Chapter 22: The New Lease

On Christmas Eve, I wrote Rule One on a clean sheet of cream paper at the desk in Unit 4.

I wrote it three times.

The first draft was too long, and the second was too funny.

The third said, in plain black ink: "The owner and the tenant share the key."

I looked at it for a long time.

The radiator ticked, and snow fell past the window onto the roof, where six strings of warm lights burned in the dusk.

Lena sat on the bed behind me with her boots off.

She drank tea from a chipped mug, and she did not look at the paper.

She had promised.

"Done?" she said.

"Almost."

"You've been almost done for an hour."

"I'm trying to get it right."

"It's a sentence."

"It's your sentence."

She was quiet.

Then the mattress creaked, and she came across the floor in her socks and stood behind my chair.

I felt the warmth of her at my back.

"May I?"

"Wait."

I put my hand over the page.

"I want to explain it first."

"All right."

"I don't mean one key. I mean the key to everything."

My voice shook.

"Your door, my door, your roof, your bed. I don't want to pay at your door at nine a.m.

"I want to live in your home."

She said nothing.

"I want my desk in your front room, by the window.

"I want to keep this place as my studio, for the days I need to be alone with a rabbit."

I took a breath.

"And I want you to count me every night. Not at two. At eleven, when I get into bed."

Lena's hand came down onto my shoulder.

It was shaking.

"Show me."

I lifted my hand.

She leaned over my shoulder and read it.

I watched her mouth move silently, once, twice.

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