Six weeks later, Elena let a class go five minutes early because nobody could stop looking at the rain.
It struck the studio windows so loudly the quieter music disappeared beneath it. She had changed the track twice, shouted a count, then given up and made them dance without music. For a little while that worked. Then one woman stopped to watch a drain overflow in the street, and the rest followed her to the window.
“We're clearly finished,” Elena said. “Go before I think of something strenuous.”
They laughed and began collecting shoes. A pupil returned a scarf Elena had forgotten lending her. Elena remembered the lending: a cold evening in February, the woman arriving without a coat because she was furious with someone and had stormed out. She remembered many things. They had begun to stop arriving as proofs that she still could.
She locked the studio, took a bus and walked the last two streets under an umbrella whose bent rib dripped onto her shoulder. The café stood at the corner of Marsh Street, with yellow tiles visible through its steamed window. She had looked at its address on her phone four times that morning. Nobody had asked her to come.
Inside, Sana was arguing with a customer about whether a drink still counted as coffee if it contained four other things. She stopped when Elena closed the door.
“Hello,” she said.
Elena folded the umbrella. “Hello.”
Sana looked toward the kitchen. She did not call Miles. “Take whichever table you like. Except that one. It wobbles, and he's pretending it doesn't.”
Elena chose the wobbling table. Sana's mouth twitched. She went behind the counter and called an order into the kitchen in her ordinary voice.
Miles came out carrying a plate in his left hand.
He was wearing the old university sweatshirt. Its letters had faded further in washing. The hole near the shoulder was repaired with a patch of darker blue cloth, roughly stitched. His right hand was supported by a splint. He held it close to his body while setting the plate down for another customer.
Then he saw Elena.
For a moment he looked almost pleased. The expression shut before she could answer it. He came to her table slowly, moving around a chair somebody had left in the aisle.
“You found us,” he said.
“The bus driver helped.”
“Did he know what he was doing?”
“More than I did.”
Miles glanced at her umbrella, dripping beside the chair. “You could have waited for a dry day.”
“I'd been doing that.”
He looked at her again. She could see he was deciding what he wanted her presence to mean. She had been doing the same thing on the bus and had reached no conclusion she trusted.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Yes. Black.”
“Food?”
“Not yet.”
He nodded and went behind the counter. Sana handed him a cup, an enormous white one with a handle that looked too small for it. He stared at it, then at her. She stared back until he took it.
Elena watched him fill it. He moved differently from the man she remembered on the shore. That man had hardly moved at all. This one knew where everything stood but had to plan how to reach it. He caught a drawer with his right wrist, could not pull it, and used the other hand instead. His jaw tightened.
When he brought the coffee, she said, “That's a remarkable cup.”
“We ordered ordinary ones. These arrived. Sana says we may as well look generous.”
“You do.”
“Wait until you see the bill.”
She smiled. He stayed beside the table with one hand on the back of the empty chair.
“Would you sit?” she asked.
He looked toward the counter. There were customers, but Sana had the next order and did not look up. Miles sat.
For a while Elena drank coffee. It was good, strong without bitterness. She had learned many things about him since the fire: his age, the café, Eva, Daniel's payment, the events of the night. Miles had told her on the phone, sometimes answering the same question twice because she wanted to be certain she understood. The facts did not bring her back inside the house.
She had put Daniel's photographs away for a week, then taken them out again. The man in them seemed kind, impatient, amusing, beloved by a younger version of herself. She could look at his hand on her waist and know there had once been pleasure there. She could not feel it. Sometimes the absence made her furious. Sometimes she felt guilty for eating breakfast happily before she remembered it.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, looking at Miles's hand.
“Yes.”
“All the time?”
“Less. Not much less.” He shifted in the chair. “I can do more with it than I could last week. Then I do too much and can't do anything for the rest of the day.”
“That sounds like you.”
He looked at her.
She put the cup down. “Sorry. I don't know what sounds like you.”
His good hand moved over the tabletop. “You can find out.” He paused. “If that's why you're here.”
She could hear plates being stacked, a chair scraping, rain against the front window. “Partly.”
“And the other part?”
“I keep thinking there's something I should say.”
He leaned back. “You don't have to try every time we speak.”
“I know what I did.”
“You know someone told you.”
She did not argue. She looked at the patch on his shoulder.
“Did I give you that sweatshirt?”
“No. Daniel did.”
“You told me. I meant after the fire.”
“Sana washed it. I said throw it out. Then I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
He touched the repaired shoulder with his left fingers. “I wore it a long time.”
She nodded. It was an old sweatshirt to her, repaired badly and worn by a man she was trying to know. He saw her looking at the red seam and did not tell her what she ought to feel about it.
A boy at the next table knocked his spoon to the floor. He crawled after it, striking his head on the table's underside. His father bent down too, and between them they nearly tipped a tray of cups. Elena caught its edge.
“Stay still,” she told the boy. “Move your head first. Slowly.”
He did, solemnly. Then he backed out from beneath the table as though emerging from an important tunnel. Elena handed the tray to his father. When she sat again, Miles was laughing.
“You're good at that,” he said.
“I spend a lot of time asking people where their heads are.”
“Do they know?”
“Usually after they hit something.”
He laughed again, and she liked his face. She had liked it when he first saw her, before he closed it. This was something she could feel now without asking anybody to return it to her.
Sana called his name. Miles stood, reaching automatically toward a chair with his injured hand. He stopped himself and used the other. Elena moved her cup so he could pass, then caught the wobbling table with her knee before it rocked into him.
“I'm not falling,” he snapped.
She took her knee away. “I was protecting the coffee.”
He stared at her, then looked down at the cup. “Right.”
He went to the counter. She heard him ask Sana something too quietly to catch. A minute later he came back with a folded piece of card and bent to put it beneath the table leg. He had to do it with his left hand, awkwardly, and she looked toward the window while he worked.
“I've been meaning to fix that,” he said, standing up.
“It was waiting for me.”
“Apparently.” He rested his hand on the chair. “I shouldn't have snapped.”
“You can sometimes.”
“Don't be generous about it. I'll get lazy.”
She smiled. He did not smile back immediately, but he stayed beside the table long enough for the moment to settle. Then another customer called, and he went to serve them.
Elena finished her coffee. The rain was easing. Through a clear strip in the window she could see people crossing the road, shoulders hunched, one woman holding a newspaper over her hair. The bus home would come in ten minutes. There was another after that.
She lifted a hand when Miles looked her way.
“What's the soup?”
“Leek and potato.”
“I'll have some.”
“Bread?”
“Yes.”
He went into the kitchen. Elena hung her wet umbrella from the back of the empty chair and moved her hands from the table while Sana set down a spoon.