The Booth Got Smaller
The booth did not change. Something else did.
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"You're going to want the corner side."
He said it before she sat down. She looked at him, and then she looked at the booth. Fixed bench. Narrow table. The kind bolted to the floor of a building that decided a long time ago how big a person gets to be.
"I fit fine."
"I know you do."
She took the corner side.
Her sister came for lunch in March. That was the one time anybody said it out loud.
"She's not the size she was at Christmas," her sister said, to him, across her. "You've noticed."
He said that she was happy. He said it kindly, and he said it while refilling her glass, and her sister watched him fill it and did not say the next thing.
Nobody said the next thing again after that.
The booth stopped being somewhere she sat. It became somewhere she got into, and then somewhere she got into in stages. Bag first. Coat. Then the long sideways lower that ends when the table stops you.
Creak.
"Still fits," she said.
"Still fits," he agreed.
He had watched her sister decide not to try again. He had wanted her to decide that. He was clear with himself about wanting it, and he ordered dessert for the table without asking.
The table did not stop her. The table just stopped.
"Can you — "
"Don't."
"I was going to say I'd have them move it."
"They can't. It's bolted."
She said it like a fact about the world, and ordered what she had last time, and more of it.
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