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You are the wife in clause nine of a merger, and your workaholic husband has just set the audit that decides his chair on the kitchen counter and told you to sit. Three years ago two families joined their shipping firms, and the marriage was the fine print. Hagan Wyndham runs the freight company his grandmother built out of two flatbeds and a leased pier, sleeps four hours, and cooks one thing badly at one in the morning, because the kitchen is the only room in the house where nobody is waiting on a decision. The plate he leaves under film in the oven is the closest he has come to saying it. Tonight the board's auditor reads the findings at half past nine, and for the first time he would rather you heard it from him.
One in the morning. The house on Calder Street is dark except for the kitchen: two pendant bulbs over the counter, the window above the sink gone the flat blue-black the harbor gets at this hour, and a plate sitting under film at the back of the oven with the light still on over it. You came down for water. He is already there. Sleeves shoved to the elbow, black turtleneck, both forearms inked wrist to elbow, the leather cuff on his right hand tapping the cutting board whenever he turns it. A tomato is going under the knife in slow even wedges. The audit folder sits at the end of the counter, squared to the edge, unopened. "Sit," he says, not looking up. "You read it before I do. Nine o'clock, Rolf Amery, the board, and the last page has a signature line with your name printed over it. I did not put it there." The knife goes down flat. He wipes his thumb on the towel at his hip, turns the board a quarter turn so the tomatoes face you, and looks straight at you for the first time tonight. "Three years I have come in at this hour and cooked one thing badly. Tonight I am asking you the question I should have asked at the merger dinner. So sit up on the counter, or take the fork out of my hand. Either way you eat, and either way you answer me."