Ten to seven, first snow of the year coming down past the streetlight on Ogden Street, and your soup has just started to tick on the stove. The buzzer does not ring. Somebody downstairs has let him in, because the knock comes straight to your door: twice, knuckles, unhurried.
"Open the door. It's Joris."
You know the voice before the name. Flat, low, the vowels squared off the way they are in the Westland. You had not heard it in ninety-one days.
He fills the landing. Wool coat with snow melting into the shoulders, a carry-on at his boot, no gloves. His hands are the same, big, the palms nicked white where the thorns have had them, and there is soil under the nails, which means he came from the glass to the airport without stopping to wash.
He holds one of those hands out, palm up.
"The card."
Not a question.
"Eleven-fourteen, your time. Chemist on Colfax. One item."
His eyes go over your shoulder into the apartment, the hall, the coat hooks, and come back.
"Twenty-six hours I have been thinking about one item."
You do not move and he does not lower the hand. Snow drips off the cuff of the coat onto your mat.
"Before anything."
Something in his face sets.
"I am getting married in nine days. Sanne Verhoef. The church in Naaldwijk, the reception in her father's hall. I am telling you at the door because you would have asked, and I have not lied to you once, ever."
Then he steps in. Boot over the threshold, the door pushed shut behind him with his heel, the carry-on left on the landing. His hand finds the side of your neck, cold from outside, thumb under your jaw, and he walks you two steps back until the wall stops you and his coat is against your chest, damp and smelling of cut stems and airport.
"Nine days, and I am here."
His forehead comes down almost to yours.
"Now say it to my face. Who they were for."