But this day, today, I have done something. Because of the length of the month, because of the scratch of my unused throat, and the ache of the shine that no one has seen on the fish jug and the fire irons and the floor, I am a failed recluse. Today I ask for company.

I have uttered at the doorknobs, “Thou shalt have no audience before me. I thy audience am a jealous audience.” I chuckle into the recesses of the linen closet. But it is a lie, of course, and my clean house is only good if there are other eyes and dirtier houses. The depth of my tub and the heat of the water are luscious to me because of the shallower, chillier baths of other times. Rennel would not comment on the gleam of things. Would not notice. But he sniffs my soap and lotions as I pass his chair and doesn’t scratch as much in this house as he has in some others.

Besides all that, I made the sauce for the periwinkles in front of him today. He sat over the hermits explaining an intricate exchange of prestige involving a bolt of antique lace and I nodded and laughed and minced garlic and sautéed tomatoes in front of him.

“What are you cooking?”

“Sauce for the periwinkles. Do you always eat in restaurants?”

“Not always. Did you get those in the village?”

“I took them off the rocks.”

“You do yourself well.”

“I was thinking I would like you to stay and have dinner with me.”

He stops chewing, his cheek swollen with hermit. He lowers his brows suspiciously.

“I was thinking if you didn’t have a date you could stay and read what I’ve been writing.”

His brows hike up and he begins chewing again, methodically. He swallows and gives me one of his flirtatious leers. “I thought you’d decided I was too dense to read your stuff.”

I grin into the reeking steam from my skillet. Once a year or so he says something that breaks me, that shows he’s not the fool I think of him.

“That’s only because you never like it. But I want you to eat a big meal and have peaches and tea afterward and then sit there in front of the fire and read this thing. That’s what I was thinking. You can sleep on the sofa if you want.”

I am older than he is. Have probably always been old to him. He swallows the last morsel of hermit.

“Do you really have peaches?”

“You can pick them yourself.”

“It’d save me the hotel bill.”

“You could stay tomorrow night, too, if you wanted to.”

“It must be a real ordeal, this stuff you want me to read.”

“I had a fight with Jean. She and Spike don’t come here anymore.”

“How long has that been going on?”