbing aisle comparing two nearly identical packages while Nadia read the labels on drain cleaner out of boredom.

In the checkout line she unloaded the cart while he bagged, an arrangement neither of them had discussed. Bread on top. Eggs on top. The cashier asked if they'd found everything.

"Mostly," Nadia said.

In the parking lot the wind was cold enough that they both hurried. Julian loaded the trunk while she sat in the passenger seat with the heat on, holding the receipt.

"Ninety-four dollars," she said when he got in.

"That's not bad."

"That's terrible. We didn't even buy meat."

He backed out carefully. At home there was still the laundry, and the toilet, and a bag of clementines to put in the bowl on the counter. She reached over and turned the radio down, and he let her.


The list was Maya's, but Deshawn held it, because Maya's handwriting only made sense to Maya.

"Almond milk or oat?" he asked, squinting at the third line down.

"Both. The oat's for coffee." She was three feet away, weighing a cantaloupe in each hand like she was deciding which one had wronged her. "This one sounds hollow. Is that good or bad?"

"I have no idea what that means."

"Neither do I." She put one back and set the other in the cart.

They'd started the morning with the intention of being efficient. At eight-thirty they'd stripped the bed and gotten a load going, and Deshawn had scrubbed the shower while Maya carried four months of Amazon boxes down to the recycling bins. Then they'd sat on the couch for forty minutes doing nothing at all, which was how it always went.

At the store, they split up near the deli. Maya took produce and dairy; Deshawn took the middle aisles and the stupid errand of finding the specific brand of black beans her mother insisted were the only acceptable ones. He found them behind a display of tortillas, three cans left, and took all three.

At checkout, Maya remembered eggs. She jogged back and returned slightly winded, holding the carton open to check for cracks.

The bags were heavy on the walk to the car, and the parking lot was hot in that early-June way that felt like a promise. Deshawn loaded the trunk while Maya returned the cart, and on the drive home she read the receipt out loud, appalled.

"Eighty-nine dollars. For that."

"For a week."

"For four days, realistically."

Back at the apartment, they put everything away in the wrong places, moved the laundry to the dryer, and agreed—firmly, out loud—that they were not going to the hardware store today.

They went at four.


The list was Maya's, written in pencil on the back of an envelope, but Dev was the one holding it in the parking lot because she'd asked him to check whether they still needed coffee filters.

"We have like forty," he said. "You bought the big box in February."

"Then cross it off. Don't just tell me, cross it off."

Inside, the store had that Saturday-morning crowd, carts nosing each other in the produce aisle. Maya squeezed avocados with the seriousness of someone defusing something. Dev drifted toward the bakery and came back with a loaf of sourdough she hadn't asked for.

"It's four dollars," he said, preemptively.

"I didn't say anything."

"You made the face."

"That's just my face."

They split up for efficiency, which never worked. Dev texted her a photo of two brands of pasta sauce and she wrote back *the one on the left, obviously*, though she couldn't see the price tags. He got the one on the right. By the time they met at the dairy case, the cart had accumulated things neither remembered adding: a bag of limes, a candle, a rotisserie chicken that was warming a corner of the produce.

The self-checkout scanner refused the limes twice. An employee came over, tapped something, and left without saying anything.

At home, they carried everything up in one trip because Dev insisted, and he dropped the eggs on the landing, and only two broke. Maya wiped the stairs while he put things away in the wrong places on purpose, or not on purpose, she'd stopped being able to tell.

Then the laundry, which was hers, and the trash, which was his, and the recycling bin they dragged to the curb together because one wheel had cracked in December and neither had fixed it.

By two o'clock the apartment smelled like the chicken. They ate it standing up, out of the plastic tray, with their fingers.


The list on the fridge had been accumulating since Tuesday. Dana pulled it down while Marcus dug through the junk drawer for the reusable bags they always forgot.

"Did you write 'cheese' or 'chives'?" she asked, squinting.

"Cheese. My handwriting's not that bad."

"It's exactly that bad."

They stopped at the hardware store first, because the bathroom faucet had developed a drip that woke Marcus at three in the morning and that Dana claimed she'd never once heard. He spent ten minutes comparing washer kits while she wandered off and came back with a pack of furnace filters they actually did need.

At the grocery store, they split up. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the interior aisles, where he texted her a photo of three different pasta sauces with the caption *pick*. She sent back a thumbs-up, which helped no one. He bought the middle one.

They reconvened near the frozen section and argued mildly about whether they still had olive oil at home. Neither could remember. They bought it, which meant they'd get home and find two unopened bottles in the pantry, as had happened with soy sauce, and before that, cumin.

The self-checkout gave Marcus trouble over the bag of loose apples. Dana stood beside him with the receipt-length patience of someone who'd rather be doing this than waiting in the human line.

Back home, they carried everything in two trips. Dana put away the cold things while Marcus started the laundry, which had been sitting in the machine damp since the night before and now needed rewashing. He didn't mention this. She noticed anyway and said nothing, which he appreciated.

By two o'clock the faucet was fixed, mostly. It still dripped, but slower. Marcus declared victory. Dana made a sandwich and let him have it.


The list was Maya's, written on the back of a receipt while she waited for the coffee to finish. Dan had added two things in his cramped handwriting at the bottom: batteries, and something illegible that turned out, after some debate in the car, to be "bagels."

They hit the hardware store first because it opened at eight and the parking lot on Saturday mornings turned brutal by ten. Dan wanted a specific kind of drywall anchor for the shelf that had been leaning against the bedroom wall since March. Maya wandered off to look at houseplants and came back with a pothos in a plastic pot, which Dan looked at without comment.

"It's eight dollars," she said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You did the face."

At the grocery store they split up. Maya took the produce and dairy; Dan took the middle aisles and the meat counter. They met near the frozen foods, comparing carts like customs officials. He'd gotten the wrong yogurt, the vanilla instead of plain, and she sent him back while she stood in line at the deli counter holding a number.

The self-checkout was down to two working machines, so they waited behind a man buying what appeared to be forty cans of cat food. Dan bagged while Maya scanned. Total came to $148, more than either of them expected, and Maya said something about how it used to be a hundred, and Dan said it hadn't been a hundred since 2019.

At home, the eggs went in first, then the cold things, then the rest in whatever cabinet had room. Dan started on the shelf. Maya could hear the drill through the wall while she broke down the cardboard for recycling, and at some point the sound stopped and he said, from the bedroom, "Come look at this," and she went.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of a Comcast envelope, but Marcus was the one who carried it, folded twice, in his shirt pocket. They'd gotten a late start. It was almost eleven by the time they left the apartment, and the parking lot at the Kroger on Belmont was already full of people who'd had the sense to come at nine.

"Circle around," Dana said. "Someone's leaving by the cart return."

"That's a Buick. Buicks never leave."

But it did, eventually, and Marcus took the spot while an older man in a Titans hat waited two rows over, resigned.

Inside, they split up, which they always agreed was more efficient and which never was. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the middle aisles, where he stood a long time comparing two brands of black beans that cost the same. She found him there.

"They're identical," she said.

"One's organic."

"For four cents. Just get it."

At checkout the coupon on her phone wouldn't scan, and the cashier, a teenager named Britt, tried three times before typing the code in manually. Dana apologized. Britt said it happened constantly. Marcus bagged, badly — eggs in with the cans — and Dana rearranged them in the trunk without comment.

Then the hardware store for a furnace filter and a package of felt pads for the kitchen chairs, because the downstairs neighbor had said something. Then the dry cleaner, closed, which neither of them had thought to check.

Home, they carried everything up in two trips. Marcus put away the cold things while Dana wiped down a shelf that had gotten sticky. He found a jar of capers behind the vinegar, unopened, from some recipe neither could remember.

"Do we keep this?"

"Keep it," she said. "We'll use it."

He put it back where it had been. It was one-thirty. They still had the whole afternoon.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus had added things to it in his cramped handwriting: batteries, the good coffee, something about a shower curtain liner. They'd been putting off the liner for three weeks, ever since it went gray at the bottom.

They took his car because hers was low on gas and neither of them wanted to deal with that yet. Saturday morning traffic on Colfax was slow, and Dana read the list out loud while Marcus drove, both of them trying to remember whether they still had rice.

"We have rice," he said. "We have four kinds of rice. We have a rice problem."

At the hardware store, they spent eleven minutes in the bathroom aisle debating liner thickness. Marcus wanted the cheap one, arguing that they'd just replace it again in six months anyway. Dana pointed out that the cheap one was why they were standing there. He conceded, mostly because a man with a flatbed cart was waiting to get past them.

The grocery store was crowded. Dana took the cart and the left side of the list; Marcus took produce and the deli counter, where he stood behind a woman ordering a quarter pound each of six different things. They found each other again in the cereal aisle. He'd forgotten the lemons. She'd gotten two half gallons of milk instead of one, which he said was optimistic.

At checkout, the card reader asked for a PIN and Dana blanked on it, then remembered. Marcus bagged. They loaded the trunk in the parking lot, and he returned the cart while she scrolled through her phone in the passenger seat.

At home they put things away without talking much, moving around each other in the small kitchen. Marcus installed the liner. Dana started a load of towels. It was a little after one.


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

They started with the recycling, which had been accumulating on the back porch for three weeks. Marcus carried the bin down the apartment stairs while Dana propped the door with her foot, and they drove to the depot behind the hardware store, where an attendant in a reflective vest waved them toward the glass bins. The bottles made a satisfying racket.

"That's the sound of every Tuesday since March," Dana said.

At the dry cleaner, they picked up Marcus's suit for his cousin's wedding and dropped off a comforter that had suffered a coffee incident. The woman behind the counter squinted at the stain and said, hopefully, "We'll see."

The grocery store was crowded, the way it always was on Saturdays around eleven. Dana pushed the cart. Marcus read the list aloud, item by item, and they argued mildly in the produce section about whether they actually needed two bunches of cilantro or whether the first bunch would rot in the crisper drawer like the last one had. They compromised on one. In the cereal aisle, Marcus put a box of the sugary kind in the cart, and Dana looked at him, and he left it there anyway.

They split up near the deli to save time. Dana got the sandwich meat and the cheese; Marcus got laundry detergent, paper towels, and, unprompted, the good coffee. They found each other again by the frozen foods.

"Chicken or the pasta thing tonight?" Dana asked.

"The pasta thing. We have the sauce."

At checkout, the total was more than either expected. It always was. Marcus paid; Dana would get the next one, or wouldn't, and neither of them would keep track.

They carried the bags up in two trips, and Dana put the milk away first, and then they sat down.


The list was Maya's, written on the back of a receipt in her cramped handwriting, but Dev was the one holding it in the parking lot of the Kroger on Fifty-Third, squinting because he'd left his glasses in the car.

"It says 'the good bread,'" he read. "What is the good bread?"

"You'll know it when you see it."

"That's not how information works."

They split up at the produce section, which was their system and had been since the second month they lived together. Maya took the perimeter — vegetables, dairy, the deli counter where she always got two pounds of turkey and always regretted not getting three. Dev took the aisles. He came back with the bread, which was correct, and also with a jar of pickled banana peppers nobody had asked for.

"For sandwiches," he said.

"We don't eat those."

"We could."

She let it go. In the checkout line he read her the rest of the list while she looked at the tabloids, and they discovered they'd both grabbed sour cream, so one went back on the shelf by the gum.

At home the groceries went in fast because the ice cream was already sweating. Maya put things away wrong on purpose — cereal above the stove — to see if he'd notice, and he did, and moved it, and said nothing, which was its own kind of comment.

Then there was the rest of it: a load of towels, the bathroom sink that had been draining slow for a week. Dev knelt with a coat hanger and a flashlight and pulled out something gray and terrible, and Maya, from the doorway, said she was going to be sick, and did not leave.

By two they were done. He made sandwiches. He put banana peppers on hers without asking.

She ate the whole thing.


The list was Maya's, but Dev held it, because Maya's hands were full of the reusable bags they kept forgetting in the trunk.

"Eggs," she said. "The good ones or the regular ones?"

"Regular. We're already over budget from the thing with the tires."

They'd been up since eight, which on a Saturday felt like a small betrayal. Dev had run the dishwasher and put away the clean load from Thursday that had been sitting there judging them. Maya had stripped the bed, started the sheets, and discovered that the laundry detergent was down to a scrape at the bottom of the jug, which meant it went on the list too, in her small block letters.

The store was crowded. A woman with a double stroller had blocked the yogurt entirely, and they waited, not impatiently, Dev reading the ingredients on a granola bar box he had no intention of buying.

"Do we need coffee?"

"We have half a bag."

"That's like four days."

"Fine, get coffee."

At the register, the total was thirty dollars more than either of them expected, which was normal. Maya tapped her card. Dev bagged, arranging the eggs on top, the way he always did, the way she'd taught him after the incident two years ago.

In the parking lot the cart wheel shuddered and pulled left. Dev fought it to the car and Maya laughed at him.

At home they put things away in a rhythm they hadn't decided on and couldn't remember forming: he took the cold things, she took the pantry. Then the sheets went in the dryer, and Maya vacuumed the hallway while Dev took out the recycling, and by one o'clock the apartment smelled like laundry and the coffee they'd opened early, just to try it, and Saturday still had most of itself left.


The list on the fridge had been accumulating since Tuesday, written in two different hands. Dana added *coffee filters* in her small block letters, then pulled the paper free of its magnet.

"Ready?" she called.

Marcus came out of the bedroom still working his arm into a jacket sleeve. "We should hit the hardware store first. If we go to Kroger last, the ice cream won't melt."

"There's ice cream on the list?"

"There is now."

The hardware store took eleven minutes. They needed a furnace filter, and Marcus stood in the aisle comparing MERV ratings while Dana checked her phone and then wandered two aisles over to look at drawer pulls they didn't need. She came back with a package of picture hooks, since the framed print from her mother had been leaning against the hallway wall since August.

At the grocery store, they split the list without discussing it — she took produce and dairy, he took the middle aisles and the meat counter. They met near the bread. Marcus had put two boxes of the store-brand crackers in the cart.

"Those are the ones that taste like nothing," Dana said.

"They're for soup. They're supposed to taste like nothing."

She let it go and added a bag of clementines. At the register, the total came to eighty-seven dollars, which was less than either of them expected, and Marcus paid because Dana had paid last time and they kept a loose, unspoken ledger.

Home, they carried everything in two trips. Dana put the cold things away while Marcus went down to the basement to change the filter, and she heard him swearing mildly at the latch. Later, after the groceries were shelved, she found the hammer and hung the print in the hallway, a little low, and neither of them ever moved it.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus held it, because Dana always lost lists between the car and the store.

They'd started the morning at the laundromat on Peachtree, since the washer in their building had eaten someone's quarters and never recovered. Marcus folded fitted sheets badly and Dana redid them, which was a routine so old it had stopped being annoying and become a kind of joke. They ate gas station donuts in the car with the windows down because the air conditioning made a noise nobody wanted to pay to diagnose.

At Kroger, they split up. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the middle aisles and the meat counter. She texted him a photo of two brands of tortillas with the message *which one*, and he wrote back *the one you always get*, which was unhelpful and true. He found her by the yogurt eight minutes later, comparing expiration dates like it was a serious science.

"They're out of the coffee," he said.

"The good one?"

"The cheap one."

She made a face. They bought the good one. In the checkout line she scrolled through the calendar on her phone and reminded him about his sister's birthday, and he said he knew, and she said he didn't, and he admitted he didn't.

At home they carried everything up in one trip, badly, and Dana dropped a lemon in the stairwell. Marcus put things away in the wrong places and Dana moved half of them. He broke down the boxes for recycling while she wiped the counters and started a load of towels in the building's other washer, which worked most of the time.

It was two-fifteen. The couch was open. Neither of them said anything about it, but they both sat down, and the afternoon went quiet and unremarkable, the way good ones do.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus was the one who kept it in his coat pocket, and by the time they reached the grocery store parking lot he'd already lost track of whether they needed eggs or just remembered thinking about eggs.

"Two dozen," Dana said, pulling the cart free from the corral. "You ate four yesterday."

"Three."

"Four. I counted the shells."

Inside, they split up the way they always did—him for produce and bread, her for everything with a coupon attached. He came back with a bag of clementines that weren't on the list and a loaf of the seeded rye she liked, and she pretended not to notice the clementines while quietly moving them to the front of the cart so they wouldn't get crushed.

The line at checkout moved slowly. A woman ahead of them was arguing about a rain check for canned corn. Marcus leaned on the cart handle and read the tabloid headlines out loud in a newscaster voice until Dana elbowed him, laughing, and told him to stop.

At home they carried everything in two trips. Dana put the cold things away while Marcus broke down the paper bags for recycling and stacked them by the back door, where they'd sit for a week before anyone did anything about them.

Then it was laundry. He sorted; she started the first load and swore at the machine, which had a habit of stopping mid-cycle if the load was unbalanced. He came down and redistributed the towels without saying anything, and it ran fine.

By two o'clock the kitchen smelled like the coffee she'd made too late in the day, and there was still the bathroom to clean and a light bulb out in the hall closet. Marcus asked if they could do the bulb tomorrow. Dana said yes, knowing neither of them would.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of an envelope from the electric company, but Marcus was the one who carried it, folded into his jacket pocket like something official.

They started at the hardware store because it opened at seven and the parking lot was still mostly empty. Dana wanted the right furnace filter this time, not the cheap one that let dust through, and Marcus stood in the aisle comparing MERV ratings while she went to look at drawer pulls she had no intention of buying. He found her three aisles over holding a brushed nickel knob against her palm.

"We're not redoing the kitchen," he said.

"I know. I'm just looking."

At the grocery store she took the cart and he took the list, which was how they'd always done it without ever deciding to. She read out what they needed from memory anyway—coffee, eggs, the yogurt he liked, chicken thighs because they were on sale. He argued mildly for the ground beef instead. They compromised by getting both and then had to reconsider the produce because the cart was filling faster than expected.

In the cereal aisle Dana ran into a woman she used to work with and stood talking for six or seven minutes while Marcus drifted ahead to look at the bread. When she caught up he had already bagged four apples and put back the sourdough after checking the price.

"Sorry," she said.

"It's fine. Who was that?"

"Renée. From the Fairfield office."

The checkout line was slow. They loaded the car in the drizzle that had started while they were inside, and Marcus took the cart back to the corral because Dana had done it last time. On the way home she opened the yogurt in the passenger seat and ate it with a spoon she'd remembered to bring.


The list was Dana's, but Marcus was the one who kept it in his jacket pocket, folded into quarters, checking it at the end of every aisle like a man consulting a map.

They'd started the morning slowly. Coffee, then the laundry Dana had left in the washer overnight, which smelled faintly sour and had to be run again. Marcus took the recycling out to the bin at the curb while she matched socks on the living room floor, the television on but ignored. By eleven they had the car keys and a canvas bag from a bank neither of them used anymore.

The hardware store came first, for a furnace filter and two light bulbs for the hallway fixture. Dana wanted the warm-toned ones. Marcus said all bulbs were the same and then bought the warm-toned ones anyway.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays always are. Dana pushed the cart; Marcus went ahead for produce, coming back with a bag of apples she squinted at.

"These are mealy. Look at the bruising."

"They were on sale."

"They're on sale because they're mealy."

He swapped them without complaint. In the middle aisles they disagreed twice — about whether they still had rice at home (they did, she was right) and about buying the more expensive coffee (he won, mostly by putting it in the cart while she was reading a soup label). At checkout the total came to eighty-seven dollars and change. Marcus paid; Dana would cover the internet bill on Tuesday.

Unloading took two trips up the apartment stairs. Dana put things away while Marcus fought with the plastic wrap on the filter, then knelt at the furnace closet with the old one in his hands, gray with dust.

"How long has it been in there?" she asked.

"Don't ask questions you don't want the answer to."

She laughed and handed him the new one.


The list had been magneted to the fridge since Wednesday, accumulating additions in two different hands—Dara's tidy print, Marcus's slanted scrawl that had turned "cilantro" into something closer to "cilantro?" because he was never sure if she meant the leafy kind or the seeds.

They left the apartment at nine-forty, later than planned. Marcus had insisted on running the dishwasher first, and Dara had spent ten minutes hunting for her sunglasses before finding them on the bookshelf, where she'd set them down while watering the pothos.

The first stop was the hardware store for a furnace filter and a replacement handle for the bathroom cabinet, the old one having come off in Marcus's hand two weeks ago. He held the broken piece up against the display of knobs while Dara wandered toward the paint chips, drifting back with three greens fanned in her fingers.

"For what?" he said.

"Nothing. Someday."

At the grocery store, they split the list the way they always did—she took produce and dairy, he took the center aisles and whatever was on sale in the meat case. They met near the bread and negotiated. He'd gotten the wrong yogurt again, the vanilla instead of plain, and she made a face but put it in the cart anyway because it wasn't worth walking back. He'd also gotten a bag of pretzels that wasn't on the list, and she pretended not to see it.

The self-checkout scanner wouldn't read the barcode on the coffee. Marcus tried four times, then flagged down the attendant, a teenager who fixed it in three seconds by turning the bag sideways.

In the parking lot, loading bags into the trunk, Dara said the filter needed changing before it got cold. Marcus said he'd do it after lunch. He mostly meant it.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of a receipt in her cramped, slanted handwriting, but Eli was the one who kept it in his jacket pocket. They left the apartment a little after ten, when the sun had finally burned the frost off the windshield.

First was the hardware store, because Dana insisted the leaking showerhead had gone from annoying to intolerable. Eli held up two washers under the fluorescent lights while she squinted at the packaging.

"That one," she said. "The bigger one. Trust me, I watched a video."

"You watched half a video."

"I watched enough."

They bought both, plus a roll of plumber's tape, because Eli said it was a dollar-fifty for peace of mind.

At the grocery store, they split up the way they always did, Dana taking produce and dairy while Eli went for the pantry aisles. She texted him a photo of two brands of yogurt with a question mark. He texted back *the one you actually eat*. They found each other again near the frozen section, cart mostly full, and argued mildly about whether they needed more coffee. Eli won by pointing out they had used the last of it that morning.

In the checkout line, Dana remembered they were out of trash bags and went back for them while Eli started unloading. The cashier, a teenager with a name tag reading NOAH, asked if they had a rewards number. Eli recited Dana's phone number from memory, which he was quietly proud of.

At home they carried everything up in two trips. Dana put things away while Eli attacked the showerhead with a wrench and a stubbornness that lasted twenty minutes.

"Try it now," he called.

She turned the handle. The spray came out even, no dribble down the wall.

"Huh," she said. "Look at that."

He shrugged, pleased, and went to find the receipt so they could throw it away.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of a receipt in her cramped handwriting, but Marcus held it because his coat had better pockets.

They started at the hardware store, where the furnace filter took nine minutes to find and forty seconds to buy. Marcus insisted on the more expensive one. Dana pointed out that they'd changed the last filter in February and it was now October, so clearly they were not the kind of people who deserved a premium filter. He bought it anyway. In the parking lot she took a picture of a bumper sticker that said MY OTHER CAR IS ALSO THIS CAR and sent it to her brother.

At the grocery store they split up, which they'd agreed years ago was the only way. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the middle aisles and whatever meat was on sale. She found him twenty minutes later comparing two brands of tortilla chips with an intensity she associated with tax season.

"They're the same," she said.

"These have lime."

"Get the lime ones, then."

He put both in the cart. At checkout the total came to eighty-seven dollars, which was less than Dana had braced for, and she said so, and Marcus said that's because you forgot the coffee, and she said no I didn't, and then they both looked in the bags and she had, in fact, forgotten the coffee. He went back for it. She waited by the cart and read the ingredients on a granola bar without absorbing any of them.

Home took eleven minutes. They carried everything in two trips instead of the heroic one trip Marcus always proposed. Dana put the cold things away while he wrestled the old furnace filter out, coughing at the gray felt of it, and then it was one-thirty on a Saturday and the whole afternoon was still there, unspent.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of a takeout receipt, but Marcus was the one who insisted they leave before ten.

"Saturday after eleven is a war zone," he said, pulling on his jacket. "Everyone with a toddler is in that store."

They stopped at the hardware place first, because the bathroom faucet had been dripping since Tuesday and Marcus had watched enough videos to believe he could fix it. Dana wandered the paint chips while he compared washers, holding two nearly identical cards—Alabaster and Chantilly Lace—up to the fluorescent light as if they might reveal themselves.

"They're the same," Marcus said, appearing behind her.

"They're not."

"They're the same white."

She put them back and took one anyway, folding it into her pocket.

The grocery store was already filling up. Marcus pushed the cart while Dana worked the list, and they fell into the routine they'd built over two years: she picked produce, he handled the aisles with the boxes and cans. She squeezed avocados and found three that would ripen by Wednesday. He stood too long in front of the pasta sauces before texting her a photo of two jars, and she wrote back *the cheaper one*.

They disagreed about the chicken. Dana wanted thighs; Marcus wanted breasts, and lost, because she was the one who'd be cooking on Tuesday. At the register she bagged while he loaded, and they both winced at the total.

Back home, the groceries went away in ten minutes—cold things first, Marcus's rule. Then he lay on his back under the sink with a wrench while Dana held the flashlight and read the video's instructions aloud, one step behind him.

The drip stopped around one-thirty. They stood looking at the faucet for a moment, oddly pleased, and then Dana said she was starving, and they went to make sandwiches with the bread they'd just bought.


The alarm went off at eight, which Dani thought was criminal for a Saturday, but Marcus had already been up for twenty minutes, standing in the kitchen in his sweatpants, scraping burnt egg off the pan they kept meaning to replace.

"We need to leave by nine-thirty," he said when she shuffled in. "The thing at the dry cleaner closes at noon."

"The thing." She poured coffee. "It's a suit, Marcus. Say suit."

They made a list on the back of a receipt. Dani wrote in her looping hand while Marcus opened cabinets and reported inventory: no rice, half a jar of peanut butter, four rolls of paper towels because he'd panic-bought at the warehouse store in March.

The dry cleaner first, then the hardware store for a furnace filter, where Marcus stood in the aisle holding two sizes and squinting until Dani took a picture of the old one's dimensions off her phone. The right one was 16x25. They bought two.

The grocery store was crowded with people who had also decided to go at eleven on a Saturday. Dani drove the cart. Marcus went off for produce and came back with a bag of clementines and an argument about whether they actually eat clementines or just let them go soft in the bowl.

"We eat some of them," Dani said.

"We eat four of them. Out of twenty."

They bought them anyway. In the cereal aisle they disagreed about oat milk versus regular and settled it by getting both. Marcus put back the fancy olives. Dani put them back in the cart when he wasn't looking.

At the register a woman ahead of them had a coupon issue that took six minutes. Marcus read the tabloid headlines out loud. Dani laughed at the one about the alien senator.

They unloaded the car in two trips. The clementines went in the bowl.


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

They'd started the morning slow — coffee, the dishwasher unloaded in shifts, a fight over whether the smell in the fridge was the scallions or something worse. It was the scallions. Marcus bagged them and took the trash out while Dana stripped the bed, and by ten-thirty they were in the Civic with a reusable bag folded in the back seat and one they'd forgotten at home.

Hardware store first. The bathroom faucet had been dripping for three weeks, long enough that Dana had stopped hearing it and Marcus had started dreaming about it. He found the cartridge aisle and read part numbers with his phone flashlight while Dana wandered to the paint chips and came back with four grays she liked, fanned out like cards.

"We're not painting anything," Marcus said.

"I'm keeping my options open."

At the grocery store they split up, which they'd agreed made them faster and which had never once made them faster. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the middle aisles and the meat counter. They texted each other. *Do we need rice.* *We have four rices.* *Ok but do we need the good rice.* They met near the frozen section and argued mildly about whether two boxes of the ice cream sandwiches counted as stocking up or as a problem. They bought two.

The line was long. Dana leafed through a magazine she wasn't going to buy. Marcus loaded the belt in his particular order — cold things together, bread last — and Dana teased him about it the way she did every week, without meaning it.

In the parking lot the cart wobbled. Dana wrestled it while Marcus opened the hatch, and they got everything in, and drove home with the windows down.


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

"We need eggs," she said, steering the cart around a woman blocking the dairy case with a phone call.

"It's on here. Twice, actually. You wrote eggs, then you wrote eggs again."

"Then we need a lot of eggs."

They'd started the morning with laundry, which had been Marcus's idea, and which had gone badly when the machine downstairs ate two of his quarters without running. He'd stood there arguing with it while Dana went back up for the rest of the whites. Eventually a neighbor showed them the trick — a hard slap on the coin return — and now three loads were tumbling in the basement while they shopped.

"Cereal," Dana said. "The good one, not the cardboard one."

"The good one is nine dollars."

"The cardboard one is a punishment."

He put the nine-dollar cereal in the cart. She noticed, and didn't say anything, which was how she said thank you.

At the deli counter they waited eleven minutes for a half pound of turkey. Marcus checked his phone. Dana read the ingredients on a jar of pickles she wasn't going to buy. When their number was called, the man behind the counter asked if they wanted it thin, and they said yes at the same time, in the same tone, and looked at each other.

Outside, the parking lot was hot. Dana loaded bags while Marcus returned the cart, and then he came back and took the heavy one from her hands without being asked.

"Bank," she said. "Then the dry cleaner. Then we're done."

"Then the laundry."

"God. Right. The laundry."

He started the car. She rolled down her window, because the air conditioning took a minute, and put her feet up on the dash.


By ten on Saturday the apartment smelled like burnt toast, which was Dana's fault, and neither of them mentioned it.

"Do we need paper towels?" Marcus asked, standing in front of the open pantry with a pen behind his ear.

Dana was on the floor pulling recycling out from under the sink. "We need paper towels, and we need those coffee filters, the number four ones, not the cone ones you got last time."

"The cone ones fit."

"They fit if you fold them. That's not the same as fitting."

He wrote *filters (#4)* on the back of an envelope and added *paper towels*, then *eggs*, then *something for Tuesday*, because Tuesday was when her sister was coming and neither of them had thought about it yet.

They dropped the recycling at the bins behind the building, and Dana ran the vacuum over the living room rug while Marcus took the sheets out of the dryer downstairs. He folded the fitted sheet badly, the way he always did, and she took it from him without a word and folded it again into a neat square.

The grocery store was crowded. They split the list — she took produce and dairy, he took the middle aisles — and met near the deli counter, where he was holding two boxes of pasta and looking uncertain.

"Get the rigatoni," she said. "Did you get the filters?"

"Number four."

At checkout, the total was more than either of them expected, and Dana tapped her card and made a face. In the parking lot, Marcus loaded the trunk while she pushed the cart back to the corral, and on the drive home they argued mildly about whether they'd remembered garlic.

They had not remembered garlic. Marcus said he'd go back later. He didn't, and it turned out not to matter.


The list was Maya's, written on the back of a receipt in handwriting that Deon claimed was a form of code. He drove because she'd driven all week, and she read aloud from the passenger seat with her feet on the dashboard until he told her, mildly, that airbags broke ankles.

First stop was the hardware store, for a furnace filter and a can of the paint they'd used in the hallway two years ago, so Deon could cover the scuff where the couch had gouged the wall during the move. He stood in the paint aisle holding the color chip up to the fluorescent light, unconvinced. Maya said it looked fine. He said it looked like a different beige entirely, and bought it anyway.

At the grocery store, they split up—she took produce and dairy, he took the middle aisles—which they'd learned was faster but riskier. They ended up with two bags of coffee. Neither would admit fault. In the checkout line, Maya remembered they needed dish soap and jogged back for it while Deon unloaded the cart, and the cashier, a teenager with a nose ring, waited patiently while Maya returned slightly out of breath.

The car was hot. They rolled the windows down. Halfway home Maya said they should have gotten the good bread from the bakery instead of the sandwich bread, and Deon said they could go back, and she said no, forget it, not worth it, and then was quiet in a way that suggested it might be.

They carried everything in two trips. Maya put groceries away while Deon changed the furnace filter, which took four minutes and involved one bruised knuckle. Afterward he opened the paint and dabbed a small test patch by the baseboard. They both looked at it.

"It's close," Maya said.

"It's not the same."

"Nobody's going to see it."

He painted the whole scuff anyway.


The list on the fridge had been accumulating all week in two handwritings—Dana's tidy print, Marcus's slanted scrawl that she could only half decipher. She pulled it down Saturday morning while he was still finding his shoes.

"Does this say 'brown rice' or 'brown ice'?"

"Rice," he said. "Also we need lightbulbs. The one in the hallway went out Tuesday and I keep forgetting."

They took his car because hers was low on gas and neither of them wanted to deal with that yet. At the hardware store they spent eleven minutes in the lighting aisle while Marcus compared wattages and Dana read the backs of packages, and they ended up buying a four-pack that was probably too bright.

The grocery store was crowded the way it always was at eleven on a Saturday. Dana pushed the cart. Marcus went ahead to the deli counter to take a number and came back with turkey and a container of olives nobody had put on the list.

"We don't need those."

"We don't need most things."

She let it go. In produce he squeezed avocados and she stopped him, said they'd be mush by Wednesday, so he put back the soft ones and kept two hard. They disagreed briefly about cereal—she wanted the store brand, he said the store brand tasted like cardboard—and compromised by buying both. In the pasta aisle she remembered they were out of dish soap and doubled back while he stood with the cart, texting his sister.

The self-checkout ate a coupon. Marcus flagged down an employee who fixed it with a key card and a bored efficiency.

At home they carried the bags in two trips. Dana put things away while Marcus changed the hallway bulb, standing on a kitchen chair, and when the light came on she called from the pantry that it was way too bright.

"Told you," he said, pleased.


The rain had stopped by the time Maya finished sorting the laundry, though the sky over Sacramento stayed the color of dishwater. She hauled the first basket down to the building's laundry room while Devon wrestled with the vacuum cleaner, which had developed a rattle he was convinced meant something had gotten lodged in the brush roll.

"It's a hair tie," he called up the hallway. "Two hair ties."

"They're probably yours," Maya said, not turning around.

By eleven they had a list going on the back of an envelope, half in her handwriting and half in his. Devon wanted to try making the braised short ribs his mother had described over the phone, which meant a detour to the good butcher counter, which meant the Raley's on Freeport instead of the closer Safeway. Maya agreed on the condition they also stop at the hardware store for the light bulbs they'd been meaning to buy since February.

The store was crowded. They split up—she took produce and dairy, he took the meat counter and the coffee aisle—and reconvened near the frozen foods, where Devon had picked up a pint of ice cream that wasn't on the list.

"It was on sale," he said.

"It's always on sale."

She put it in the cart anyway. At checkout she bagged while he loaded, and they argued mildly about whether the eggs should go on top or in their own bag, an argument they had approximately every two weeks and had never resolved.

At home, Devon carried in the heavy bags and Maya put things away, calling out when she couldn't find room. The apartment smelled faintly of the vacuumed carpet. She found the light bulbs still in the car, went down for them, and came back to find Devon standing on a kitchen chair, unscrewing the dead one in the hallway fixture, waiting.


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

"We have six," she said.

"Not this one."

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

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

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


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

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

"For the bedroom," she said.

"We're not painting the bedroom."

"Someday we are."

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

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

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

"Did we have olive oil?"

"Two bottles now."

"Told you."

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

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


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

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

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

"Okay."

"You don't believe me."

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was still grinning when he went down the hall.


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

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

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

"We have chips," she said.

"We have stale chips."

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

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

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

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


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

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

"We have four coffee filters."

"That's still filters."

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

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

"Do you want the plain or the vanilla?"

"Plain. We always get plain."

"You said last time the plain was chalky."

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

He put the plain in the cart.

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

"We don't need those."

"We don't need most of this."

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

"We're cooking Sunday."

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

"You didn't write eggs."

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

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

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

"We can decide later," he said finally.

"We can decide later," she agreed.

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


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

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

"One time. I bought one pineapple."

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

"The pretzels were for you."

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

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

"It was a long week," he said.

"I didn't say anything."

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

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

"Monday," Dana said.

"Monday," he agreed.

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's Sunday," he said.

"That's Sunday and Monday."

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

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

"Laundry?" she said.

"After lunch."

"You said that last Saturday."

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Then get the pudding."

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

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

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

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

"I know."

"I'm just saying it out loud."


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

"You have the list?" he asked.

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

"We just bought toilet paper."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Home Depot?" she said.

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's *fiber*."

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

"You okay?"

"She wants me to call this week."

"So call her Sunday. Before the game."

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

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

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

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

"Got it," he called.

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

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


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

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

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

"Then we need a fixture."

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

"They're the same," he said.

"They're not."

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

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

"You always do this."

"Because I'm always right."

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

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

"Don't say it," she said.

"Wasn't going to."


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

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

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

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

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

"Listen," he said.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

"It's October," he said.

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

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

"I answered that," he said.

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Really."

"They were on sale."

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


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

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

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

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

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

"I wasn't going to make that."

"You were thinking about it."

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

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

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


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

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

"Prove it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

"Do we need almond milk or regular?"

"Both. I use the almond for coffee."

"That's a waste of fridge space."

"Then drink the almond."

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

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

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