All the Good Things

Linette had just asked whether she should bring the smoked-pepper char when Ceret heard herself say, “Yes, and the lemon potatoes for Veslina, and Mezzara will want—”

Linette laid three menus on the table, though only one chair was occupied. “You may choose water for people who aren’t here.”

“Veslina always orders the char.”

“Last time she ordered the mullet.”

“Only because the char was sold out.”

“She can tell me when she arrives.” Linette turned the empty glasses upright. Her black tail curved behind her apron, still except at the tip. “I’ll bring the water.”

Ceret folded her hands under the table before she could straighten the menus into a single exact fan. “And three plates?”

“That much I can assume.”

The restaurant’s one small room glowed in layers of amber: candle cups on the tables, shaded lamps along the plaster walls, a copper shine from the open kitchen hatch. The chairs had curved gaps beneath their back rails so tails could hang or curl without being trapped. Ceret had chosen the round table near the guitarist, close enough to hear the brush of fingers on strings but not so close that conversation became work.

Joia sat on a low stool in the corner, tuning quietly. She drew one string down, listened with one russet ear inclined, and adjusted it by a fraction. Around her, the early diners kept their voices low without seeming to mean to.

Since spring, the three friends had managed hurried cups of tea and meetings in pairs, but no supper together. Ceret had missed the interruptions as much as the talk.

Ceret checked the door. Then she checked it again.

Linette set down the water. “Still absent.”

“I was looking at the rain.”

“It remains wet.”

The door opened before Ceret could answer. Mezzara entered first, unfastening her damp green coat as she walked, and Veslina crowded in behind her with a striped shawl over her head and a paper parcel tucked under one arm. Rain had darkened their sleeves and tails. At the sight of them, Ceret stood so quickly that her knee struck the table and made all three empty glasses chime.

“That was almost musical,” Veslina said.

Mezzara kissed Ceret’s cheek, then pressed two cool fingers to the silver-speckled fur at the base of her ear. “You’re early.”

“I’m on time.”

“For us, that’s early.”

Veslina embraced Ceret one-armed, still protecting the parcel. She smelled of rain, citrus soap, and the cold street. “Please tell me there’s food coming.”

“Linette wouldn’t let me order yours.”

“Good.” Veslina dropped into her chair and guided her tawny, dark-ringed tail through the open back. “I changed my mind on the walk.”

Ceret sat more slowly. “About the char?”

“About everything. Then back again about most of it.”

Mezzara hung her coat on the wall peg. The fur along one dark ear was still beaded with rain. “We took the wrong tram.”

“It wasn’t wrong,” Veslina said. “It went past the soap shop.”

“It did not come here.”

“But I needed soap.” Veslina lifted the parcel as evidence. “Now I have two bars.”

“You made us get off six streets away.”

“And now I have soap.”

Linette arrived with a folded cloth for the damp table edge and waited while Veslina moved her parcel. She did not glance at Ceret.

Veslina read the menu from top to bottom, lips moving slightly. “I’ll have the char.”

Ceret looked at Linette, who remained professionally blank.

“With the green olives, not the potatoes,” Veslina added.

“You don’t like olives,” Ceret said.

“I didn’t. Someone has been putting them in rice at home, and apparently I like them when I’m not told in advance.”

“Who is someone?” Ceret asked.

Veslina opened her mouth, but Mezzara spoke over her. “Salt-baked bream for me, please. And the tomato salad.”

Ceret turned. “Not the river trout?”

“I can have trout another day.”

There was no sensible answer to that. Ceret picked up her own menu, which she had already read twice. “Then the herb-roasted bass. We’ll share all three.”

“If you ask before moving food onto my plate,” Mezzara said.

“When have I not asked?”

Mezzara and Veslina looked at each other.

“Recently,” Ceret amended.

Linette took the menus. “I’ll begin with the small gilt fish and fennel. You can practice.”

Once she was gone, the first few minutes broke apart pleasantly. Veslina wanted to know whether Ceret had cut her own fringe; Ceret insisted it had merely dried badly in the rain. Mezzara asked if the loose window above Ceret’s sink had finally been fixed. Ceret asked why Mezzara had a streak of white dust on her sleeve. Veslina unwrapped one of the soaps to let them smell it, then complained that the rose scent was much stronger in the warm room than it had been in the shop.

“You’ve bought a cupboard fragrance,” Mezzara said.

“It smelled like orange peel outside.”

“Outside was mostly tram smoke.”

Ceret pushed the soap farther from her water glass. “Give it to the someone who taught you to eat olives.”

Veslina started folding the paper around it again. “They chose the other one.”

“They?”

“I’ll tell you. I was going to tell you.”

“After the soap?”

Veslina’s ears tipped outward. “The soap was meant to lead there.”

Mezzara reached for the water jug. “You started at the wrong end.”

“Then I’ll begin again after food.”

The small fish arrived on a dark oval plate, their skins crisp and gold, laid over fennel shaved thin enough to turn translucent at the edges. Preserved lemon shone between them. For a while the talk narrowed to ordinary negotiations: which fish had the fewest bones, whether Veslina had taken all the lemon, who wanted the last piece of bread while it was still warm.

“This was our first table,” Ceret said when only tails and bright smears of oil remained on the platter.

Mezzara looked toward the window. “No, the first one was against that wall.”

“It was this table. I remember the candle wobbling every time the kitchen door opened.”

“There wasn’t a candle,” Veslina said. “It was afternoon.”

“It was dark.”

“Because it was raining.”

“It was night,” Ceret said. “We had spent all day moving Mezzara’s boxes, and the bottom came out of the one with the blue bowls.”

“The bottom did not come out. The knot slipped.” Mezzara extracted a neat backbone from the last fish and placed it at the side of her plate. “Also, there were eight bowls.”

“Twelve,” Ceret said.

“Eight bowls and a blanket.”

Veslina pointed her fork at Mezzara. “A wet blanket.”

“Because you set it in the gutter.”

“To catch the bowl I saved.”

“You saved no bowl. Ceret caught the stack against her coat.”

Ceret could see it as soon as Mezzara said it: her younger self kneeling on slick paving stones, a tower of blue ceramic pressed to her ribs, rain dripping off her chin. She had forgotten the weight of the bowls. She had remembered only Veslina laughing and Mezzara saying, with terrible calm, that the blanket would wash.

“We came in because we could smell grilled fish from the street,” Ceret said.

“We came in because you wouldn’t let us carry another box before supper,” Veslina said.

“We came in,” Mezzara said, “because it was open.”

They considered these accounts.

“All of that can be true,” Veslina decided.

“Not the candle,” Mezzara said.

Joia began to play before Ceret could defend it. Her thumb kept a soft, quick pattern on the lower strings while the melody passed above it, light enough that the clink of cutlery stayed part of the room. Ceret watched Veslina’s ears turn toward the corner. Mezzara rested both wrists beside her plate. At another table, a child stopped trying to balance a spoon on one finger.

No one at Ceret’s table spoke until the piece ended. Their applause joined the room’s, brief and warm. Joia nodded without standing and started another tune.

The second tune left longer spaces between its chords. Ceret let her eyes settle on the candle. This one did wobble when Linette passed with a tray, though there was no kitchen draft anymore.

When Joia paused for tea, Linette cleared the first platter and brought the tomato salad. Mezzara caught Ceret looking at the white mark on her sleeve again.

“Plaster,” she said.

“I guessed plaster.”

“You asked why.”

“I assumed you would eventually tell me.”

“I looked at a room this afternoon.”

Ceret expected the rest: a temporary room before another journey, a place to leave two cases while Mezzara worked elsewhere. “For how long?”

Mezzara spooned tomatoes onto her plate. “I hope for years.”

Veslina bit into a strip of bread, apparently unsurprised.

“Here?” Ceret asked.

“Three streets over. Above a cabinetmaker. The room has an east window, and the little alcove is wide enough for a table.”

“I thought you still wanted to go north in the autumn.”

“That was four autumns ago.”

“You said you’d never live where you could hear the same bells every day.”

Mezzara’s mouth bent. “I said I would never live above the bell shop again. The apprentice tested them before breakfast.”

Veslina covered a laugh with her napkin.

“I may have remembered the broader meaning,” Ceret said.

“You made it broader. You do that when a story has an untidy edge.”

Ceret picked up the salad spoon. “Does the alcove get the morning light?”

“Some. The building across the lane takes part of it.”

“Enough for a lemon tree?”

“Perhaps herbs. A lemon tree would have to be very forgiving.”

“And the plaster?”

“I leaned against the wall while the landlord found the key to the cupboard.”

“Is the cupboard good?” Veslina asked.

“We never found out. He had brought the cellar key.”

Veslina nodded gravely. “Promising. A man with many keys suggests many cupboards.”

“Or one cupboard he has never opened,” Mezzara said.

Ceret began to offer the name of another street, another landlord, a sunlit top floor she had once passed on her way to the market. She stopped after, “There’s a building near—”

Mezzara waited.

“What do you want in it?” Ceret asked instead.

The question seemed to please her more than Ceret had expected. Mezzara put down the spoon. “A table I don’t have to clear before I eat. A cupboard that closes. Light enough to sew black thread without carrying the sleeve to the window. Two comfortable chairs.”

“Only two?” Veslina asked.

“Other people can sit on ordinary chairs.”

“I have a green chair you can take.”

“I said comfortable.”

“The green chair has character.”

“The green chair leans toward the door.”

“It encourages visitors not to linger.”

Their main plates arrived before Mezzara could reject it again. Linette carried the fish one at a time: the char with dark pepper and a bowl of glossy olives; the bream under a shell of salt that she opened at the table, sending up a clean thread of steam; the bass surrounded by roasted tomatoes, herbs, and small yellow potatoes. She turned each platter so the serving spoons faced inward.

“The peppers are hotter at this end,” she told Veslina. “And yes, you may all exchange pieces. Ceret has asked properly.”

“Once,” Mezzara said.

“A beginning,” Linette replied, already moving toward another table.

They tasted each fish before returning to anything important. The bream was tender and sweet beneath its salt crust; the char left warmth at the back of Ceret’s tongue. Veslina discovered that she liked the green olives less on their own than she did in rice, and deposited two on Ceret’s plate without asking.

“The someone,” Ceret prompted.

Veslina drank water. “Yes.”

Mezzara, occupied with a fish bone, said, “Try the middle this time.”

Veslina arranged her fork and knife, then rearranged them. “I’ve been seeing someone. No, that sounds recent. We’ve been together for a while. They stay most nights. Nearly every night, except their early mornings are easier from their own rooms, so some weeks it’s four nights, and some—”

“How long?” Ceret asked.

“Since late winter. Properly. Before that, it depends what counts.”

“Who counts?”

“We do. Differently.” Veslina’s tail tip tapped once against the chair leg. “I wanted to ask whether they could come to supper sometime.”

Ceret paused with a piece of bass halfway to her plate.

Veslina went on at once. “Not every time. Not this table, I mean this table is fine, but I don’t mean they belong at every supper because that would make it a different—unless you wanted—”

“Ceret is holding hot fish in the air,” Mezzara said.

Ceret put it down. “I was wondering if they eat fish.”

Veslina blinked. “They eat almost everything. Not fennel.”

“Then the first plate would have been difficult.”

“They could move it aside.”

“What are they like?” Ceret asked.

Veslina’s shoulders lowered. “Patient with kettles. Impatient with hems. They read the last page first, which I object to, although not enough to stop lending them books. They leave tea in every room.”

“That’s what you do,” Mezzara said.

“I leave cups. They leave tea in the cups.”

“A household distinction,” Ceret said.

“You’ll understand when you see the windowsill.” Veslina rubbed her thumb over the edge of her napkin. “I wanted you to meet them. And I wanted this sometimes. Still. I couldn’t find a way to ask for both without making one sound like the apology for the other.”

Ceret had been ready with questions about work, family, how they had met, whether they treated Veslina well. They crowded behind her teeth. She began with the easiest. “Do they know how much you talk during the quiet parts of songs?”

“I do not.”

Mezzara looked toward Joia’s stool. “You whispered through half the last piece.”

“That was before it began.”

“Joia had begun.”

Veslina turned to Ceret. “You see why I need another person on my side.”

“I’d like to meet them,” Ceret said. “Bring them one evening, if they can come.”

Veslina smiled, not broadly, but for long enough that Ceret had time to notice. “All right.”

“And some suppers can still be three,” Ceret added.

“Please.” Veslina picked up her fork again. “That was the part I kept making worse in my head.”

Mezzara passed her the char. “It took you four months to produce that sentence.”

“The sentence took four months. Other things happened meanwhile.”

“The soap, for example.”

“The soap happened today.”

Ceret reached for an olive from Veslina’s plate, and Veslina tapped the back of her hand away with two fingers. “Ask.”

“May I have the olive you don’t want?”

“No. But you may have this one.” Veslina selected another, apparently identical olive, and set it on Ceret’s plate.

Mezzara leaned back while Linette replaced their water. “What about you, Ceret?”

“What about me?”

“We have supplied rooms, keys, poor chairs, soap, and a person who abuses tea. You’ve told us nothing.”

“Nothing has happened.”

“Did they fix the window over your sink?” Mezzara asked.

“Yes. In May.”

“And the damp patch?”

“Dry. Mostly.”

Veslina tucked one foot beneath her chair. “Did you move your bed away from the cold wall?”

Ceret looked at her. “Last month.”

“Does your shoulder hurt less in the morning?”

“A little.”

“And the basil?” Mezzara asked.

“Dead.”

Veslina clicked her tongue.

“It was a weak plant.”

“You said it had survived two winters.”

“Then it was an old, tired plant.”

“What did you put in the pot?”

“Mint. My sister gave me a cutting.”

“The one that tastes like pepper?”

“That was the other mint. This one tastes like mint.”

Mezzara waited while Veslina served herself another potato. “You were going to have supper with your sister on Thursdays.”

“I do. When she isn’t working late. Her youngest has decided soup is an insult, so we eat a lot of bread.”

“And the clarinet downstairs?” Veslina asked.

“Upstairs. The boy knows six notes now.”

“Last time it was four.”

“The fifth was a difficult week.”

They both laughed, and Ceret did too. She had called the months empty because no single event seemed large enough to set in the middle of the table. Yet Mezzara remembered the wall by her bed. Veslina remembered the boy’s four notes.

“I’ve been leaving work early on Tuesdays,” Ceret said. “Not early. On time. I walk home by the long street and buy whatever fruit is cheapest.”

“What was cheapest this week?” Mezzara asked.

“Small red plums. Sour ones.”

“You like those,” Veslina said.

“I’d forgotten.”

Joia returned to her stool. She tightened one string, played a chord, and looked toward the kitchen hatch. Linette lifted a hand to say she had heard. The next set began with a slower tune, low notes opening beneath a plain melody.

At Ceret’s table, forks settled. Veslina wrapped both hands around her glass. Mezzara’s ears inclined toward the music, and the candle traced a narrow line along the dark fur of her cheek. Ceret listened without trying to decide what the tune was about. Joia repeated the melody, changed two notes, and let the last chord fade under the murmur of the room.

During the applause, Linette offered them honey cakes. They agreed to one plate and then, after Linette looked at the cleaned fish, two. Veslina claimed she could eat only half and finished a whole cake before the second song.

Joia played three more pieces. Between them came the sounds the music had made room for: a chair easing over the floor, rain ticking at the window, someone near the kitchen laughing into a napkin. Veslina’s tail curled loosely around one ankle. Ceret’s lay warm against the leg of her chair.

When Joia finally set the guitar aside, the room’s conversations rose by degrees. Mezzara lifted her teacup and frowned into it.

“I never finished telling you about the room,” she said.

“You reached the cupboard,” Ceret said.

“Barely. I didn’t tell you the measurements.”

Veslina leaned closer. “How wide?”

“Five and a half paces, not counting the alcove.”

“Your paces or the landlord’s?” Ceret asked.

“Mine. His were enormous and he kept stepping on the hem of his coat.”

Veslina moved the candle toward the center of the table. “Say this is the window.”

“That is the alcove,” Mezzara said. “The window is the sugar bowl.”

“Then where’s the warm wall?” Ceret asked.

Mezzara shifted the cups aside and laid one hand flat beside Ceret’s plate. “Here. The bed would go along it, and the table would face this way…”