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“Good,” Felix said. “Then you can stop by the bakery—the Polish place on Milwaukee. I’ve already ordered. Somebody needs to pick it up Christmas Eve morning because once I start cooking I don’t leave the kitchen.”

“I’ll get it.”

Waiting in line at the bakery was the best part. Half the neighborhood came in good coats with pajamas showing underneath, and the women behind the counter shouted numbers in two languages.

“And next time you make my chicken,” Felix said, “send me a picture.”

I showed him one I already had. In it, Trier’s hand held a spoon of lemon juice over the pan with great concentration.

Felix enlarged it. “That’s a soup spoon.”

“Yes, but he insisted it held exactly one tablespoon.”

***

Gwen called later that night. Water sloshed on her end. She washed dishes while she talked on the phone without apology.

“Thursday,” she said. “Dinner at five fifteen, not five thirty. Last year they gave our table away at five thirty-two. Come in through the side door on Adams.”

On Wednesday Trier had a gap between practice and video, and we met at a café near the Performance Center that served soup in bread bowls. Someone had drawn a lopsided tree in the steam on the front window. Through the clear glass, the river lay flat and gray, ice forming along the far bank. Trier set my coffee in front of me with the milk already in.

My phone buzzed. Gwen wanted to know whether she needed one or two bags of cough drops.

“The woman who medicates strangers,” Trier said. “Does anybody refuse?”

“The first time she brought loose ones, and a man told her they were unsanitary. The next year she brought individually wrapped honey-lemon and offered him the first one.”

He wrapped both hands around his cup. “These concerts you go to—do you know the music beforehand?”

“Some of it. I used to exchange tickets if I didn’t recognize anything on the program. Then I started going anyway. Some of those have been my favorite nights.”

Trier was listening closely. I thought about him sitting beside me some evening during a spring concert. He’d probably enjoy a strong rhythm, or a concerto where he could watch the soloist and orchestra create a musical conversation. I opened the symphony app.

Trier leaned over. “What’s that one? March.”

“Beethoven’s Seventh.”

“What’s it like?”

The concert was on a Friday, and I hadn’t promised the second ticket to anyone. I could have asked him immediately.

Instead, I played him the second movement through the phone. One wind chord, then the low strings, very quiet, in a rhythm that never changed: long, short-short, long, long. Trier leaned in. More instruments entered, and right when it seemed to be getting somewhere, it stopped.

“Why stop it there?”

“It’s a thirty-second preview.”

“It was just getting started.”

“They want to create drama.”

I found the full recording and started it a little earlier so he’d hear the lead-in. The rhythm underneath never let go. Everything else got louder and more crowded above it.

“Some people hear a funeral march,” I said. “I hear somebody refusing to stop.”

He listened a while longer. “It’s a forecheck,” he said. “Same pressure every shift until the other team breaks.”

Under the table, his knee rested against mine. When the violins finally took the melody, he tipped his head.