The kittens had become cats. They had become regal, Alexandra said. They took the laundry baskets as their duchies, were spoiled with breakfast kippers. Sometimes, she called him from the office. She asked what So-So and Jill were thinking about.
“They want to know why we haven’t got them mobiles yet,” Jeremy told her, “conveniently forgetting they’ve not washed the dishes in ever.”
“This generation,” she said.
“A whole other species, you’d think.”
For a while, she’d talk about her work. He liked to listen to her take a whole place and make it fit in the grip of her hand, tell it in a sentence. Lately, she was researching a new internet scrapbook of sorts, Cathexis, and though it was still only for individuals, she said just he wait. She said just wait and nations would declare themselves in online patchwork, any brand would, and he was a little drunk with her clarity, her faith that there was clarity. We are past the Iraq fallout, the agrarian deal. We see consistent positives on innovation. You see Spain’s strategy in ’82, ’92. When there’s the thought to fall to one knee, it will be beneath the Galata Tower at sunset.
He’d had the thought.
And in time, he thought he was clearer too. He was clearer because he knew she ate meat but did not like to see the raw slop. He was clearer because he came to know she did not watch sports except horseback riding. She did not wear perfume. She wore scented lotion. He’d look at the nightstand and see her bottle. Together, they were becoming the routine of his longing.
So it was that in the routinization, he became fluent. The New One was whomever Genevieve Bailey was dating. Lyle Michaels was the journalist. So-So Jordan was So-So when she’d done something naughty with her claws. Jeremy understood the implication when Alexandra relayed that she was sure the wife must know her boss was playing snooker with the secretary.
“Come closer,” Alexandra said. And that translated too.
On weekends, he spent hours in the consult of texts. He made lists. He loved to walk to the store with his list and see below his her handwriting—crème fraiche, strawberry cake. He went to the butcher. He’d salt. Tenderize. While she read in the other room, he followed the procedures step-by-step. And when there were specks of herb on his forehead, she took to leaning in the doorway, one hand over her eyes, asking, so hopeful, so apple-bright, “Still gruesome in there?” until dinner was ready. After, they played poker, and she did not let him win unless she’d had a wretched week at work. She rarely had a wretched week at work. In this way, he managed to give her many chocolates.
One day, he tucked a note for her in a magazine: What does it feel like to make someone happy?
Don’t play stupid, she wrote in a cookbook. You know.