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aroma of her husband’s cherry-flavored pipe tobacco.
    Marilena missed him somehow. It was true. It wasn’t love. It was familiarity. She wanted him home. She would not obsess about where he might be, what he might be doing, or with whom. She would just sit in the dark, sweating from her walk from the bus, reminiscing about the first time she laid eyes on Viviana Ivinisova.
    She had initially been offended when Sorin had arrived home from the university late that Tuesday afternoon. With her last class over by noon, she had rushed home to fix his favorite meal, grinding and grilling pork and beef and rolling it into spherical mititeli. Marilena knew she didn’t have to remind him—again—about his commitment that night, but he had to notice she was being overly helpful. When he arrived home, she took his book-laden leather bag so he could wrestle his bicycle into the flat.
    “Do I have time to change before eating?” he said. “I have a lot of work tonight.”
    Change? He never changed. And now, the evening he had promised to go with her, he was changing? And work? He always had work. But Sorin was one who never had to cram or rush. His routine was to read the paper, have a little dinner, study for several hours before watching the international news, then read until going to bed at midnight. His schedule could bear a couple of hours for her that evening.
    Marilena nodded. “You have time,” she said flatly. She couldn’t make him go. If she had to go alone, she would. But it wasn’t like him to renege. It took all the fortitude she could muster to keep from saying, “You haven’t forgotten, have you?” But forgetting was not part of Sorin’s makeup either. He was not the cliched absentminded professor.
    That left one possibility Marilena didn’t want to entertain. Sorin was toying with her. His passive-aggressive streak infuriated her, yet he was so clever about it she dared not challenge him on it. He always left room to turn the blame on her.
    He stopped by his massive bookshelves for a thick reference work—in case her small talk bored him, she presumed—and padded to the table in the flannel robe and slippers she had always wished he would wear when he worked at night. Yet if she had raised his having to dress again to fulfill his promise that evening, he would have said, “Of course. Why would you think I had forgotten?”
    And it would be on her. She would have been made to feel small, paranoid, a nagger. But that night she was on to him. She saw bemusement in his eyes as he sat. Normally better mannered, he immediately reached for the platter of meatballs and ladled himself a large portion. He inhaled noisily through his nose. “Your specialty,” he said. “You would have made someone a good housewife.”
    It was a joke she didn’t find humorous. “Why would I want to be a housewife when I can be your servant?”
    He laughed. “Touché.”
    Sorin ate with such relish that her pique began to fade. It returned, however, when he finished, expressed a cursory thanks, wiped his mouth and hands, and abruptly retired to his desk. Usually one cooked and the other tidied, but clearly all the chores were hers that night. She managed them noisily, hoping to interrupt his concentration, knowing he had provoked her.
    Her own desk and chair were in full view of his, so when it was nearly time to leave for the bus, she sat in plain sight, coat on, bag in her lap. Sorin read and made notes as if she were not there. Marilena wanted to tap her foot or drum her fingers, to scream, but she would not. She resolved to march out as soon as the clock reached a quarter past six, slam the door, and not speak to Sorin for weeks.
    Her respiration increased with a couple of minutes to go. Her jaw was set. Abruptly Sorin rose and stepped into the bedroom. Just as she was about to leave, he reappeared fully dressed and carrying a book. “We’d better get going,” he said. “You don’t want to be late.” It was not lost