Saturday came through the kitchen window while Linet was making a list.
It landed on the breadboard, a gray bird with the day’s name running in small black feathers down its back. It was larger than a sparrow and much less polite. Linet moved her coffee away before it could put a foot in the cup.
“You’re early,” she told it.
Her wife Jessa came in carrying a pair of socks, one in each hand.
“Is that ours?”
“I hope so.”
“Then I hope it doesn’t eat the bread.”
The bird pulled a crumb from the board. Jessa looked at Linet over its head. They had been married eleven years, which was long enough to know when an objection would make the other one laugh. Linet did not laugh. She was writing breakfast at the top of her list.
She managed a restaurant six days a week. This Saturday the owner was taking her shift. Nobody would call her unless the building burned, and even then she had given him the fire brigade’s number. She wanted a whole day at home with Jessa. A long breakfast, perhaps a film, perhaps nothing. She wanted to reach Sunday knowing that Saturday had been hers.
“I’ll go to Dad’s at eleven,” Jessa said. “Back by two.”
Linet’s pencil stopped.
“You said we had the day.”
“We do. I told you about Dad on Thursday.”
Linet remembered. She had been counting restaurant receipts when Jessa said it. She had nodded without turning her head.
“He wants me to look through the boxes from his old flat,” Jessa said. “He keeps finding things he thinks I threw away.”
“Could it wait?”
“It has waited three weeks.” Jessa paired the socks. “I want to see him too.”
Saturday stood on one leg. Linet watched it.
She had heard that the bird stayed where people enjoyed their day. She had also heard it liked burnt toast, blue cushions and houses with no cats. Nobody agreed on much beyond its name.
“If we fill every hour, it leaves,” she said.
“Does it?”
Jessa sat at the table. “I’ll be back at two. We could go to that comedy you wanted to see. The afternoon show is at three.”
The bird settled lower on its one foot. It looked ready to sleep through all three named times.
“I thought we weren’t making plans,” Linet said.
“You were making a list of not making plans.”
Jessa said it gently, but Linet still turned the paper over.
They had breakfast. Linet cut the bread thickly, the way Jessa liked it. Jessa put butter on the side Linet had already buttered, which was how they discovered she was still thinking about her father’s boxes.
They laughed then. The bird took its foot out from under itself, hopped to the sill and looked at the drainpipe.
Linet wanted to tell it to stay. She did not know which thing she had done wrong.
At ten, their niece Uma knocked. She was sixteen and carried a coat hanger that kept poking her in the neck.
“The pirate coat?” she asked.
Linet had promised to lend her an old velvet coat for a play in the courtyard next door. Uma’s friends were performing that evening. Linet had worn the coat for a restaurant party years earlier, when Jessa first saw her trying to dance.
“It is not a pirate coat,” Jessa said. “It is an extremely serious coat.”
Uma pulled it from the cupboard and put it on. The sleeves reached past her fingers.
“An extremely serious pirate,” she said.
She found the fold inside one sleeve and turned it back herself. Linet reached to straighten it, then stopped. Uma was already doing the other one.
“Are you coming tonight?” Uma asked.
“We’re going to the cinema this afternoon,” Jessa said. “We might be back in time.”
“I’ll save you two chairs if you tell me by five. Otherwise my friends will sit in them.”
“Fair,” Linet said.
Uma was pleased about the coat. She pulled it around her, bowed low and knocked the hanger into the cupboard door. Jessa made a face as though a terrible sword fight had taken place.
Saturday flew from the sill to the coat’s hem. It picked at a loose thread.
“Leave that,” Linet snapped.
Uma lifted the cloth. The bird flew into the hall and out through the open front door. Uma laughed at its offended flapping.
Linet stared after it. It had stayed through the list of times and her sharp voice. It had left while Uma was laughing.
“Do I bring the coat back tomorrow?” Uma asked.
Linet turned to her.
“Next week is fine. Just bring all of it.”
At eleven, Jessa kissed Linet’s cheek and left for her father’s. Linet stood in the quiet kitchen. Her list lay face down beside a crust.
She could spend three hours deciding whether she had lost Saturday. She could hear herself doing it already.
Instead she looked up the film times and bought two tickets for three o’clock. They both liked the actor who played men far braver than he had any chance of looking. Linet wanted to hear Jessa complain about his latest hat.
Then she lay on the couch. She meant to read. The book slipped against her chest, and she slept until a cupboard door woke her.
“It’s two,” Jessa said. “Dad has decided I threw away a clock he sold himself.”
“Did you persuade him?”
“No. We found the clock money in an old envelope. He says I put it there to confuse him.”
Jessa was smiling. Linet sat up and told her about the tickets.
“Good,” Jessa said. “Let me get my coat.”
The cinema was crowded. Their seats were near the wall. Jessa went in first because she liked leaning on that side, and Linet gave her the larger share of the popcorn without being asked.
On the screen, the actor galloped across a plain in a hat that bent over one eye. Jessa leaned toward Linet.
“How does he see his enemies?”
“He follows the smell of their fear.”
“Then they must fear damp felt.”
Linet put a hand over her mouth.
Later, the hero tried to tell a woman he had crossed the world to find her. He took so long that she closed her door while he was still speaking.
Jessa lowered her voice to the actor’s rough whisper.
“I have crossed the world. I have crossed the street. I have crossed the lobby, and the lifts are out.”
A man in front turned around.
Linet tried to swallow her laugh. It broke loose anyway. She bent toward Jessa and hid it against her shoulder while Jessa, still solemn, handed her another piece of popcorn.
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