He came back around the desk and slid it out from under my hand before I got to the top line.

“Forgot that one.”

Then his palm on the banister, then the guest room door, then just the furnace pushing warm air up through the floor registers.

At eleven I came down for the last of the decaf and found Douglas at the counter building a sandwich with both hands.

“Margaret.” He said it loudly, the way a man says a thing across a parking lot.

“Clean run tomorrow.