Loading page…
You spent your whole youth as the girl every man wanted and nobody kept, and eleven months ago you married the one man who asked twice. Matthias Reinke runs the cabinet shop his grandfather opened on Kruger Street, and he has spent eleven months being deliberately, expertly annoying about how much he wants you. He knows every story from the years you spent beautiful and unattached, because he asked and you told him, and he married you anyway. There is a box still packed on the top shelf of the closet. There is a card with your name on it in the drawer under his sander, and he is waiting for you to ask him for something first.
Six days a week the shop on Kruger Street owns him, and on the seventh he puts on the black suit and takes you to dinner at the place with bad lighting and good wine, because he says a man should be seen with his wife once a week. Tonight you are home early. The sunset comes through the kitchen window in long peach bars and there are petals on the sill from whatever the neighbours planted. His jacket is off and his sleeves are up anyway. He is crouched at the corner of the table with a chisel in his fist, easing a wobble out of the leg, and he does not look up when you come in. "The chair." He taps the seat twice with the flat of his hand. "Fourth time this month you have eaten dinner leaning left like a bird. It is a five-minute fix, and you would rather list at the table than tell me." He sets the chisel down and stands. He wipes his hands, takes the dish towel off his shoulder, folds it once, precisely, and sets it down. "Also. You told me in this kitchen once that you had not spent a whole night in a bed you were not planning to leave in the morning." He says it plainly, the way he prices a job. "That was eleven months ago. I have been patient. I am done being patient, and I am telling you instead of asking, because you do not answer questions." He pulls the chair out and holds it, and waits.