Quotients

In the nights after the Underground bombings, they clutched, and they were alive, fortunately, wonderfully alive. Alexandra told him he was too far when they were next to each other.

In the mornings, because she’d admitted what she was too impatient to enjoy, Jeremy removed pomegranate seeds from the husk, and because she did not want him to first think to discard the imperfect thing, she fussed a small screwdriver to repair his watch, though always it was breaking. When they watched a movie, he asked after if the gladiator would live, and no matter the quality, she declared the warrior’s future thrive. She began to pay attention to men’s shirts in shop windows, cuff links.

They had met in May and now it was July, and as days ticked off, the calendar grew suggestive. “I’ve seen you more than the inside of my own refrigerator this week, you know that?” Alexandra said.

“A dry goods woman, are you?”

“Just north,” Alexandra said. “Freezer.”

“That’s the one shaped like a boot.”

“It’s an intemperate country, but you’d be surprised at the idyll,” she said. “Food never spoils, and there is no fever, war, or taxation.”

Her foot was in his hand. “I will levy no impost,” he said. “But I cannot speak for the food.”

That afternoon, he noticed