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She'd brought a casserole in the blue dish she always brought casseroles in, and she set it on the stovetop and watched him slide the junk drawer shut - the one with the expired coupons and the tape measure - with that small nod, the chin dropping once like a period. He opened the drawer under the phone next - the one with the takeout menus, ran two fingers along the bottom, closed it the same way. The car keys were on the hook by the door, where they'd been since she arrived, where they always were - the little orange foam float he'd put on the ring after the lake scare still dangling there in plain sight. She picked up a dish towel and folded it into thirds and set it back down without drying anything.
He sat down and wrote LATHE in the boxes without looking at the clue, the letters firm and even, the way his hands used to true a piece of walnut on the shop floor. Then he found fourteen across and his pencil hovered, the tip a half-inch above the page, not quite touching. The fly landed on the casino mug and cleaned its face with its front legs - and the coffee beneath it went from steam to nothing. He didn't move the pencil down.
She set the paper next to the sugar bowl, folded once, the red circle bleeding through from the other side so it showed even closed, a small pink bruise on the white. He picked it up by the corner the way he'd pick up a hardware receipt, read it front and back - smoothed the fold with his thumb. The fly moved to the windowsill. He set the paper down and looked at her across the casserole dish and said, "What'd you bring that for?
He reached into the left pocket of the coat draped over the chair and the keys were there, the orange float compressed and warm from sitting against the lining all morning. He brought them out and set them on the table beside the open crossword book without looking at either one. The pencil, resting loose across thirty-four across, rolled a slow half-inch toward the edge and stopped. He closed his fist around the keys and left it there on the tablecloth - not moving toward the door.
She caught the pencil between two fingers and set it back in the spine, eraser toward the window. She sat down in the chair across from him, the one with the cracked vinyl she'd been meaning to mention for three years. The casserole dish ticked once between them. He turned the orange float over in his closed fist, the foam giving slightly, and she watched the sugar bowl instead.
He got up and took the casserole off the stovetop and put it in the refrigerator without serving any of it - sliding it onto the second shelf beside a jar of bread-and-butter pickles and a lemon going soft at one end. She heard the seal close. He came back to the table and picked up the pencil and looked at thirty-four across again, and she watched his mouth form the M, just the M, like a man starting a word in a language he used to speak fluently, the lips together and then not quite opening for what came next.
She got up and took two plates from the cabinet above the sink - his with the chip on the rim - hers with the blue stripe - and set them on the counter, then stood there with her hands flat on the edge of the tile looking at the closed refrigerator door. He watched her from the table. After a moment she put the plates back, the chipped one on top, and sat down again and straightened the salt shaker, which hadn't been crooked. He wrote *Mont* again in the margin - in the same careful letters, just below where he'd already written it.
The phone on the wall rang once and he stood up and answered it before the second ring, the receiver fitting his palm the way it had for forty years, and he said his own name into it the way you answer a business line. She heard him say it again, quieter - like a question this time, and then he held the receiver out toward her without covering the mouthpiece, the cord swinging once, and said, "It's for somebody. " She took it. Her sister's voice came through asking how the visit was going - and she turned to face the window above the sink so he wouldn't see her close her eyes.
She told her sister fine, it was going fine, and when she turned back he had the crossword book closed and was holding it in both hands like something he'd found in a box, reading the cover - *Dell Crossword Puzzles, Volume 47* - the way you read the spine of a book that belongs to someone else. He set it down and smoothed the cover once with his palm - a long slow stroke from the spiral binding to the edge, and then he looked at the refrigerator and said, "Did somebody bring food? " The orange float sat on the tablecloth where he'd left it, the keys fanned out around it, and she watched him look past them at the closed refrigerator door - his hand still resting flat on the crossword book, waiting for her answer.
She said yes, somebody brought food, and he nodded the way he nodded at weather reports, processing and releasing - and then he pulled the crossword book back toward him and opened it to a clean page near the back - not thirty-four across, not any across - and wrote the word CASSEROLE in the margin in the same firm letters he'd used for LATHE, underlining it once, a man making a note he intended to keep. The pencil left a small dent in the page below from the pressure. She watched him cap an imaginary pen, the thumb and two fingers closing on nothing - and set the nothing down beside the sugar bowl with a small decisive click of his knuckles on the tablecloth. Outside the window the light had gone the color of the lemon in the refrigerator, and she didn't look at the clock.
