The cupboard did not look like a reason to come across town. It looked like a cupboard.
Then Evan opened it, and Claire saw how the shelf slid forward without tilting, how a narrow space behind the door became somewhere a person could actually reach. He stood back while she tried it. There was pleasure in the movement, a satisfying little resistance followed by ease.
“That's good,” she said.
“It should be. I've made it twice.”
They were inside a cruiser pulled up at the yard, with a little temporary stair beside it. The boat smelled of wood, dust, and an old life that someone was trying to replace. A seat cushion lay on the floor beneath a sheet. Beyond the window, the river moved gray in the evening light.
“Why twice?”
“She couldn't get to the back.”
“You couldn't tell that from the drawing?”
“I thought I'd made it work. I hadn't.”
He said this without much drama. Claire tried the shelf again and imagined finding a bag of rice at the back, a thing she routinely abandoned in her own kitchen until it became archaeological.
“Can you come to my house?”
“For a bag of rice?”
She looked at him. “Did I say that out loud?”
“Yes.”
She laughed. He smiled at her, pleased in a way the finished cupboard hadn't made him. His injured eye was a dark patch above the clean line of his cheek. She could see the discomfort when he smiled too widely.
She hadn't come only to see the work. They both knew that now. It made the small cabin feel warmer.
He was still wearing work clothes, a shirt with the sleeves rolled and trousers dusted at the knees. She had changed after the studio into jeans and a soft dark top, then decided changing made her too obvious and put the top on anyway. The effort amused her in retrospect. He had a pencil behind his ear and hadn't taken it out on seeing her.
“What else?” she asked.
He showed her a little seat that lifted to give access to storage, a new frame around a window, a latch the owner could work without twisting her wrist. Some things were unfinished. He pointed to them as confidently as the finished ones, and Claire liked him more for it. She had never shown a client the picture with a closed eye while explaining how she intended to improve it.
“You can photograph something if you want,” he said.
“You noticed the bag.”
“It's difficult to miss.”
“Beth says the same.”
She took out her familiar camera. He looked at it but didn't ask. She told him anyway.
“The ordinary one.”
“Right.”
She photographed the shelf with his hand on it, then the little seat lifted, then the window frame. He stood by the steps while she backed into the cabin to find an angle, and for a moment the last light fell along his cheek.
“Stay there.”
“Do I have a splinter in my face?”
“You have a good face.”
He blinked. She took the picture before his expression finished answering.
Then he laughed. She took that too.
“I wasn't prepared for that,” he said.
“I know.”
She showed him the first picture. He studied it for perhaps two seconds, then made a face.
“No.”
“Why?”
“That's someone having his photograph taken.”
“That's what happened.”
“I know.”
She moved to the second. He shook his head again, smiling. In the third he had turned half away, his hand reaching for a tool he hadn't noticed he'd left on the step. The shadow under his eye was more obvious. The pencil was slipping from behind his ear.
“That one,” he said.
“You can't see much of your face.”
“Enough.”
“The first one is better.”
“For you.”
“I'll send both,” she said.
“You bargain like a person who always wins.”
“I lose quietly.”
He held her gaze. “I don't believe that.”
She felt the pleasure low in her stomach, unexpectedly direct. The cabin was too small to pretend she had to walk toward him, and she did not pretend. She put the camera down on the covered cushion and came closer.
He looked at her mouth, then back at her eyes.
“Careful of the step,” he said.
“I saw it.”
“You were looking at me.”
“I can do two things.”
He moved a hand toward her waist and paused there, not touching. She closed the remaining space. His palm settled against her back.
The first kiss was not quite smooth. She turned toward the injured side of his face and he drew back a little. She said sorry, he said don't, and they laughed with their mouths close enough that she felt it. Then she changed the angle and kissed him again.
His hand tightened against her back. The second kiss had none of the uncertainty of the first. She put her fingers at the side of his neck, above his collar, and felt the heat of him there. He had tasted of tea at first. Now she wasn't thinking about that.
When they parted he stayed close. Claire could hear someone working in another part of the yard, a metallic tapping that had been going on all along without reaching her.
“That's a much better reason to come,” he said.
“The cupboard was good.”
“I'm glad.”
She laughed, but she was shaking slightly, and he felt it where his hand rested. He bent a little to see her face.
“All right?”
“Yes.”
She was. She wanted him to kiss her again, wanted to stand here until it became something they didn't have to decide. He kissed the corner of her mouth, then drew back and removed the pencil from his ear, as though remembering he was a man at work.
“I need to finish this bit.”
“Of cupboard?”
“The seat.”
“I can go.”
“You could stay.”
She did. She sat outside on a low bench while he finished fitting something she could hear but not see. His voice came through the window when he asked if she was bored. She said she was billing him for the time. He told her to put it against the rice cupboard.
The ordinary exchange pleased her almost as much as the kiss. She had wanted to know what kind of man could stand in her bedroom. Now she wanted to know what he ate for breakfast, whether he talked while driving, what made him impatient at the end of a workday. She wanted access to details no image had given her.
He came out after half an hour, washed his hands at the yard tap, and asked if she'd eaten.
“Soup.”
“That's not an answer.”
“Maris's soup. It might have been.”
He had bread and tomatoes in a box in the car. She had the milk she had bought for Beth and forgotten to deliver. They went back into the cabin and made something more like a meal on a board he said was not intended for food but could survive one tomato. The milk waited in the cool of a bag by the steps. Claire would take it to Beth soon. Not quite now.
Evan ate with his elbows on his knees. There wasn't room for a table between them.
“Sam used to hate this,” he said, looking round the cabin.
“Boats?”
“Small rooms. He said he hadn't worked his whole life to sleep inside a cupboard.”
“He was thirty.”
“Yes. It was a busy whole life.”
He smiled, and this time the memory didn't take the smile away immediately.
“Did he ever stay on one?”
“Two nights. He brought a girl, who was apparently supposed to be impressed. She was sick most of the second day.”
“Not Vivian?”
“No. Before her.”
He took another bite, chewing slowly. “He could make you believe it was going to be a wonderful time. Sometimes it was.”
“Sometimes?”
“Sometimes he expected you to be grateful for the wonderful time before you'd had it.”
Claire looked at the bread in her hand. The answer had let Sam become difficult without needing Vivian's account to do the work. She wanted to touch Evan again, but not to shut that difficulty away.
“Did you get on?” she asked.
“We argued.”
“I didn't ask if you agreed.”
He looked at her. “Yes. We got on.”
His mouth turned slightly. “He'd come round and criticize the place. Then fix a thing I hadn't had time for. Then borrow money. In that order.”
“Did you give it?”
“Usually.”
“And when you didn't?”
“He'd find something else to fix.”
They sat quietly for a while. Claire could see the tenderness in the story, and the annoyance, neither of them completed by the ending Sam had been given.
“You'll speak to Vivian again,” she said.
Evan looked out of the window. “Will I?”
“I think she wants to.”
“You think.”
Claire put down the bread. “I'll ask.”
“Don't ask for me.”
“You want to know.”
“I do.”
“Then—”
“Claire, leave it a minute. I'm trying to eat.”
She picked up her bread, then put it down. A minute earlier the cabin had held them so easily. Now she felt like a woman who had brought nothing but herself.
“All right,” she said.
He glanced at her and saw whatever she hadn't kept out of her face.
“I'm not saying go.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
She looked at him. “I'm deciding.”
He smiled a little. She leaned over and kissed him, briefly this time. He put his hand behind her neck and held her there for another second.
By the time she left the yard, she was properly hungry again. She delivered Beth's milk, refused to explain why it had taken so long, and went home. In the kitchen she ate the last two biscuits from Sunday's packet and looked at the picture Evan preferred.
The pencil had been about to fall. His hand was reaching down. He wasn't looking at her.
She sent him that one first.