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

"You beat me," she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I said we haven't decided."

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

"I'll make the pasta."

"Not the pasta again."

"You like the pasta."

"I liked the pasta in July."

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


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

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

"Did you get the milk?"

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

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

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

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

"Are we?"

"I said I'd ask you."

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

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

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


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

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

"Just write 'return to sender.'"

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

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

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

"Trim those. The ends."

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

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

"You've been saying that since March."

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

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

"Five minutes," she said.

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


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

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

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

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

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

"Questionable how?"

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

"Salvage it."

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

"Rice or the couscous?" she asked.

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

"You're always starving."

"I'm a growing boy."

"You're thirty-four."

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

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

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

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

"Then I'll do two things Thursday."

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

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


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

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

"How long has it been?"

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

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

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

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

"That's healthy."

"That's survival."

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

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

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

"So no."

"So no."

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

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


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

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

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

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

"Did you get the peppers?"

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

"Devon."

"I got the sour cream."

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

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

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

"From *Christmas*?"

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

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

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

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

"You said that last week too."

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


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

"You're early," she said.

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

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

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

"I thought insurance covered it."

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

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

"How was Priya?" he asked.

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

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

"So no."

"So probably no."

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

"This is good," she said.

"It's just chicken."

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


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

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

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

"The bike pump?"

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

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

"Now we have three."

"Now we have three," she agreed.

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

"How was the thing with Karen?"

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

"That's the third time."

"I'm aware."

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

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


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

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

"You said that Tuesday."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"She knows you don't answer."

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

"I told her probably. Is it probably?"

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

"A granola bar."

"Dana."

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


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

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

"By what?"

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

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

"It's been thawing since noon."

"Noon isn't morning."

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

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

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

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

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

"Then no."

"Then no."

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's Wednesday."

"Sunday to Wednesday is fine."

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

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

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

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

"Because you put it there."

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

"Your mom called me," he said.

"Called you?"

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

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

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

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


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

"You got the cilantro?"

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

"That's basically green vinegar."

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

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

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

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

"Are we ever making pie?"

"We might make pie."

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

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

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

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

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

"Five more minutes," she said.

"Okay." He sat down anyway.


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

"Don't say it," she said.

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

"It's Thursday."

"I know what day it is."

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

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

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

"That's what I'm saying."

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

"Your mom called me," Dev said.

"She called you?"

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

"That's the twentieth?"

"Twenty-first."

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

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

"Butter?" she asked.

"Obviously butter."

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


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

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

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

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

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

"So couscous."

"So couscous," she agreed.

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

"Did you call about the water heater?"

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

"Shocking."

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

"Smell it."

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

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


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

"Onions or no onions?" she called.

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

"Somebody who complained about heartburn last Tuesday."

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

"It cooks down."

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

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

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

"The grinding thing?"

"The grinding, and now a smell."

"Great. Wonderful."

"I'll look at it Saturday."

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

"Probably," he admitted.

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

"Your mom called me," he said.

"About Thanksgiving?"

"About Thanksgiving."

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

"That's what I told her."


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

"Traffic?" she asked.

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

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

"Ambitious."

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

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

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

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

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

"Did you commit us?"

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

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

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

"The book club you don't like."

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

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


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

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

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

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

"It's fine, right?"

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

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

"Compost bucket's full."

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

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

"Your mom called me," he said.

"Called you?"

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

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

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

"Driving's eleven hours."

"Flying's four hundred dollars each."

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

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


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

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

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

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

"That's basically the whole job."

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

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

"Did you pay the electric?"

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

"Okay. Because last month —"

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

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

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

"We should do something Friday," Devin said.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Something."

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


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

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

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

"Which plant?"

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

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

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

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

"Door. Left side."

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

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

"Are we?"

"I told her probably. Is that okay?"

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

"I told her that too."

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


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

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

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

"Maybe he's committed."

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

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

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

"Keep pretending."

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

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

"Can we decide Saturday?"

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

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

"She likes you more than me."

"Obviously."

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

"Plates?" he asked.

"Plates," she said.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"There's a house line?"

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

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

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

"Wine?" he asked.

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

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


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

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

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

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

"Ambitious."

"You're welcome to order something."

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

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

"Do we have soy sauce?"

"Behind the vinegar."

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

"Table or couch?" she asked.

"Couch. It's a couch night."

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


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

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

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

"We say that every time."

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

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

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

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

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

"You should tell him that."

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

"No, you won't."

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

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

"Is that rice from Sunday?" she asked.

"It's from Monday."

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

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

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


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

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

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

"He said Thursday last week."

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

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

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

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

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

Dev quartered a potato. "Are we?"

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

"You'd be a wreck."

"I'd be a wreck either way."

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

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

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


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

"You're home early," she said.

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

"With the capers?"

"We're out of capers."

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

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

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

"We have a house phone?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Salad?" she asked.

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

"Everything in that drawer is questionable."

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

"One's tamari."

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

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

"You could stop accepting."

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

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

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

"Ten minutes," he said.

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

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


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

"You beat me home," she called.

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

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

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

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

"I bought scallions Tuesday."

"So did I."

He laughed. "Okay. Scallion week."

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

"How was Lauren?" he asked.

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

"Are we?"

"I said probably. Is that a no?"

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

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

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

"Back of the fridge. Behind the pickles."

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


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

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

"Is it still good?"

"It's Thursday."

"That's four days."

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

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

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

"Your mom called me," she said.

"Today?"

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

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

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

"We could go Saturday and leave Sunday night."

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

"It's my mother."

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

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

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

"It's slimy."

"Some of it."

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


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

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

"It smells like garlic. Wash your hands."

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

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

"Into what?"

"Into the pan, Dev."

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

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

"Your mom called me," he said.

"Called you?"

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

"What did you tell her?"

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

"These are all different sizes."

"They'll cook."

"Some of them will cook."

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

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

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

"We should get a dishwasher."

"That's a landlord conversation."

"Then we should get a second dish rack."

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


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

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

"Traffic on the parkway?" she asked.

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

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

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

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

"Weird how?"

"Gray. Just — gray."

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

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

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

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

"Oh God. The lake house."

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

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


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

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

"Since when?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What'd you say?"

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

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

"That's fair."

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


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

"You beat me," she said.

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

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

"There was a nub."

"That nub was ancient."

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

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

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

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

"She called *you*?"

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

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

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

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

"You tell her that."

"I'm not telling her that."

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What'd you tell him?"

"That we hadn't decided."

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

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

"Then we'll decide by Thursday."

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

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

"There's bread."

"Bread's fine."

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


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

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

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

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

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

"We have that dried stuff."

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

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

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

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

"What'd you tell her?"

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

"We can go. It's fine."

"You say that now."

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

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


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

"You beat me," he said.

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

"That's suspiciously generous."

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

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

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

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

"The clunking noise or the whining noise?"

"There's two noises?"

"There's been two noises since August."

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

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


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

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

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

"Then we should look there more often."

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

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

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

"So no."

"So, technically, yes. I called."

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

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


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

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

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

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

"The chicken from Sunday?"

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

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

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

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

"That's what they always say."

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

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

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

"Your mom does not make stir-fry."

"She makes something."

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Good."

"Marcus."

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

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

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

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


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

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

"It's raining."

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

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

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

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

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

"In the break room?"

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

"Passive aggressive note?"

"Deeply."

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

"Did you get broccoli?"

"I forgot."

"Devon."

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

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


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

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

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

"I always wash my hands."

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

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

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

"How is that mine?"

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

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

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

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

"That's a bummer."

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

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


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

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

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

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

"I said it tastes like feet."

"Right. Feet."

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

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

"What'd you say?"

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

Marisol laughed. "You're learning."

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

"Ten minutes," she said.

"I'll set the table."

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


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

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

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

A pause. "Second one."

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

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

"Rice?" he asked.

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

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

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

"Your mom called me," he said.

"Called you?"

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

Priya laughed. "How bad?"

"Four-fifty each if we go Wednesday."

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

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

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

They ate on the couch, plates on their knees.


The list was Dana's, written on the back of an envelope from the electric company, but Marcus was the one holding it in the car, reading items aloud in the voice of a game show host.

"Paper towels. Whatever brand is on sale. Eggs — the large ones, not the jumbo, because last time you got jumbo and they didn't fit in the door."

"That was one time," Dana said, turning into the lot behind the hardware store. They had a stop there first: a furnace filter, because the old one had gone gray and fuzzy and Marcus had been sneezing since October. The store smelled like sawdust and rubber. He held two sizes up to the light while she checked the measurement she'd photographed on her phone, and they argued mildly about whether sixteen-by-twenty-five meant the same thing on both boxes.

At the grocery store, they split up. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the middle aisles and the meat counter. They met by accident near the frozen food and compared carts like customs agents.

"You got the crackers," she said. "The list said tortillas."

"They were next to each other."

"Those things are not next to each other in any store."

He put the crackers back. She let him keep the pint of coffee ice cream because it was on sale and because he'd carried the filter without complaining.

The checkout line was long. A woman ahead of them had a coupon that wouldn't scan. Marcus scrolled through his phone; Dana read the tabloid headlines and reported the more absurd ones under her breath. When it was their turn, she bagged while he loaded, an unspoken division they'd never discussed.

In the parking lot, the wind had picked up. He wedged the eggs between two bags so they wouldn't slide.

"Filter first," she said, starting the car, "then lunch."

"Filter first," he agreed.


The list was Dana's handwriting, but Marcus had added things at the bottom in ballpoint: coffee filters, dish soap, the good tortillas. They took his car because hers still had a check-engine light neither of them had dealt with.

At the hardware store first, because Dana insisted the leaking bathroom faucet had gone from annoying to insulting. She held the old cartridge up to a bin of replacements while Marcus wandered off and came back with a package of furnace filters.

"We changed those in March," she said.

"It's June."

"They're every three months."

He looked at the package. "So we're right on time."

She didn't argue. He was usually right about the house, in a way she found mildly irritating and mostly reassuring.

The grocery store was crowded, the way it always was at eleven on a Saturday. Marcus pushed the cart and Dana walked ahead, pulling things off shelves and handing them back to him without looking. They disagreed briefly about yogurt — she wanted the plain kind, he pointed out that neither of them ever actually ate the plain kind — and compromised on vanilla. In the produce section she squeezed avocados with a seriousness he'd learned not to mock out loud.

At checkout, the card reader took three tries. The bagger asked if they wanted help out and Marcus said no thanks, we're fine.

They unloaded in the driveway, carrying everything in two trips instead of the four it would have taken alone. Dana put away the cold things while Marcus flattened the paper bags for the recycling bin. Then he went upstairs with the faucet cartridge and a wrench and she heard him swearing gently through the ceiling.

"Do you need me?" she called.

"No. Maybe. Give it five minutes."

She sat down with the coffee that had gone cold and waited, listening to the water finally stop.


The list on the fridge had been accumulating all week in two different handwritings: Dana's tidy print, Marcus's slanted scrawl that she could only half decipher.

"What's this one?" she asked, holding it up in the car. "Cilantro? Ciabatta?"

"Cinnamon. For the oatmeal."

They stopped at the hardware store first, because the bathroom faucet had been dripping since Tuesday and Marcus had finally watched enough videos to feel confident about it. He compared two washer kits for longer than Dana thought necessary while she wandered to the paint chips and brought back three shades of green she liked for the bedroom.

"That one looks like a hospital," he said.

"It's called Sage Whisper."

"It's called hospital."

At the grocery store, they split up — Marcus took produce and the bakery, Dana took everything down the middle aisles — and met near the dairy case with two carts, which they hadn't meant to do. He'd bought grapes because they were on sale and a rotisserie chicken because he was hungry, which she pointed out was exactly why they'd eaten before leaving. He said he'd been hungry then too.

The self-checkout flagged the wine and they waited for someone to come scan a badge and squint at her license. A kid a few lanes over was having a full-body meltdown about a candy bar, and Dana and Marcus looked at each other and did not say anything, which was its own conversation.

Home, they carried bags in from the driveway in two trips, and Marcus put the frozen things away wrong, and Dana moved them without mentioning it. He went to work on the faucet. Twenty minutes later she heard water hit the floor and a word he didn't usually say, and she brought a towel without being asked, and stood in the doorway laughing at him while he wrung it out.


The list was Dana's, written in pencil on the back of a receipt, but Marcus was the one holding it in the parking lot of the Kroger on Sixth, squinting because he'd left his glasses in the car.

"It says 'the good bread,'" he said. "What does that mean?"

"The seedy one. Not the sandwich bread."

"Those are both bread."

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

Inside, they split up the way they always did, which never actually saved time because Dana kept texting him questions and he kept forgetting to check his phone. She found him in the cereal aisle comparing two boxes of granola that cost the same and had, as far as she could tell, identical ingredients.

"Just pick one."

"This one has more fiber."

"Then get that one."

"But I like the other one."

She took the other one out of his hand and put it in the cart and kept walking. He caught up near the eggs, opening a carton and checking for cracks, which was a habit he'd gotten from his mother and which Dana had started doing too without ever deciding to.

The bill came to eighty-four dollars, more than they'd planned, mostly because of the coffee they both refused to compromise on. Marcus paid. Dana would get the next one; they had a rough, unspoken system that had never once been discussed out loud and had somehow worked for three years.

At home they carried the bags up in two trips. She put things away while he broke down the box in the recycling bin, standing on it to flatten it. Then he ran the vacuum in the living room while she scrubbed the shower, and by two o'clock the apartment smelled like lemon cleaner and the granola was open on the counter, both of them eating it dry out of the box with their fingers.


The Saturday started slow. Marisol was still in her pajama pants at ten, scraping the last of the peanut butter onto a heel of bread, when Dev came out of the bedroom holding two hangers.

"Which one goes to the dry cleaner?"

"Both. The gray one has that stain from Kevin's wedding."

They made a list on the back of a receipt, the way they always did, arguing mildly about whether they still needed olive oil. Marisol thought they had a backup in the pantry. Dev said the backup was the one they'd been using since March.

They took his car because hers needed an oil change, another thing that had migrated from one week's list to the next since February. The dry cleaner was a ten-minute stop, then the hardware store, where Dev spent longer than expected comparing furnace filters while Marisol wandered the paint chips, holding up cards named Morning Fog and Whispering Oat, imagining the bedroom.

"We're not painting," Dev said behind her.

"I'm not saying we're painting. I'm saying if we painted."

At the grocery store, they split the list. He took produce and the middle aisles; she took dairy and the pharmacy section for her allergy pills. They found each other again near the frozen food, Marisol pushing the cart with one foot on the bar, coasting.

"They were out of the good yogurt," she said.

"I got the store brand."

"That's not the same thing."

The checkout line took twenty minutes because the self-scanners kept freezing. In the parking lot, the wind picked up and a bag tipped, sending three oranges rolling under the car. Dev crouched to get them, knees on the asphalt, while Marisol laughed and then apologized for laughing.

They put the groceries away together, mostly. He handled the freezer. She stacked the cans. Then he started the laundry, and she sat down on the couch and, briefly, did nothing at all.


Saturday started with an argument about whether they actually needed to go to the store at all.

"There's pasta," Nadia said, still in the T-shirt she'd slept in. "There's that jar of sauce your mom sent."

"That jar has been there since March." Marcus was already pulling on jeans. "And we're out of coffee. Actually out. I checked."

That settled it. Nadia went to shower while Marcus stripped the sheets off the bed and got a load started, then stood in the kitchen writing a list on the back of a Con Edison envelope. He wrote *coffee* twice without noticing.

They walked the six blocks to the Stop & Shop because the car needed an inspection sticker and neither of them wanted to think about that yet. Nadia took the cart. She was faster in stores than he was, decisive, while Marcus lingered in aisles reading labels on things he had no intention of buying.

"Are we doing chicken thighs or the breasts," she called from two aisles over.

"Thighs. Thighs are better."

"Thighs are on sale, that's why I'm asking."

At checkout she bagged while he paid, and they discovered they'd both put yogurt in the cart, four containers total, which Marcus insisted was fine because he ate it for breakfast and Nadia pointed out that he had not eaten breakfast since October.

Walking back, the bags cut into their fingers and they had to stop twice to switch hands. At home, Nadia put groceries away while Marcus moved the sheets to the dryer, and then he swept the kitchen while she scrubbed the burner grates, which had needed it for weeks.

By two o'clock the apartment smelled like detergent and lemon cleaner. Nadia made coffee with the new bag. They drank it sitting on the floor by the window because the couch had clean laundry piled on it, and neither of them wanted to fold it yet.


The list was Maya's handwriting, but Ben had added things at the bottom in his cramped block letters: BATTERIES (AA), that hot sauce, coffee filters — the cone ones.

They left the apartment a little after ten, later than they'd meant to. Maya drove because Ben's car was in the shop again, a rattling noise the mechanic had described with a shrug. First stop was the hardware store for a furnace filter, which took twenty minutes because neither of them could remember the size and they'd forgotten to check before leaving.

"Twenty by twenty-five," Ben said, holding one up.

"That's what you said last time and it didn't fit."

He photographed the aisle tag anyway, in case.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturday stores are, carts abandoned mid-aisle, a kid crying near the bakery. Maya took the left side and Ben the right, meeting at the endcaps. He put a bag of shredded cheese in the cart; she took it out and replaced it with a block.

"It's four dollars cheaper and it doesn't have the anti-caking stuff."

"You never grate it."

"I'll grate it."

They stood a long time in front of the yogurt while Maya read labels. Ben went to get the coffee filters and came back with the wrong ones, went again. At checkout, the total was higher than they'd expected, as it always was, and Ben tapped his card without comment.

Back home, they carried everything up in two trips, Maya holding the door with her hip. Ben changed the furnace filter — it did fit — while she put things away, standing on a chair to reach the top shelf for the extra paper towels.

At one thirty they ate leftover pad thai out of the container, standing at the counter, and agreed they should probably do the laundry, and didn't, not for another hour.


The list was Marisol's, written on the back of an envelope from the electric company, but Dev was the one who carried it, folded in his palm like a raffle ticket.

They'd started the morning slow. Coffee, the good kind she'd been rationing. Dev had run the dishwasher at seven and unloaded it while she was still asleep, and she noticed, when she came into the kitchen, that he'd put the mixing bowls in the wrong cabinet again. She moved them. She didn't say anything. He saw her move them and didn't say anything either, which felt, after two years, like a small kind of grace.

At the hardware store they bought a furnace filter and a pack of light bulbs, and Marisol talked him out of a fifteen-dollar level he didn't need.

"We have a level," she said.

"We have a level that lies."

"Then it's a *personality*."

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays are crowded, everyone moving with a kind of dazed urgency. Dev took the cart. Marisol took the list back, because he'd been holding it upside down. She did produce; he went for the coffee and the frozen things and came back with an extra bag of pretzels she didn't argue about. They debated the chicken thighs versus the breasts, and thighs won, as they always won. At the register she paid, because he'd covered last time, and neither of them kept a real ledger but both of them kept a loose sense of fairness.

In the parking lot, the sky had gone flat and gray. They loaded the trunk together, cold air rolling out of the bags.

"Laundry when we get back," she said.

"Laundry," he agreed, "then I'm doing nothing."

"You have to change the filter."

"Fine. Filter, then nothing."

She got in and put her cold hands on his neck before he could start the car.


The alarm didn't go off, which was fine, because it was Saturday. Dana woke first anyway, at seven-forty, and lay there listening to Marcus breathing beside her until she gave up and went to make coffee.

By nine they had a list. Marcus wrote it on the back of an envelope from their landlord, holding it against the refrigerator door while Dana called out items.

"Coffee filters. The cone ones, not the flat."

"I know which ones."

"You bought the flat ones last time."

"That was a different store," he said, which was true and also not an answer.

They took her car because his needed an oil change, another errand, one they were not going to do today. First stop was the hardware store on Winslow for a replacement screen for the bathroom window, which had torn sometime in March and let in a mosquito every night since. The man at the counter cut it to size while Marcus held the frame and Dana wandered off to look at houseplants she wasn't going to buy.

The grocery store was crowded. Dana pushed the cart; Marcus went ahead and came back with things, an outrider. He returned with the wrong yogurt twice and the right yogurt on the third attempt. In the cereal aisle they had a brief, low-voiced disagreement about whether they already had rice at home. Marcus was certain. Dana bought rice.

At the register Dana bagged while Marcus paid, and then they carried it all up the two flights, four bags each, one trip.

There was rice at home. A full box, unopened, behind the pasta.

"Don't," Marcus said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You're saying it with your face."

She put the new box beside the old one and started on the screen while he made sandwiches.


The list on the fridge had grown all week in two different hands—Dana's tidy print, Marcus's slanted scrawl that turned "paper towels" into something closer to hieroglyphics.

"Did you write 'oat milk' or 'oat mulch'?" Dana asked, squinting at it Saturday morning.

"Milk. Obviously." Marcus was on his knees by the dishwasher, prying at the bottom rack with a butter knife. Something had jammed the sprayer arm two loads ago, and he'd been ignoring it since Thursday. "Got it. It's a bottle cap. Yours, probably."

"I don't drink beer."

"Then it's mine." He held it up like evidence and dropped it in the trash.

They ran the laundry first so it would be done when they got back—Dana loading, Marcus fishing a stray sock out from behind the machine with a hanger. Then the bank, where the ATM ate four minutes of their morning, and then the pharmacy, where Marcus waited in the car with the windows down because the parking lot was full and he hated circling.

The grocery store was crowded in the way Saturdays always were, carts nose to nose in the produce section. They split up. Dana took the perimeter—apples, a bag of spinach, chicken thighs on sale—and Marcus took the aisles, texting her a photo of two different pasta sauces with the caption *which one*. She wrote back *the one that isn't $7*. He bought the seven-dollar one anyway.

At checkout, they bagged their own groceries because the lane was self-serve and the machine kept insisting there was an unexpected item. Marcus dealt with the attendant. Dana loaded the cart.

Back home, they carried everything in two trips. Dana put away the cold things while Marcus flattened the boxes for recycling and moved the laundry to the dryer. It was two-fifteen. They still had the whole afternoon.


Saturday started slow. Dana woke first, made coffee, and stood at the window watching a neighbor drag a recycling bin to the curb. When Marcus came out of the bedroom, hair flattened on one side, she handed him the second mug without a word.

"We should hit the store before it gets crazy," he said.

"After the laundry's in."

He carried the basket down to the building's basement while she sorted the darks, and they lost eleven minutes searching the apartment for quarters. Marcus finally found a roll in the junk drawer, behind a tangle of phone chargers and a screwdriver neither of them remembered buying.

At the grocery store, they split the list. Dana took produce and dairy; Marcus took the aisles. She squeezed avocados with what she considered expertise and picked out three that would ripen at staggered intervals. He came back with a box of cereal that wasn't on the list.

"It was buy-one-get-one," he said.

"We have two boxes at home."

"Now we'll have four."

She let it go. At the register the total was higher than either expected, which it always was, and Marcus tapped his card while Dana bagged. Outside, the parking lot shimmered a little in the heat, and they loaded the trunk of her Corolla, the eggs riding on the passenger seat like something precious.

Back home, they put things away in the wordless choreography of two people who'd shared a kitchen for three years — he handled the high shelves, she reorganized the fridge around his careless placements. Then the laundry, folded on the bed while a home renovation show played on his laptop.

Around four, Dana said, "I still have to call my mom back."

"Do it after," Marcus said. "There's an hour of daylight left. Walk?"

She thought about it, then found her shoes.


The alarm didn't go off, because it was Saturday, but Dana woke up at 7:40 anyway. She lay there for a while listening to Marcus breathe, then gave up and made coffee.

By ten they had a list, written on the back of a envelope from the electric company. Marcus wanted to hit the hardware store first because the bathroom faucet had been dripping since Tuesday and he'd finally looked up which washer it took.

"You're sure it's a washer," Dana said in the car.

"I'm sure it's probably a washer."

The hardware store took twenty minutes, mostly because Marcus stood in the plumbing aisle comparing two packages that appeared identical. Dana wandered off and came back with a bag of birdseed they didn't need, which she held up without comment. He shrugged. They bought both.

The grocery store was crowded in the way it always was on Saturdays, carts blocking the ends of aisles, someone's kid crying near the bakery. Dana pushed and Marcus read from the envelope. They negotiated over cereal—he wanted the one with the toucan, she pointed out that they had half a box at home. They compromised by buying it anyway. In produce, she picked through the bell peppers while he texted his sister back about Thanksgiving. The line at checkout was six deep. Marcus bagged.

At home they put things away, which mostly meant Dana handing him items and Marcus finding places for them. Then he lay on his back under the bathroom sink with a wrench while she sat on the edge of the tub and read him the instructions off her phone, occasionally scrolling too fast.

It was a washer. The drip stopped. Marcus stood up and hit his head on the underside of the sink, and Dana laughed at him, and then apologized, and then laughed again.

They had sandwiches for lunch.


The list had been on the refrigerator since Wednesday, accumulating items in two different handwritings. Dana added *coffee filters* in blue pen while Marcus loaded the reusable bags into the trunk of the Civic.

"Did you check if we need dish soap?" he called toward the apartment door.

"There's like an inch left." She locked up and jogged down the steps. "That's a week."

"That's three days the way you wash dishes."

The Kroger on Belmont was already crowded at ten thirty. Dana pushed the cart while Marcus went ahead into produce, weighing bananas in his palm the way his mother did, putting back the ones with too much green. They disagreed about apples—she wanted Honeycrisp, he pointed at the price per pound—and settled on Galas, which neither of them really wanted.

In the cereal aisle a kid was crying about something, and Marcus and Dana exchanged the look they always exchanged, the one that meant *not yet, thank God*.

He remembered the dish soap. She remembered they'd used the last of the olive oil making that pasta on Thursday. At checkout the total came to eighty-seven dollars, which was less than usual, and Dana said so, and Marcus said it was because they hadn't bought any beer.

They unloaded the car in two trips. Dana put things away while Marcus took the recycling down to the bins behind the building, then came back up with the mail—a credit card offer, a wedding invitation from his cousin, a water bill.

"Your cousin's getting married in October," he said, holding it up.

"In Cleveland?"

"In Cleveland."

She was folding the bags into the drawer where they kept the bags. "We should probably go."

"Yeah," he said. "We probably should."

Then he changed the sheets while she vacuumed, and by one o'clock the apartment smelled like clean laundry and the afternoon was still ahead of them.