Room for one more.

Dear you,

For six months after I moved, I ate dinner standing at the kitchen counter. I told myself it was because the table was covered in boxes. The boxes were empty.

Most evenings I came home, put on the radio, and made enough pasta for one. I knew which stair creaked outside my door. I had not learned the name of the person who lived downstairs.

One Saturday, she knocked and asked if I had a spare chair. Her sister was coming for lunch. I had a blue wooden one with an uneven leg. She said a folded newspaper would sort that out, and carried it down herself.

An hour later, she came back. Her sister had canceled. The soup was already made. Would I help her eat it?

I nearly said I was busy. I had a whole afternoon of being busy planned: groceries, laundry, rearranging the same pile of books. Instead, I found myself sitting on my own blue chair in somebody else's kitchen.

Her name was Mara. The soup needed salt. We talked about the building's unreliable hot water and a bakery that had closed before I moved in. When I left, she handed me a container and asked me to bring it back whenever.

I washed it that evening. On Tuesday, I returned it with a slice of cake from the grocery store. It was an ordinary cake, still in its plastic box. I had spent ten minutes deciding whether that was embarrassing.

The chair is still downstairs. I have another one now. Last Thursday, I set out two plates before I had asked anyone to dinner. Then I went down and knocked.