Page 122
“You have already married her.”
“Exactly. Standards could collapse at any moment.”
She sits, and I take the chair across from her, and for the first time since I met this woman there’s no clinic table and no legal folder and no twelve-year-old anywhere between us.
She catches me. “What?”
“I’ve spent months being told where to put my arm while you wore a name badge. I’m adjusting.”
“To a dress?”
“To having nowhere medically appropriate to look.”
Astrid picks up her wine and holds it without drinking any.
“Then look somewhere else.”
It’s the way she says it. Completely level, eyes on mine, the same voice she has used to tell me my range is down and my minutes are too many.
“You’re in a mood.”
“I am having dinner.”
“You’re in a mood at dinner.”
She opens her menu. “Try the food.”
“That’s why I married you. Practical guidance.”
“You married me yesterday.”
“Still holding up.”
She looks at me over the top of the menu, and I grin before I open mine.
When the server comes back she orders without opening the menu again, which I notice and don’t ask about. Steak and potatoes, both of us. She takes one glass of red and doesn’t go at it quickly. I’m driving, so I stay with water, and for ten minutes we talk about nothing that has to be accomplished. The bread. The man at the next table who has sent his steak back twice and is building toward a third. Whether the flowers will survive Tova being left alone with them tomorrow.
“Does this count as dating?”
Astrid cuts into her steak. “We are on a date.”
“We got the order wrong.”
“You got the order wrong.”
“I recall a fair amount of participation from you.”
“I corrected it.”
“By proposing marriage.”
“Yes.”
“Aggressive correction.”
“It worked.”
I look at the ring on her hand when she reaches for her wine.
