Chapter 4: The Heater

Tristan came back that night with a bag of groceries and a pair of thick wool socks.

It was past midnight. He stood in my doorway in his good coat, snow on his shoulders.

"You didn't eat," he said. "I saw the toast."

"You told me not to come back."

"I told you not to come back from London." He walked past me. "You haven't left yet."

He put the soup on the stove and stood over it until it boiled.

It was a small thing, and I hated that I stood there with my arms crossed, watching him do it.

"Sit," he said.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

He took off my slippers, which were wet from the kitchen, and put the dry socks on my feet.

Then he went into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

The hot water took forever in that building, and he knew exactly how far to open the tap.

He had learned all my small inconveniences.

When I came home exhausted, he washed my delicates in the sink and hung them on the shower rail.

When the old heater broke in January, he let me put my frozen feet against his stomach.

Two days later, a new unit had been installed.

"I bought it for me," he'd told his friend on the phone. "You try sleeping in a freezer."

I stood in the bathroom doorway holding a towel.

I would miss being cared for like this.

It did not make it acceptable that he laughed about me with men who drank the wine I carried at forty dollars a bottle.

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