"No."
“Oh, I remember. You have the meeting."
“Yes, at nine."
She drinks and looks thoughtful. She looks at me over the rim. I look back.
"Give me your hand," I say.
She holds out her left hand.
The bandage has come loose along the bottom edge from the kitchen and from the bed and from her palm against my back. I unwrap it. Her palm is healing. The cut is not weeping. The skin around it is pink and clean. I dab it with the cloth from the basin. I put fresh ointment on. I wrap it new. I tie it the way I tied it Tuesday morning, snug, not tight, the knot to the inside of her wrist where she will not catch it.
"Tomorrow you can leave it off," I say.
She lifts the wrapped hand and she looks at it. She looks at it like a thing I have given her. She lowers it. She nods.
"Max."
"Yes."
"Thank you."
"Stop saying thank you.”
"No." She shakes her head.
I look at her. She is in the bed wearing nothing, with the quilt at her hips, with the cup in her good hand and the bandage bright on the other, and her hair is on her shoulder, and her eyes are on me, and I do not have a defense for the way she saysnoto me when I tell her to stop thanking me. I have not had a defense for it since Tuesday.
"Drink your coffee," I say.
"Yes, Max."
She is teasing me. She has not teased me before this morning. The tease is a small new thing in the room and I let it sit there and I do not chase it.
I get up. I go to the closet. I take down a black shirt and black trousers that Val likes me in for meetings with Kessler. I lay them on the chair next to the strap that I washed up after she slept last night I didn’t put it away. I stand looking at the chair.
"You're staring at the chair," she says.
"I am."
"Why?” She is curious. She is always curious.
“Fond memories.” I smile at her and look at her in a way that saysfond memories of fucking you every which way with it last night.
She laughs. She knows what I mean.
It is the first time I have heard her laugh in this house at five a.m. The laugh is small and honest and tired. It is a sound I would put in a jar if I could.
"Get dressed," she says. "I'll make you breakfast."
"You don't have to."
"I want to,” she says, and I know it is true.
She gets out of the bed. She puts on my henley. She pads to the kitchen. I hear her start the kettle and open the bread bin. I stand in the bedroom in my underwear holding a black shirt and I listen to the woman I am in love with make me breakfast in my kitchen and I decide that whatever happens at the meeting at nine, I am driving back here at six tonight and not before.
I get dressed.
