"Not yet."
"We should go Friday. I heard the black bean ones are serious."
"Where did you hear that?"
"Paulson's wife told me after practice."
"Paulson's wife has better taste than Paulson."
"That is a very low bar. Friday?"
"Friday."
He picks up both plates and carries them to the sink before I can stand up. I follow him to the kitchen. He runs the water and hands me a plate and I dry it, and we are standing at the sink together the way we have been standing in this kitchen since he moved in, close enough that his elbow brushes mine when he turns from the faucet. He hands me the second plate. I dry it and set it in the rack.
"I had a good practice today," he says, still facing the sink. "My release has been off since Seattle but today it was back."
"Your release has been fine."
"My release has been a seven. Today it was an eight-two."
"You're still rating your own release point."
"Everything gets rated. You agreed to this system."
"I agreed to rate restaurants. I did not agree to rate your hockey mechanics."
"The system has expanded. You missed the memo." He shuts off the water and dries his hands on the towel hanging from the oven handle and looks at me, and the look holds for a beat longer. Then he turns toward the living room. "Balcony?"
"Yeah."
We take our glasses out. Water for me. He poured himself the end of a bottle of white wine that we opened last week. The railing is warm from the day, the water below is dark and flat.
He leans on the railing with both forearms. I lean next to him. There is a foot of space between us. The same foot that has been between us for three weeks on the couch, at the table, at the sink where his elbow just brushed mine. The foot has not closed. It has not widened.
"You should bring your camera out here in the morning," he says. "The light was good today."
"I saw it. I was up at six but the clouds were wrong."
"How can clouds be wrong?"
"Flat overcast. No texture. The water looks dead when the sky doesn't have shape."
"You need clouds with ambition." He takes a sip of wine. "I don't understand photography. I don't understand how you look at the same water every morning and find new things in it."
"That's because you rate everything on the first look. You'd give the ocean a seven-three and move on."
"The ocean is at least an eight. The ocean has range." He pauses. "But you're right. I would move on."
For a while we don't talk. The waves are low tonight, barely audible underneath the hum of the building. I can hear him breathing. I can hear the wine shifting in his glass when he adjusts his grip on the stem.
"Can I ask you something?" he says.
"Yeah."
"Do you ever think about leaving here?"
I look at the water. "No."
