The Lanterns We Took Home

Mira had drawn a door on her lantern because she could not make the corners meet. A door gave the crooked side somewhere to belong.

She was adding a blue handle when a man at the next table said, "Mine looks like something the council would condemn."

His lantern sagged over a saucer of glue. He held it upright with one finger and regarded it without much hope.

"You've given it a very large roof," she said.

"I was being generous."

"To the roof?"

"I hadn't thought it through."

She laughed. He looked pleased, but not as if he had been waiting to collect the laugh.

They were in the community hall on an evening when Mira might otherwise have gone home, heated something and watched the room become dark around her. She had moved into a flat above the shoe shop three months earlier. At forty-five, she disliked the phrase new beginning. It made ordinary unpacking sound like an announcement.

A handwritten notice at the cinema where she sold tickets had offered a lantern-making evening. She had come because the materials were supplied and nobody had mentioned introducing yourself to the room.

"Jonah," the man said.

"Mira."

"Do you know what happens when the glue dries?"

"To the lantern?"

"I was hoping it would become competent."

She turned his saucer so he could reach it without knocking over his roof. She did not repair the lantern. He kept working, and they stayed until the hall clock made a small, uncertain sound at nine.

Nora, who organised the evening, asked everyone to leave their lanterns to dry. They would put little battery lights inside them for the hall's autumn gathering the following week. The lanterns would remain in the building, not float into the sky or river. It was Nora's small local event, not a ceremony Mira was expected to know.

"Your door is lovely," Nora told her. "Could you do a few more for the front table?"

Mira almost said yes. She had worked four long cinema shifts that week and had spent her free morning carrying a parcel for a neighbour. She was tired of reaching the end of her own time and finding it already promised.

"One more," she said. "Not a few."

"One would help."

Nora said it easily. Mira had prepared for more resistance and did not know where to put the preparation.

Jonah was taking his coat from the hook.

"You're good at this," he said.

"At doors?"

"At knowing when one is enough."

She looked at him. He seemed serious.

"I've only just started."

"Then it was a convincing first attempt."

He walked with her as far as the corner. He worked in a school kitchen, he told her, and could make lunch for a roomful of children but had never mastered buying the right amount for himself.

"I have six carrots waiting for an occasion."

"Carrots don't usually need a guest of honour."

"These have had time to develop expectations."

At the corner, she went toward the shoe shop and he crossed toward the estate behind the cinema. They said goodnight. She had reached her door before she realised she was still smiling.

On Friday, Jonah appeared at the cinema. Mira was behind the glass with a tray of coins and a pencil that had lost its eraser.

"One ticket," he said, "to the film with the least complicated furniture."

"That's not how we list them."

"It should be considered."

He had chosen a quiet comedy, the sort people described afterward by remembering a scene rather than the plot. She sold him a ticket. He paid the proper price and did not ask her to use a staff favour.

"Are you watching it?" he asked.

"Working until ten."

"Of course."

He glanced at the clock, then back at her.

"Would you like a walk on Sunday? Not to carry lanterns. Just a walk."

She wanted to answer before she could replace wanting with a practical objection.

"Yes. After lunch."

They arranged to meet outside the cinema at two. He wrote his number on the back of an unused receipt. The pencil tore a little hole through the paper. He looked apologetic.

"I pressed too hard."

"I can still read it."

When he had gone into the screening, Mira put the receipt in her wallet. For the rest of the shift, every customer seemed to require a complicated explanation of which door led to which room. She gave each explanation patiently. Between customers, she looked at the clock herself.

On Sunday, they took the longer path around the recreation ground. Jonah had brought a coat because the sky looked undecided. Mira had brought one because she disliked being cold. They agreed those were different reasons and then spent a minute trying to explain why.

He told her about the school kitchen's radio, which only worked when nobody particularly wanted to hear it. She told him about customers who asked the running time after the film had finished.

At a bench, they stopped. A dog came over to inspect Jonah's shoe and left without reaching a conclusion.

"Were you always at the cinema?" he asked.

"No. I used to work in a hotel office. Different tickets. Rooms instead of films."

"Do you like this better?"

"Some days. I like being able to go home and not keep answering the telephone in my head."

She had left a marriage the previous year. She told him that too, without giving him a performance of either injury or triumph. There had been enough of both in other conversations.

He had never married. There had been relationships, one long enough to leave him with a favourite saucepan that had not originally been his. He said it with affection rather than complaint.

"Do you still use it?"

"It's a very good saucepan."

"That's not what I meant."

He understood, then nodded.

"Yes. It's not a shrine. It's where I cook my dinner."

When they stood, he asked whether she wanted the longer route back as well. She said she did. Near the cinema, he touched her hand and waited. She opened hers, and they walked the last street together.

At the second lantern evening, Jonah's roof had dried at an angle. He had decided to leave it. Mira made the one extra lantern she had promised Nora, with a window instead of a door.

Nora came by with a list for Saturday's gathering. She needed people to put out chairs and carry the boxes from the store cupboard.

"Mira, you're so quick with things. Could you come early?"

Mira was deciding how much she wanted to give when Jonah said, "We could do it together."

She looked at him. He smiled.

There was the invitation she had been hoping for, and it came with chairs in it.

"I haven't said I can," she answered.

"Sorry. I thought—"

"I know."

Nora tapped her pencil against the list, then stopped.

"I'll ask someone else. Come for the gathering if you like. No early shift required."

Mira thanked her. The conversation had been small enough that nobody at the other tables looked up. That was a relief, though she felt foolish for needing one.

Afterward, Jonah helped wash the glue brushes. He did not approach her until she had put on her coat.

"I should have let you answer."

"Yes."

He waited for more. She was glad he didn't turn the word into an argument.

"I wanted to come with you," she said. "I didn't want another reason to be useful."

He looked down at the damp mark a brush had left on his cuff.

"I wanted you there. I made it sound like I wanted a second pair of hands."

She did not tell him it was all right before she had decided whether it was.

"Can we walk a little?" she asked.