Page 80 of Crosswind

"I'm looking at the barber's work," I say.

"You're looking at me."

"The barber's work involves you."

He grins at the mirror. He looks, I note this, as I note most things, extraordinarily good. Sharp and clean and warm. The look of someone who has been properly attended to.

I look at him in the mirror.

"You look good," I say.

He meets my eyes. "Good."

"Yes."

"Just good." He tilts his head slightly in the mirror. A studied neutrality.

"Patrick." I hold his gaze. "You're beautiful. You know that already."

He meets my eyes in the mirror. The corner of his mouth. "I like hearing it from you."

The barber, who has been quietly finishing Patrick's neck line and has, I now realise, been following the entire exchange with the expression of someone trying very hard not to laugh, puts down her scissors.

"Sorry," she says, in Dutch. She is smiling. "But you two are very cute." She looks at Patrick in the mirror, then at me. "And very handsome. Both of you."

Patrick looks at her. Then at me. The expression of someone who has just received unexpected backup.

"Thank you," he says, with great dignity.

"See," he says to me. The expression of someone who has received unexpected backup.

"Let's go home," I say.

He grins at the barber. She smiles back. We go.

Home at six-thirty. Patrick drops onto the sofa with the particular satisfaction of a very large man who has had a full body massage and a facial and a barber treatment and would like to remain horizontal indefinitely. He is not thinking about dinner. He is not thinking about anything. This is, I note with quiet satisfaction, precisely the point.

I ordered dinner on Wednesday. From a restaurant on the Utrechtsestraat that does a very good lamb — the slow-cooked kind, the kind that requires a kitchen I cannot replicate on short notice. I timed the delivery for six-thirty-five.

The doorbell rings at six-thirty-four.

Patrick opens his eyes from the sofa. "What's that."

"Dinner," I say.

He looks at the door. Then at me. "You ordered dinner."

"Lamb," I say, going to collect it. "The good kind."

He follows me to the kitchen and watches me unpack the containers.

"There's bread as well," I say. "And a salad."

He looks at the containers, then at me. "You thought of everything."

"Eat something," I say.

He shakes his head once, not disagreement, something else, and sits down at the table.