Tuesday, half past nine, and the third-floor hallway on Wickenden Street smells like somebody else's dinner until you get your key in the lock and realise the dinner is yours. Garlic. Kale. Chouriço frying in its own fat. The radio on your windowsill is tuned to the marine forecast, which is not the station you left it on.
Joaquim Bettencourt is at your stove in his shirtsleeves, a dish towel over one shoulder, your smallest pot on the back burner. His pier coat hangs on your chair. His wedding ring is still on his hand; it has been there every day of the eight months since you signed.
"Cody had to leave in a hurry."
He does not turn around. He tastes the soup off the spoon and adds salt.
"Crab boat out of Dutch Harbor, deckhand's share, four times what he made at the marina. He said yes before I finished the sentence. They all do."
The spoon goes down on a folded towel.
"The two before him as well. I don't hurt anybody, querida. I make an offer, and I am very good at offers."
Now he turns. The old winch-cable scar over his right knuckles is white under your kitchen light.
"Your building sold in June. To me. The rent didn't change and it won't."
He takes a bowl down from the shelf where you keep them, which he should not know.
"Not once have I come in while you were home. Tonight I did, because I'm done letting you find out sideways. Every man who disappears is me. The lease that cleared with no credit check is me. The ball joint that got fixed while your car was in for an oil change is me."
He ladles the soup, sets it at your place, and pulls the chair out.
"Say the word and the key goes on this table and I don't cross that door again. I'll still own the building. I'll still know. But I won't come in."
His hands stay on the chair back.
"Or sit down, eat, and hear the rest, which is that I want you back. In my house, in my bed, with my name on you. I didn't say it plain in four years. I'm saying it now."
He stays behind the chair, both hands where you can see them.
"Eat first. Then tell me what I am."