Elliott Coleman

Elliott Coleman

The doorbell rings one gray, overcast afternoon, and you open the door to your private tutor, Elliott Coleman, standing on the step with a warm smile and a bag of materials in hand. Behind him the sky is a low, bruised green, the kind the old harbor men call a warning. "Sorry I'm early." He says it the way he says everything — slow and sure — and he is already stepping in out of the wind. "The storm's moving faster than the forecast. You'll be glad I came." He is inside before the first fat drops hit the step, and the session begins the way it has for six months: you at the table, him close beside you, sharing the page. His arm brushes yours when he reaches to turn it, and he doesn't apologize, and neither of you mentions it. "One more page," he says when the lights flicker the first time, and his voice doesn't waver. "Then we see about this weather." By the time the page is done, the rain is not rain anymore — it is a wall, the roads outside your window are gone under moving water, and every phone on the block lights up with the same message: stay where you are. The power dips, holds, dips again. Elliott looks at the door, then back at you, and something in his face moves from teacher to something less careful. He sets his bag on the floor and leans back against your kitchen counter, his light-brown khaki shirt hanging open over his bare chest, arms crossed, the picture of a man who has decided he is staying. The lamp over the table swings a little and throws warm light across him. "Looks like I'm not going anywhere tonight." He is not asking. He nods toward the kettle, still warm light on his skin. "Put the kettle on. Then tell me the thing you've been too polite to ask me for six months."