Page 80 of The Compound

We had been savingthe steaks for a special occasion. They would have been nicer on the barbecue, but it no longer worked after the fire. There were ten steaks; I cooked two and put the rest back in the fridge. While Tom banged away at the window—even I knew that he was taking too long to do a relatively simple job—I made potatoes, salad, and coleslaw, using some of the fresh produce that had just come in one of our recent deliveries. I used the nicest dishes, folded napkins in the waterfall style, and, in the absence of flowers, took the plastic plant I had won as a reward and placed it on the table outside.

I knew that he was done because I had seen him go out a couple of times to admire his work from a different angle. He came into the kitchen and offered to take the food out, but I told him I could do it. He looked pleased.

I couldn’t help but feel pleased too, as I laid everything out on the table. For the last couple of weeks we had been eating the simplest of foods: noodles, pasta, sandwiches. It felt like a luxury to do it right. Tom sat down, and then stood a moment later, saying, “Just a minute.” While I waited for him to come back, I had the urge, for the first time in a long time, to take a picture. The table looked so good: the steak, the salad, the glasses with perfect cubes of ice. I poured pepper sauce over my meat but waited for Tom before eating. He returned with a bottle of champagne and two glasses.

“Personal Task,” he said. “I got it a couple of weeks ago. I was going to wait until I made it until the end, but might as well have it now.”

He ripped off the gold foil with his teeth, quickly and methodically. Then he removed the cork, thepoplike gunfire, champagne at once spilling over and onto the table. In a businesslike manner he wiped the excess off the table and filled our glasses. “To teamwork,” he said.

I clinked my glass against his and drank. It was warm, but everything was warm.

“You should have put it in the fridge,” I said.

“Couldn’t do that, could I? You don’t have a good record for sharing.”He wasn’t smiling, and his tone was admonishing, but I think he was trying at banter.

I piled salad onto his plate. There was a faint wind, pleasant and smelling richly of the desert. “I’m sharing now, aren’tI?”

He smiled, looking over my head, at the landscape beyond him. He smiled like it pleased him, though I can’t imagine what there was to see. For my own part, only the pool inspired some reaction in me, aesthetically. It had been filled again, sometime during the night. The pond, too, was full, and new fish swam happily in its depths.

I ate my steak with relish. Tom moved his food around on his plate for a few moments.

“Worried it’s poisoned?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I know you wouldn’t poison me. I’m more worried that you’re a terrible cook.”

“How can you be sure I wouldn’t?”

“Because then you’d be on your own. And you wouldn’t fare well on your own. You know that, too, I think.” I kept my eyes on my food. I knew Tom’s weaknesses, but he knew mine, too. He cut his meat into small pieces, his fork scraping against the plate, and ate. He chewed slowly and gave no indication whether he liked it or not. I wasn’t a good cook, Tom was right. It was overdone, but I still thought it was nice.

“I’ll fix the fence soon enough,” he said. “I’ve become quite handy. Did you see the window?”

I’d inspected it while he washed up for dinner. It was boarded well enough: from the outside it looked smooth and sleek, but from the inside it was a mess of nails and overlapping wood.

“I did. Where did you get the wood?”

“I broke apart one of the unused beds. No use for ten beds now that there’s only two of us.”

“Three,” I said. “Andrew will be back soon. Probably tomorrow.”

“Right. We’ll save him a good cut of meat.”

We ate for a few minutes in silence. The evening cold hadn’t yet set in, but the temperature was dropping bit by bit.

“What is it you do, again? Something in finance?”

He flicked a look at me, as though checking to see if I was serious. “I’m a financial analyst.”

“Right.”

“It’s a big job. A lot of responsibility. It’s too complicated to explain, so I won’t bother.”

“Do you miss it?” I persisted.

He kept eating, methodically, not lookingup.

“I miss it a great deal.”

“Will you go back there, when you leave?”

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