Before He Had Anything

Owen took the coat from the server and laid it behind Clara.

"You're needed downstairs," he told the woman.

She looked from him to Damian.

"I thought—"

"I know. Go on."

After she left, he asked Clara whether she wanted tea or coffee.

"Neither. I'll go soon."

"Milk," Damian said from the table.

Clara turned back to her phone.

"You're very generous with other people's decisions."

Vince bent over his cards to hide his face.

Damian lost the next hand.

Then the next.

Clara didn't notice. The file on her phone described a failing timber joint in a building she had only seen in photographs. She enlarged the image, read the same paragraph twice, and felt her eyes closing.

She only meant to rest her head for a moment.

***

Owen stood beside the sofa.

"Well," he said quietly. "Shall I carry her?"

Damian put down his cards.

Nobody at the table volunteered an opinion.

He crossed the room and lifted Clara with more care than his expression suggested. She made a sleepy sound and settled against his chest without opening her eyes.

That was worse than if she had argued.

He sat, tucked the coat around her, and found her cold foot beneath the hem.

"What happened to her shoes?" he asked Vince.

Vince explained.

Damian stared at him.

"She let her take them?"

"She didn't exactly let her."

Clara shifted. Her hand caught the front of his shirt.

He looked down.

"Very fierce with me, aren't you?" he murmured. "Everybody else walks out wearing your clothes."

She opened one eye.

"You're loud."

"You married me."

"A terrible lapse."

He smiled despite himself.

The cigarette between his fingers had burned low. When he moved his hand away, Clara reached toward the small light without properly waking.

He caught her wrist before she touched it.

"Don't."

That woke her.

She looked at the cigarette, then at him.

"Why are you smoking over my head?"

He crushed it in the ashtray.

"Better?"

"You smell dreadful."

"You smell like my coat."

"Then your coat's dreadful too."

He bent and kissed her forehead.

"I'll stop."

She looked at him.

"Smoking?"

"That's what we're discussing, isn't it?"

"You say things very easily."

"Hit me if I don't."

Her eyebrows rose.

"Don't look so enthusiastic."

She settled back against him, hiding a smile against his shirt.

Vince went to buy socks.

***

Damian carried her to the club office because he still had people to see.

On the way, he covered her face with his coat, partly against the cigarette smoke and partly because he didn't want every man they passed studying his wife.

She objected from beneath the wool.

"I can walk."

"Your shoes are in someone else's house."

"I could use yours."

"You'd need both feet in one."

The office door closed behind them.

He set her on a narrow cot beside the desk and knelt to put the socks on her.

She watched his head bent over her foot.

His hands looked much too large for the task. He gathered the fabric carefully so her toes wouldn't catch.

"You don't have to do that."

"Apparently somebody does."

She looked around.

White walls. Metal cabinets. Three desks. Three cots, each half hidden beneath a desk edge. A window that didn't quite close.

"You sleep here?"

"Sometimes."

"During the argument?"

He pulled the second sock up.

"What argument?"

She looked at him.

He met her eyes for a second, then looked away.

"It's fine."

The blanket on the cot was thin. She touched its worn edge.

"You could have stayed at the hotel."

"Didn't feel like it."

He stood.

She caught his wrist.

"Damian."

He waited.

The words she wanted were unfamiliar. I'm sorry felt too simple. Come home felt as though it conceded a disagreement they hadn't resolved.

"These are very nice socks," she said.

He looked at her for a moment.

Then he laughed softly.

"I'll tell Vince. He picked them."

***

Later, when he had gone to speak to his managers, Vince brought in snacks and a tablet.

He plugged in an electric heater and positioned it near the cot.

"Don't put the blanket over it."

"I'm not six."

"Boss said—"

"I know. The boss says many things."

Vince grinned.

She opened a bag of chips and offered it.

He sat on the edge of his own cot.

"This one's yours?"

"Yes. Owen's over there."

"You all sleep here?"

"When we need to."

"Why don't you buy better beds?"

He looked around as though the thought had never occurred to him.

"These fold up."

Clara pressed her lips together.

"A considerable advantage."

"We used to sleep in trucks. This is good."

She glanced at him.

He kept eating chips.

"Once I fell off a loading platform," he said. "Broke enough things to be no use for weeks. The contractor wanted me gone. No pay, no place in the crew cabin."

"What did you do?"

"Damian hid me where he was sleeping. Fed me. Gave me his coat."

He said it lightly, as if people did that every day.

"What did he wear?"

Vince shrugged.

"Said he didn't feel the cold."

Clara looked toward the door.

She could hear her husband's voice somewhere outside, amused and confident, a man accustomed to being obeyed.

"Did you believe him?"

"No."

Vince reached for another chip.

"That's why I'm still here."

***

Damian returned near midnight to find Clara awake and the heater glowing beside her.

"Ready?"

She nodded.

He sat to pull on his shoes, and she touched the cuff of his shirt.

"Vince told me about the loading platform."

He gave her an annoyed look.

"He talks too much."

"Probably."

She waited.

Damian rubbed his thumb over an old scar on his hand.

"We all had bad years."

"Before Vince?"

"Before everybody."

He leaned back against the desk.

"There was a flood where I grew up. I was nine. Lost the house. Lost the family."

"We had one coat that lasted through half the children," he said. "Blue. By the time it reached me, there were more patches than coat."

Clara brushed her fingers over his sleeve.

"Was it warm?"

"Warm enough if you kept moving."

He smiled faintly.

"My sister could sew anything. Made the patches look like somebody had meant them. I used to complain if she found a different color. Wanted it all to match."

"Did she do it?"

"Usually. Called me an ungrateful little bastard while she worked."

Clara laughed once, softly.

His face eased at the sound. He was remembering a living girl with a needle, not an absence. Clara could see the difference.

"I wish I'd met her," she said.

He rubbed the edge of the desk with his thumb.

"She'd have liked you. Told me I was punching above my weight."

"You are."

"There it is."

He looked down, smiling, then his hand grew still. The office seemed quieter around them.

"That winter was cold," he said. "The one before the water. I remember thinking the worst part would be over when spring came."

Clara looked at him.

"All of them?"

He nodded once.

"I held on to a tree. Neighbors found me when the water went down. After that, people fed me. I got bigger. Started working."

There was nothing in his voice asking to be pitied.

That made it harder.

She slid off the cot and stood between his knees.

He looked up, surprised.

She put her arms around him.

For a moment he didn't move.

Then his forehead came to rest against her shoulder.

"It's a long time ago," he said.

"I know."

His hands settled at her waist.

Outside, somebody laughed. A door opened, then shut again.

Clara held him a little tighter. He let her, his hands slowly relaxing against the back of her sweater.