Raspberry Season

Gina was thirty-three years old and she had forty-one days left in the city, and she knew that number because she'd been counting since the acceptance letter came from the school in Lyon. She sat on the floor of Camille's apartment that September afternoon with a small suitcase open in front of her, trying to decide if two coats was one too many for a person who planned to spend two years learning to cook in France. The apartment sat on the fourth floor of an old brick building near the harbor, and the big windows let in the kind of late afternoon light that made everything look like a photograph, which was probably why Chester, the photographer from next door, liked the building so much. Camille, who was twenty-nine and off visiting her sister in Portland, had left Gina the keys and one instruction, which was to eat whatever she wanted out of the pantry, and Gina had taken that instruction seriously.

The pantry was the best part of the place. Camille preserved things the way other people collected records, with real commitment, and the kitchen counter now held a row of jars in amber and red and deep purple, fig jam and apricot preserves and pickled beans and a big bowl of late raspberries that had gone soft enough to need eating today. Gina had been tasting them alone for a week, standing barefoot at the counter with a clean spoon each time, feeling a little guilty and not stopping. She'd met Camille exactly once, for the key handoff at a coffee shop three weeks back, and the woman had waved a hand at the pantry and said take everything, so she had.

The knock came while she was folding a sweater over her knee.

She opened the door and there was Chester, thirty-four, holding a jar of apricot jam the way a man returns a library book. He was tall and a little rumpled, camera strap over one shoulder, hair pushed around from the wind on the stairs.

"You left this on my doorstep a week ago," he said. "I've been eating it and I feel bad about that, so here it is, mostly empty, which I realize makes the gesture worse."

Gina laughed and took the jar. "You ate almost all of it and then brought me the carcass."

"I brought the carcass respectfully." He looked past her into the kitchen, where the row of jars caught the light. "Okay, hold on. Those were not all out last week. Camille's whole collection is lined up on that counter like a museum."

"She told me to eat my way through it," Gina said, stepping back so he could see. "And I have been. Alone, which felt pathetic, but it felt right at the time."

Chester set his camera bag down inside the door, which she took as a sign he wasn't leaving quickly. "Alone is a waste of jam like this. You should have a tasting. Two spoons, some crackers, you rate them one to ten. That's a real thing people do, I've seen it on television."

"That's an excuse to stand in this kitchen," she said, and he shrugged like he wouldn't argue the point, and somehow that was how it started.

They pulled stools up to the counter and he lined the jars up in order of color, light to dark, like a painter organizing a palette. Gina cut slices of baguette and set out a sleeve of plain crackers and a little dish of honey, and Chester narrated the whole thing in a bad sommelier voice that made her laugh until she had to put the knife down.

"This apricot," he said, spreading it thin, "has notes of apricot, with a finish of also apricot."

"You're a professional," she wheezed.

"Freelance," he said, mouth full. "Nobody pays me for adjectives."

The fig jam went on crackers, and it was darker and stranger than she expected, almost like wine. Chester held a cracker out and the jam came off the edge and ran down in a slow line, and Gina caught it on her thumb without thinking, the way you do when you've been cooking alone for weeks and nobody's watching. Then she realized he was watching. She went to wipe her thumb on a towel and he reached out and wrapped his hand around her wrist, gentle, asking with his eyes before he did anything.

"Can I?" he said.

She nodded, and he brought her thumb to his mouth and licked the fig jam off it, slow, his eyes on hers the whole time, and Gina felt her face go hot and something low in her stomach tighten up. Her thumb stayed in his mouth a second longer than it needed to, and then he let her wrist go and picked up his cracker like nothing had happened, and her heart was doing something unhelpful in her chest.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. So. Forty-one days."

"I know," he said. "I'm leaving too, sometime after the new year if the dates hold. Lisbon, six months, maybe longer." He turned his cracker over. "I've been trying to think how to say something to you for three weeks and the best I've come up with is that I don't want to waste the jam either."

"That was almost romantic and then you ruined it."

"I'm aware." He looked at her, and there was nothing joking in it now. "Gina. I like you. I've liked you since you held the laundry window open for me while I climbed through it like an idiot."

"You were very graceful," she said. "Like a cat."

"Like a drunk cat." He smiled and then it settled again. "Tell me if I'm reading this wrong."

She looked at the suitcase open in the other room, and at the forty-one days, and at this man with jam at the corner of his mouth, and she thought about how the last three weeks of talking through his door had been the best part of her days. She reached over and took a clean jar off the counter, the raspberry one, the last full jar of the season, and worked the lid off with a twist that hurt her wrist a little. Then she scooped a fingerful, deep red and thick, and held it out to him.

"Taste," she said, and her voice came out lower than she meant it to.

Instead of taking her hand he took her whole arm and pulled her off the stool, and she came around the counter laughing, and he put one hand on her jaw and kissed her. It was soft first, careful, and she could taste the raspberries on his mouth and on hers, sweet and a little tart, and then she opened her lips and it stopped being careful. Her hand found his shirt and held on. The afternoon light was coming through the big windows and she could feel it warm on her back and his other hand settle at her waist and she thought, wildly, that this was the best thing she had tasted all week, and she'd eaten an entire jar of apricot preserves.

When they broke apart they were both breathing different.

"So that's a no on reading it wrong," he said.

"That's a no!" She laughed and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and then wished she hadn't, because she wanted to keep the taste. "I'm leaving in forty-one days, Chester. I need to be honest about that, I'm not going to be here, and I don't know what this is."

"I'm leaving sooner or later," he said. "So maybe we don't have to know what it is. Maybe we just eat the rest of the jam and see what happens."

"Talk about low standards."

"I have very high standards," he said, and kissed the corner of her jaw, and she shivered. "The jam is just a bonus."

She looked up at him and then down at the bowl of raspberries going soft on the counter, and she picked one up and pressed it gently against his lips, and he bit it off her fingers, and the juice ran down both their hands.

Gina pulled her shirt off over her head before she could think about it too hard, because she had learned in her thirty-three years that if you thought about these things too long you talked yourself out of them, and she had forty-one days and a whole jar of raspberries and no intention of talking herself out of anything. Chester set his camera down on the far counter first, out of the way, careful, like the camera was a guest too, and then his hands came up to her shoulders.

"You're sure," he said, and it wasn't really a question, but she answered it anyway.

"I'm sure. Are you sure?"

"I climbed through a laundry window for you three weeks ago. I've been sure since the window."

And then her bra was off and the afternoon light was on her skin, warm and gold, and he was looking at her the way he probably looked at sunsets, patient and like he had all the time in the world, which they both knew they didn't. He reached past her for the raspberry jar and dipped two fingers in and dragged them across her collarbone, slow, and the jam was cool and a little sticky and she shivered even though the kitchen was warm.

"Hold still," he said.