"I've been doing ankle exercises like a man preparing for the ballet of mediocrity."
"Mediocrity that shows up is still a kind of art."
They passed the Christmas tree. A child in a puffy purple coat pointed at Rowan's form and told her father, "I want to go backward like that." Rowan smiled without breaking stride, a coach even off the clock. Theo felt a familiar ache watching her: admiration mixed with the knowledge that bodies kept their own calendars. Her knee would hum later. His pride would, too, in a different key.
Near the far curve, Rowan slowed. "Tell me something true that isn't about us."
Theo thought. "My mother called yesterday. She's dating a man who repairs clocks. She says he understands time better than my father ever did. I don't know if that's wisdom or a joke she's still workshopping."
"Both can be true."
"Your turn."
Rowan watched the ice ahead. "One of my kids asked if coaches were just skaters who got tired. I said coaches were skaters who learned how to hand the ice to someone else without disappearing from it. I don't know if I believe that every day. I wanted to believe it while I said it."
"That counts," Theo said.
"Does it?"
"In radio, we call that a working truth. It holds until a better one arrives. You don't throw it out for being incomplete."
They completed two loops that way, trading working truths, until Theo's ankles filed a motion to adjourn and Rowan mercifully steered them out. At the booth, Lottie took a five-dollar tip for the cocoa fund and promised a second print by Saturday. Ned was not at the tree. The empty space where he sometimes stood felt oddly like a blessing left on a porch.
January arrived with sidewalk salt and resolutions people lied about immediately. Rowan and Theo did not call themselves a couple in public for three careful weeks. They called themselves Thursday dinners and Sunday afternoon walks and one disastrous attempt at teaching Theo a swizzle that ended with both of them laughing on a rink bench while a toddler judged them silently.
They also argued.
The first real argument of the new year happened on a Wednesday in Theo's kitchen over a calendar. His producer had asked him to fly to Chicago for a live taping on the same Saturday Rowan had scheduled a parent showcase for her advanced group. Theo put the taping on the calendar in pencil, then stared at it as if pencil could make the conflict theoretical.