"The one by the sofa."
"That one's good." Then, "Slow start."
"I liked the slow start."
She nods. She eats.
I watch her eat.
I have never, in my life, watched a woman eat a meal alone at a table and felt what I am feeling watching it. I do not have a word for what I am feeling. I have never thought about a woman this way before. I have thought about women the way a woman thinks about other women in rooms full of women, which is always partly about measuring. This is not measuring. This is a thing without a word yet.
Her hands are broad. Her forearms are bare and strong. The scar is turned away from me but I know it is there, on the farside of her left arm. She eats with a fork in her right hand and no knife, cutting chicken against the plate with the edge of the fork, the way a woman who has eaten a lot of meals alone in a kitchen eats. Her jaw works. Her collarbone under the henley moves when she swallows. Her hair is damp and curls a little at her ear. I am watching the curl at her ear.
She is attractive. I find her attractive. I look at the table.
She looks up.
"You all right?”
"Yes."
"You sure?”
"Yes."
"Did something happen today at the cabin."
"No."
"You look like something happened."
"I looked for the truck keys."
She sets her fork down. Not hard. She sets it down and she puts both hands flat on the table and she looks at me.
"I took them," she says.
"Okay."
"I meant to tell you this morning. I didn't want to wake you."
"Okay."
"I took them because I didn't want you to feel like you had to decide what to do with your whole life at six in the morning with no breakfast and a driver's license that's in the rubble of a house in Redwater. I took them because if a reporter finds this cabin this week, I want to be the first person you talk to about what happens next. Not because I wanted you not to be able to leave."
"Okay."
"That's the truth."
"All right."
"You don't believe me?”
"I believe part of it."
She nods. "Fair."
She picks up her fork.
