Page 63 of Power Play

Iris got home at midday and the house turned from empty to full in the time it took her to get through the door.

Her hair had been slept on hard and stood up in a ridge over her left ear. She smelled of somebody else’s house, laundry soap I didn’t know and pancake syrup, and she had a complete oral history of every hour away from us. Sophia had a dog named Biscuit who was allowed on the couch.

“Did you sleep okay, bug?”

“Yes.” She thought about it. “I woke up one time and I remembered where I was and then it was fine.”

Eli, behind her with the sleeping bag under one arm, didn’t speak. His jaw shifted and none of it got as far as his eyes.

Gerald hadn’t come to the table once since the strike began. Iris checked on him and reported back that he was standing firm.

“He wants to know if there’s any news.”

“Tell him negotiations are ongoing,” Eli said.

“What’s that mean?”

“It means no.”

Iris took this to Gerald.

We made lunch. We moved around each other in that kitchen the same as we always had, and none of it was the same. When he reached over me for the good cutting board his forearm crossed my eyeline, the veins standing up along the inside of it, and I had to put my eyes on the counter. Then his hand landed on my hip on his way past the stove and moved me two inches so he could get to the drawer, one hand, no discussion, and the plate wobbled in my hand.

His eyes dropped to it and lifted back to my face. He said not one word.

We sat down to dinner and Iris ran it. She ate with her knees under her for the extra height. Eli chewed on the right side of his mouth, slow. She worked through her report in the order she had decided on, which wasn’t chronological and couldn’t be interrupted.

Then she got to the part she had been saving.

“Kasperi says orange cats live for twenty years.”

Eli put his fork down.

“When did Kasperi tell you that?”

“At the rink. He comes and finds me. He had it written on his hand so he wouldn’t forget it.”

“He wrote it on his hand.”

“In pen,” Iris said. “Because it’s important.”

I got up to fetch a napkin no one had asked for, and put my back to the table and both palms down on the counter until my face was under control.

“Twenty years is a long time, bug,” I said.

“That’s the point.” Iris met my eyes with enormous patience. “It’s not a short cat.”

Eli sat at his own dinner table with a black eye and no available move.

“Eat your peas,” he said.

“Gerald says⁠—”

“Gerald has been on an extended work stoppage and has lost all standing.”

Iris considered this, heard it as a legal ruling rather than a refusal, and returned to her chicken to regroup.

He looked at me over her head. It lasted no time at all. Then Iris asked whether whales had knees and he turned to answer her, and I put my fork down. I had no chance of making it to the end of the week.