Chapter 12 — "Her World"
842 Words
Adrian drove himself.
Maya had assumed there would be a driver. There was always a driver. But Saturday morning he appeared at the door in a dark jacket and plain trousers and held up his keys.
"Ready?" he said.
Maya picked up her bag.
"You don't have to come in," she said. "You can wait in the car."
"I know," he said.
He came in anyway.
Her apartment was on the fourth floor of a building that needed work and had for a long time.
The elevator was broken. It was always broken.
They took the stairs.
Adrian said nothing about the elevator. Nothing about the peeling paint on the walls or the bulb that flickered on the second floor landing. He just walked up four flights of stairs beside her like it was completely ordinary.
Maya unlocked her door.
She stepped inside.
She saw it the way he would see it — small living room, second hand furniture, bookshelves made from planks and old bricks, a kitchen that fit one person comfortably and two people not at all.
Photographs on the wall. Her mother. Her father. A younger Maya at university, squinting into the sun.
"It's small," she said.
"It's yours," Adrian said.
He was looking at the photographs.
Maya went to the bedroom to check her father's room. Clean sheets. Extra blankets. The reading lamp he liked. She moved things quietly, made notes on her phone, tried to focus.
From the other room she heard nothing.
When she came back Adrian was standing in front of the bookshelves.
"You've read all of these?" he said.
"Most of them."
He tilted his head to read a spine.
"This one." He pointed. It was a thin paperback, the cover soft from being opened so many times. "My mother had this."
Maya looked at it.
"It's good," she said.
"She read it every year," he said. "I never understood why anyone read the same book twice."
"Because you get something different each time," Maya said. "You're a different person every time you read it."
Adrian looked at her.
"That's what she used to say," he said quietly.
Maya didn't know what to say to that.
So she went to put the kettle on.
The kitchen was too small for two people.
Adrian stood in the doorway.
Maya made tea the same way she always did — too strong, too much sugar.
"You always make it that way," Adrian said.
Maya turned.
"You noticed?"
"You've made tea in my kitchen eleven times," he said. "Same every time."
Maya stared at him.
"You counted?"
"I noticed," he said. "There's a difference."
Maya turned back to the kettle.
She was smiling and she didn't want him to see.
"My mother taught me," she said. "She said weak tea was a waste of everyone's time."
"She sounds practical."
"She was." Maya poured the water. "She was also the most impractical person I knew. She used to buy flowers when we couldn't afford them. She said some things were necessary even when they weren't."
She handed him a mug.
He took it. She took her hand back quickly. Her fingers were cold from the window.
"My mother bought flowers too," he said.
"Maybe they knew something we don't," Maya said.
Adrian looked at his tea.
"Maybe," he said.
They sat at her small kitchen table.
Two people who lived in a mansion eating biscuits from a packet in a fourth floor apartment with a broken elevator.
Maya thought about Clara.
She doesn't know your world.
She looked at Adrian — at his expensive jacket hanging over the back of her cheap chair, at his hands wrapped around a chipped mug, at the way he was looking at the photograph of her mother on the wall.
Clara had said she didn't know his world. She wondered if he knew hers now.
"She looks like you," Adrian said.
Maya looked at the photograph.
Her mother. Summer. Laughing at something just outside the frame.
"Everyone says that," Maya said.
"Is that good?"
"She was beautiful," Maya said simply. "So yes."
Adrian looked at her.
Not the quick assessing look.
Not the flat unreadable one.
Something slower. Quieter.
Maya looked away first.
She didn't know why she always did that. She just did.
On the way back to the car Adrian stopped at the flower stall on the corner.
Maya watched him.
He stood there for a moment looking at the flowers like he wasn't entirely sure what he was doing.
Then he bought a small bunch of white ones.
He handed them to Maya without comment.
Maya took them.
She didn't say anything either.
They walked to the car.
The drive home was quiet.
But Maya held the flowers the whole way.
She thought about her mother buying flowers when they couldn't afford them.
She thought about some things being necessary even when they weren't.
She looked at Adrian's hands on the steering wheel.
She thought about maybe.
She thought about four months left.
She held the flowers a little tighter.
- Writer
