Power of Attorney

The kettle clicked off, and Dana didn’t look at me while she poured. Coffee for her, tea for me, the way it had gone for months. Sunday light sat on the dining table in a clean square. She set my mug down, wiped her hands on a dish towel, and slid a single sheet across the wood.

I picked it up because it was in front of me. The heading was in her handwriting, which I could have picked out of a pile.

Agreement between the parties.

I laughed. “You drafted us.”

She didn’t. She stood on her side of the table with one hand on the back of a chair and watched my face the way she watched a client find the sentence that mattered.

The laugh died in my mouth. “Dana.”

“Read it,” she said.

I read the first line out loud, because saying it made it smaller. “This agreement is a private game. It concerns no money and no property. It binds nothing a court would recognize.”

“That’s the point of the first line,” she said.

“Clause one. The truck gets cleaned. Not eventually. On a day she names.” I looked up. “You have seen the truck.”

“I have ridden in the truck. Clause one is not a joke to me.”

“Clause two. Texts get answered in full sentences. No thumbs-up where a sentence would do. No disappearing into a job site for six hours and calling it busy.” I tapped the page. “You wrote ‘emoji’ and then crossed it out.”

“I decided against legislating punctuation.” Her mouth almost moved. “Keep going.”

“Clause three. Sunday afternoons default to this house unless one of us says otherwise before noon.” I took a sip of tea. It was too hot. “I was already here.”

“You were here because I asked. The clause makes the asking into a habit.”

I set the mug down and found I was sitting straighter. “Clause four. During the term, Will follows Dana’s instructions about how the week is spent, provided the instructions are reasonable and given in writing.”

I stopped.

She waited.

“Provided they’re in writing,” I said. “So if you tell me something on the phone, it doesn’t count. And ‘the week’—you didn’t define it. A week can be Monday to Friday. Weekends fall out. And ‘reasonable’ is a door I can drive the truck through, clean or not.”

“Mm.”

“That’s the one,” I said. “That’s my door.”

She reached into the folder she hadn’t opened yet and took out a narrow strip of paper, already written, already dated today. She laid it under clause four.

I read that too. “Amendment. Instructions may be spoken or written. ‘Week’ means seven days. ‘Reasonable’ means Dana decides it is, and if Will disagrees he says so at the time, not three days later in a joke.” I stared at the strip. “You wrote this before I got here.”

“I wrote it on Thursday.”

“Because you knew I’d find it.”

“Because you always find it. That’s half of why I like you.” She said it plainly, then looked at the window as if the yard needed checking. “Read the rest.”

“Clause five. Either party may end this at any time, for any reason, by saying so. Out loud. No period of notice. No penalty.” I let that sit. “You put the exit in the middle.”

“I didn’t want it at the bottom where people stop reading.”

“Clause six.” My voice came out quieter, so I made myself finish. “Decisions in the bedroom are Dana’s. When Will agrees to one, he says so out loud. He doesn’t nod and let her guess.” I put the page flat. “That’s not funny.”

“No.”

“Clause seven is the exit again, in case someone skipped five. And a line at the end for initials. Two sets. Date blank.” I turned it over. The back was empty. “One page.”

“I didn’t need two.”

The clock in the kitchen ticked. Somewhere outside, a neighbor’s mower started and quit.

“You went quiet at dinner,” I said. “I told you to take over my life. I thought it was a bit.”

“It was a bit,” she said. “And then it wasn’t, for me. I went home and I couldn’t tell which one you’d meant.”

“So you wrote a contract.”

“So I wrote the thing I actually wanted, where you could see it and walk if you hated it.” She pulled her chair out and sat, finally. Her coffee had skinned over. She pushed the mug aside. “Two men before you said they liked this. Liked me deciding. Liked the way I am in a room. The first one wanted it until his friends were around. The second one wanted it until I used it, and then he said I was too much and that I’d tricked him into a mood.” She folded her hands. They were steady. Her eyes weren’t. “I am not interested in being a mood.”

I didn’t have a joke ready. That was new enough that I noticed it.

“I never told anybody this,” I said.

She nodded once, a small permission, and didn’t fill the space.

“I go for women who take the lead,” I said. “I have since I was old enough to know what I was doing. I pick the fight I’ll lose on purpose. Then I spend the rest of it finding the crack in whatever she asked, so I never have to say I wanted to be told. If she notices, I turn it into charm. If she doesn’t, I get bored and call it something else.” I looked at the amendment she’d written on Thursday. “You noticed before I signed anything. That’s the frightening part. The funny part is that I’m still sitting here.”

“Are you bored?”

“No.”

“Are you going to turn this into charm?”

“I already tried. You didn’t laugh.”

She let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh either. “Good. I don’t want charm for this. I want the sentence.”

“Which sentence?”

“The one where you don’t make a door out of it.”

I looked at clause six again. The letters were small and careful. She’d pressed harder on the line about saying it out loud.

“If I initial this,” I said, “and you tell me to come upstairs some Sunday and wait while you decide what happens, I say yes out loud or I say no out loud. I don’t get to smirk my way through it.”

“Yes.”

“And if I hate it, I say I hate it, and it’s done.”

“Yes. Same if I hate it.” She met my eyes. “I might. I don’t know how I’ll be when it isn’t a page.”

“You’re nervous.”

“I’m terrified,” she said, almost lightly, and the lightness failed. “I have been since I printed the heading. You laughing was the best and worst second of my week.”

I stood up. The chair leg caught the rug and I freed it. I came around the table because sitting across from her had started to feel like a trick I was still running.

She put one finger on my chest and stopped me. Not hard. Exact.

“Not because you feel sorry that I said terrified,” she said.

“I’m not sorry.”

“Then why are you on this side of the table?”

“Because I wanted to be closer before I answer a page.” I covered her hand with mine, her finger still against my shirt. “That’s not a yes to the initials. That’s a yes to you.”

She looked at my mouth. I didn’t ask. She pulled me down by the wrist, and I went.

The kiss was not careful for the first second and then it was. Her other hand came up into my hair and stayed there, holding me at the angle she wanted. I kissed her back. I had kissed her before, quick ones at her door, one in the truck that tasted like the orange she’d been eating. This was her deciding, and me letting her, with my hand on the side of her face and her pulse under my thumb where I held her wrist.

She made a small sound and didn’t pull away. I didn’t either. When she eased back, her forehead rested against mine for a breath, and then she let go of my hair and sat down again, as if the chair had been the plan all along.

My mouth was warm. The page was still between us, unsigned.

She uncapped a pen. The cap clicked against the table. She held the pen out in the air between her hand and mine. She was smiling, a real one, thin and hopeful, and she didn’t say anything to move me faster.

I stood there with the offer an inch from my fingers and the week looking like something I might actually hand her.