Daniel answered on the fourth ring, breathing hard.
“I'm carrying something.”
“Put it down.”
“Can't. It's half in.”
Mara waited. She could hear somebody asking a question and Daniel answering from farther away. A metal edge scraped. He said something sharply, then apologized to whoever was beside him.
“Right,” he said into the phone. “What?”
Mara looked at the list on the table. His name was at the top. Beneath it she had written flowers, then crossed flowers out and put two small ones.
“About tomorrow. It's six. Food at six thirty.”
“I can manage six.”
“Elena isn't coming.”
The sounds behind him continued. His breathing had gone quiet.
“She told you?”
“Yes.”
“Right.”
Mara heard him walk somewhere, the sound changing as he passed through a door. When he spoke again the words were closer.
“What's she doing?”
“I don't know what she's doing all day. I'm taking the things over afterward. At nine.”
“The coat and that?”
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Yes.”
He was silent long enough for her to look at the screen and check the call was still there. His name shone above the little moving line.
“I thought we'd stay together after,” he said. “Have a proper evening.”
“We can have dinner. I'll be there for dinner.”
“Then go to her.”
“I said I'd bring her things.”
“Couldn't you do it Sunday?”
Mara looked toward the bag by the door. She'd put a clean towel around the book so the cover wouldn't catch against the coat buttons.
“I could,” she said. “We arranged Saturday. I want to go when we arranged.”
“Okay.”
It was not an okay she could work with. She waited.
“I won't be bringing her back,” she said.
“Did I ask you to?”
“No. I need to say it.”
He let out a breath. Somewhere behind him a man called his name.
“One minute,” Daniel called back. To Mara he said, “You keep telling me things I haven't asked. Then I sound like—”
He stopped. She let him.
“I want to see you,” he said. “My son. Your girl. Have something good happen without being told what it means for my marriage. Is that so terrible?”
“No.”
“You said we'd do that.”
“I remember.”
“You still mean it?”
Mara picked up the list and folded it in half, putting the words she had written out of sight.
“It's for the people at work. I want us to have a good evening. I'm not planning a speech about you and Elena.”
“Then don't make it that. Don't make me sit there while everybody explains her to me.”
She could hear the man call again. Daniel didn't answer him. He was waiting for her.
“We can have a few hours without that,” she said. “I promise.”
He breathed out. “All right. Six.”
“Six.”
The other man said something she couldn't hear. Daniel answered with an apology. He came back to her once more, quieter.
“Do I need to bring anything?”
“No.”
“I'm bringing bread. People always get that wrong.”
She smiled, though he couldn't see it. “Then bring bread.”
He said goodbye and went back to the thing he was fitting into somebody's house. Mara kept the phone in her hand until the screen went dark.
At the hotel the back room had been opened to air it. Two windows stood on their catches, letting the cold in without any of the stale carpet smell out. Doreen was stacking spare chairs against one wall. She had come before her shift to make sure Jules's sister would not be given a stool somebody had to sit sideways on.
“That one rocks,” she told Mara, pointing at a chair near the door.
“They all rock.”
“That one thinks it's music.”
Mara tested it. It was bad. She carried it into the storage room and found another. When she came back Doreen had set three tables at an angle, leaving a broad passage through the middle.
“Children,” she said. “If they're going to run, let them see what they're hitting.”
Mara helped her move the fourth table. A leg caught in the carpet and they had to lift, both holding their breath until it came free. They stood back. There was room for people to pass, room for food at the side and nowhere anybody could be stuck beneath a speech unless they chose to be.
Simon came to count the places. Mara gave him the new number, including Iris and Nell, Jo's two children and the plate to go home for Calvin. Elena was not on it. Simon glanced at the line she'd crossed out and said she'd called him. He left it at that.
“Leo might only be here for a while,” Mara said.
“We'll feed him while he is.”
They looked at the room together. It was not beautiful. There were little hooks high on the walls where someone had once hung decorations that nobody liked enough to replace. The carpet had a mark shaped like a country Mara couldn't name. Through the door she could see Sonia moving a cart toward the elevator, a new woman in the old work trousers, her hair tied back with a blue band.
“You coming tomorrow?” Mara called.
Sonia turned. “Is that all right?”
“Of course.”
“I wasn't here for most of it.”
“You're here for the next bit. Come and eat.”
She smiled and said she would. Doreen watched her go, then came back into the room and began moving the chairs so there would be another place without one person looking like an addition.
Mara took out the list. She put Sonia beside Doreen, left room for Jules's sister and gave Jo the end of the table nearest the door. There were three arrows on the page now, one running through Simon's name. She put the pen away.
At the store she bought two small bunches of flowers, pale yellow because the dark red ones looked too much like an announcement. The woman at the checkout wrapped them separately. Mara asked her not to, then changed her mind when she saw the stems were wet.
“Keep them like that,” she said. “Sorry.”
The woman put them into the bag without needing the rest of the decision. Mara was grateful. She went back for a packet of napkins because the ones in the room had a logo for an event that hadn't happened for four years.
On the way home Iris called to ask if there was anything they could bring. Mara said just themselves, then remembered the napkins and told her fruit, if she wanted. Iris said Nell had already bought something sweet because she didn't trust a goodbye without dessert.
“Good,” Mara said. “Bring that.”
“You sound tired.”
“I'm not.”
“Okay.”
Mara waited for a question. Iris asked what shoes she was wearing. The answer made them both laugh. When they hung up, Mara stood outside her apartment holding the flowers, the plastic handles pressing into the same place where the couch strap had been.
She let herself in and put the flowers in water. One bunch leaned left; she turned the vase and it leaned right. She left it. The room would have two vases of something alive, the food would come out on time, Jules's sister would have a chair. It was possible to get those things right.
Daniel sent a message just before six. Leo says your repair's better than mine. Shirt looks good. Thanks.
Mara read it twice. She wrote that he was welcome, then added Don't eat first tomorrow. There'll be plenty.
He replied that he would try to survive until then.
She smiled and put the phone on the table beside the bag for Elena.