He plates the food. His hands are large on the serving spoon and the motion is the same motion I have watched him make in this kitchen for two years. Steady and unhurried. He sets two plates on the table and I sit across from him and the table is thesame table and the chairs are the same chairs and I am the one who is different. The visitor now in the apartment that used to be mine.
The sofrito is good. I give it a seven-six.
"Seven-six? The sofrito is at least an eight."
"The peppers are excellent. The seasoning is correct. But the rice is slightly overcooked on the bottom layer, which tells me you reheated it and the texture degraded."
"I reheated it because you got here at midnight."
"Texture degradation is texture degradation regardless of the reason. I don't grade on circumstance."
He shakes his head. His fork moves at a pace that is not slow but is deliberate, the way everything about him is deliberate. I watch him eat, and I didn’t think I would miss such a small moment.
"I looked at the spreadsheet on the plane," I say. "You haven't entered anything in two weeks."
"I haven't been eating out."
"Home meals have their own index."
"I know they have their own index. I just haven't been in the mood."
"Not in the mood to rate food?"
"Maybe I just haven't been thinking about it." He says it simply. The way Wes says things that carry weight, with the same level voice he would use to tell me the time.
I let the sentence sit.Haven't been thinking about it.Wes has been thinking about the spreadsheet since the day we built it.
"How's the team?" I ask.
"Good. Winning more than we should. Paulson is still telling the marlin story."
"The marlin has to be twelve feet by now."
"Fourteen. He added a dorsal fin."
He laughs. He's across from me, looking like he's got all the time in the world for me, and I do not know what to do with that.
We finish eating. I carry the plates to the sink because I know the order they go in the rack and my hands remember. I wash and he dries. Like all the other nights we used to do this together. His shoulder is next to mine and his elbow brushes my arm when he turns.
"Balcony?" he says.
"Yeah."
The railing is cool. November in Miami is not summer but the air still carries salt and weight. Wes leans on the railing with both forearms and I lean next to him. His hip is close to mine. Below us the ocean is dark and flat.
I watched him on the ice tonight. From the visitors' bench, through the glass, across sixty minutes of a game neither of us could acknowledge the other one existed in. He took a shift in the second period where he drove wide on the forecheck and committed to the lane before the passing option had opened. Two years ago he would have pulled up. Held position. Waited for the safe play. Tonight he drove through, and the puck went in, and the bench erupted, and I sat on the visitors' side and watched it happen.
He is playing the best hockey I have seen from him. He started playing it when I left for Atlanta.
His hands are on the railing now. The lines at the corners of his eyes are deeper.
"Wes," I say.
"Yeah?"
"You played a hell of a game tonight."
He is quiet for a second. "You beat us."
