Chapter 7: The Walk-In

By one in the morning on Sunday, the Grange women had left me ten tables and forty chairs.

They had also left a labeled map of the town's spare ovens.

By two, the volunteers had gone home, and the kitchen was down to me, a pot of cider and a man who would not leave.

"You can go to bed," I said.

"I am in bed," Abel said. "This is where I sleep."

"In the kitchen?"

"In the office. There's a cot."

He leaned on the counter, wiping a pan he had already wiped.

"The upstairs spare room is full of my grandmother's quilts, and my grandfather snores like a chainsaw."

"You're a grown man sleeping on a cot."

"I'm a grown man with a cot, a range and a pie case. It's a good life."

I laughed, picked up a butter dish and went into the walk-in for more.

The cold hit my face.

The walk-in smelled of cream and cabbage and the clean metal of an old compressor.

The shelves were packed with tubs I had borrowed from six kitchens.

The door swung behind me.

I took one tub of butter, and I turned, and he was standing in the doorway with the light behind him, filling it.

"You have butter," he said.

"I do."

"Do you need anything else?"

His voice had dropped half an octave, and my breath showed white between us.

"Yes," I said.

"What?"

"Come in here and shut the door."

He did.

The latch clicked, the light on the wall went dim and yellow, and for one second neither of us moved.

Then he took the butter out of my hands, set it on a shelf, and kissed me against the cold steel wall.

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