5:35pm, Wellington The cup holds heat the way a room holds a person — not by clutching, only by being there. You are in the doorway. You have always been in the doorway. He does not turn. This is not absence. This is the long, practiced grammar of two people who have run out of the need to prove anything to each other, and discovered, on the other side of that, something that has no name in any language that also has a word for small talk. The light is doing something extraordinary to the glass. You watch him not watching you. The laptop is still under your arm. You haven't decided yet. This is also fine.