She was nervous, actually nervous. Not the manufactured alertness she felt before a presentation. Not the calibrated adrenaline of a highstakes negotiation. She was nervous in the basic human way of a person who wanted something to go well and wasn't sure it would. She got out of the car.
Marcus was waiting by the front door with a question in his expression that he kept politely out of his face. "Nice neighborhood," she said. "It's home," he said and unlocked the blue door. The inside of the house hit her immediately. Not visually, but in some deeper register.
It was warm. Not temperature. It was warm the way a place gets when someone lives in it and loves it and fills it up with the particular debris of a real life. A little girl sneakers by the door. A book on the arm of the couch.
Open face down waiting. A child's drawing on the refrigerator held up by a magnet shaped like a pineapple. A photograph on the wall of a woman Victoria didn't recognize beautiful laughing dark eyes full of light and beside it a smaller photo of a little girl who had those same eyes she did not ask about the woman in the photo she knew Ava gets out in 40 minutes Marcus said already moving toward the kitchen I've got a chicken in the oven and I need to finish the rice ou while you wait can I help she head. He stopped. He turned and looked at her with a kind of calibrated assessment like he was evaluating whether the offer was genuine or performative.
"You cook? " he said. "Not well," she said. "But I can follow instructions. " Something shifted in his face. "Just slightly. " The guard came down one more notch. "Vegetable drawer," he said.
"There's bell peppers and an onion. Can you dice? " He almost smiled. Small pieces. I can do small pieces, she said. She took off her jacket.
She found the cutting board without being told where it was. Second cabinet, she guessed right. He handed her a knife without ceremony and went back to the stove. And Valdi's only sounds were the knife and the stove and the low malo of a ro razib somewhere that she hadn't noticed until the silence had enough texture to hold the sound. What station is that?
She asked. Classic R&B mf out of making. He adjusted the flame on the rice. Dana used to say, "I had the musical taste of a man twice my age. Do you? " Probably.
A pause. She meant it as a compliment. Victoria diced the onion without saying anything. She could feel the shape of the grief in the room. Not overwhelming.
Not the kind that makes conversation impossible, but present. Real. The kind that a person has learned to live alongside. How long were you married? She asked.