The door under the stairs opened onto their first flat.
Elena could see the narrow kitchen, yellow cupboard doors, a window that looked directly into a brick wall. A birthday candle stood in a bowl of cherries on the table. It had been their first anniversary, not either of their birthdays, but Daniel had found nothing else in the shop and said one year deserved one candle.
Their flat had been three hours from this lake. Elena stood in the hall of the rental house with its little toilet door open and could smell the flat's bad drain.
“That's where we lived,” she said.
Miles looked past her. “It's smaller than this kitchen.”
“Much.”
She stepped inside. He followed and stopped beside the old gas cooker. The ceiling above it had a patch of damp, and the tap leaked into a mug Daniel had put beneath it because he claimed the different sound reminded him to fix it. He had not fixed it.
There were cherries in chocolate on a plate, ugly little lumps with stems. Elena picked one up. Daniel had cooked them for her. He called it cooking; she told him that melting something and putting something else into it was assembly.
“You ate twelve,” he had answered.
“They were very small.”
His voice came from beside the cooker. Elena looked toward it and saw a younger Daniel, barefoot, wearing a shirt open at the throat. He was not quite solid. She could see the edge of the cupboard through his shoulder. He had chocolate on the back of his wrist and was trying to lick it without turning his elbow far enough.
A younger Elena stood at the table, tying her hair up. Her dress was green. She had bought it for a dinner they could not afford, and then Daniel had burnt the chicken, so they had eaten cherries in the kitchen instead. They were still hungry. She remembered frying two eggs at midnight and eating hers on bread over the sink, laughing because the yolk ran down her hand.
Here in the room she could feel the dress against her legs. She looked down and found her wool trousers unchanged. The two bodies did not join. The remembered woman laughed while present Elena stood a few feet away, holding a cold chocolate cherry.
Daniel went to the younger woman. He touched the knot of her hair, loosened it deliberately and waited for her protest. She slapped his hand away. He caught it and kissed the chocolate from her thumb.
Elena felt the kiss. She pressed her own thumb against her lips.
“It's orange,” she told Miles. “In the chocolate. He put zest in it. He said it made them taste expensive.”
Miles picked up a cherry and bit it carefully. Juice dripped onto his fingers. “It does.”
“He stole a whole orange from the shop downstairs because the man wouldn't sell him one on its own. I told him to take it back. He went down and paid for six, then left five on the counter out of spite.”
Miles smiled. “I might have done that.”
“Yes. I think you might.”
The young Daniel turned a radio on. It was an ugly little radio with a split plastic handle. They kept it because they could not agree on a replacement. He held out his clean hand to the younger Elena.
“I haven't got space,” she said.
“Then be a smaller dancer.”
They moved between table and cooker, bumping the cupboard every second turn. Daniel's feet were wrong. He knew it and did not care. He watched her face instead, and she corrected him without stopping. Present Elena found herself moving one foot back to make room for a partner who was not holding her.
Miles stood against the doorway. He had stopped eating. She saw something pass across his face, a hurt she knew too well to ask about yet.
The tap stopped dripping.
Young Daniel looked toward the window. His shoulder became solid, then translucent again. Beyond the brick wall, lake water rose to the sill.
“We should go,” Miles said.
Elena watched the two young people dance one more turn. Her younger self had taken off the left shoe because its heel kept catching on a broken tile. Daniel made a terrible joke about marrying a shorter woman and got exactly the laugh he wanted.
The birthday candle bent in a warm draft. Its flame touched the edge of a paper napkin. Elena lifted the napkin, blew the little flame out and stared at the blackened corner.
“It burns,” she said.
Miles looked at her. “Yes.”
“It's real enough to burn.”
She put the napkin back by the candle. The young couple went on dancing. Their shadows crossed the damp ceiling, overlapping with her own.
Elena had been afraid all evening. Now the fear moved into anger so quickly she could hardly distinguish them. This place had waited while she came year after year with her flowers. It had let her mourn a drowned man without showing her what took him. It had opened her life like a cupboard and set it out for a stranger.
She took the candle and held its flame to the hanging kitchen curtain.
“Elena.” Miles moved toward her.
“Don't.”
The cloth blackened, then lit. For a second it seemed impossible that such a small flame could alter this room. Then the light climbed, and young Daniel stopped dancing.
He turned toward her. His face was frightened. He had never looked at the present woman before.
Elena dropped the candle. Miles caught her arm and pulled her toward the hall. She tried to take the plate of cherries with her, a ridiculous impulse, and knocked it off the table. The plate broke. The radio shrieked and fell silent.
They got through the doorway while smoke filled the narrow kitchen. Miles shut the door. From the ordinary kitchen he brought the fire extinguisher the rental company kept beside the lake door. By the time he returned, smoke had stopped coming beneath the toilet door.
He opened it a little.
Inside was the tiny downstairs toilet, dry and empty. Its heater glowed red. There was a black scorch mark on the wall, no bigger than a hand. It was fading while they watched.
“You could have burnt us with it,” Miles said.
Elena looked at him. His mouth was trembling with anger. He set down the extinguisher and turned away.
“I'm sorry.”
“Don't do it without telling me.”
She leaned against the wall. She could still taste chocolate. Her stomach hurt with hunger despite the toast. The room was gone, and the house had not released them. The lake door rattled again.
After a while Miles picked up the tea mugs they had left on the kitchen table. He looked at one, put it down and said, “I would have bought all six oranges too. Did you get the rest?”
Elena frowned. “What oranges?”
“The ones from downstairs. Did he leave them on the counter?”
She waited for the picture to return. It had been so clear a few minutes earlier: a kitchen, a radio, a joke. She could remember saying there was orange in the chocolate. She could remember Miles tasting it. But when she tried to see Daniel making it, there was nothing.
“I don't know.”
Miles looked at her more closely. She could feel herself become defensive.
“I just told you. You know.”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you asking?”
“I wasn't—” He stopped. “Elena, what did he call it? The cherries?”
She pressed her fingers against her forehead. A word waited there and would not come. Not a word. A person in a room, a face she had seen hundreds of times while remembering that evening. She knew they had a first anniversary. She knew where the flat stood, knew its address, the rent, the sound of a bus outside. She could not find Daniel beside the cooker.
“It'll come back,” she said.
Miles did not answer.
She went to the sink, splashed water on her face, then tried again. The cherries were only something she had described to Miles tonight. Their sweetness had become a taste without a hand bringing it to her.
She began to say Daniel's name. Halfway through she stopped, because she could not bear to ask for him from a house that might answer.