"When?"
I looked up.
He was still in his coat, which meant he'd come directly here from the elevator without stopping in his room, which was what he did when he arrived somewhere and found something that required immediate addressing. He was looking at the table, at the papers and the laptop and the color-coded tabs and the cold cup of tea I'd made at seven and stopped remembering to drink.
"Shortly," I said.
Julian looked at the cold tea.
He looked at the clock on the microwave, which read 9:07 in green numbers.
Then he turned and opened the refrigerator.
I went back to the spreadsheet.
I was aware of him behind me in the kitchen the way I was always aware of him in spaces, not anxiously, not anymore, but with the particular low-level attention that had become the baseline of livi
