t’s cooling on a rack on the kitchen counter. David is on the couch, cleaning under his fingernails with a corner of his Safeway card, and I’m in the kitchen, plucking red petals off a mini-rosebush plant, hoping they’re edible. We’re both getting ready, in our own ways. I’ll say this now: I love Milt and Janey together. Janey is my best friend, and she’s getting married. Milt is different. He’s the kind of man who can wear coloured socks. He knows how to play the mandolin. He buys commemorative stamps at the post office. He sends letters in the mail! David has some misgivings about Milt, but that’s because of his history with Janey. They aren’t in love anymore, obviously, but I know he still has a sweet spot for her.

David hears me clanking dishes in the kitchen. I’m looking for my milk glass cake plate, the one with the edges that look like lace. Bonnie? he asks me. Do you need any help in there?

He’s wearing that old apple green sweater Janey gave him years ago, the J. Crew with the raggedy cuffs. He wears it with his thumbs sticking out through the holes in the wrists. It’s so old it’s just falling apart. But the colour does make his green eyes bright. Like a jaguar’s. And the sweater fits nicely over his broad chest.

Are you going to change? I ask. I find my big white plate under all the other ones. The strawberries still need to be washed. They tumble over one another like drumbeats in the silver colander. When I turn off the taps, I can see that each berry is a small heart.

What’s wrong with this? he asks.

I thought it would be nice to dress up a little, I answer.

Apparently Milt has a black eye. Some guy at the Tudor House Pub in Esquimalt punched him in the face two nights ago, because Milt came in twirling his moustache inappropriately. A table thought Milt was staring at them — flirting? — and this guy stood up and walked over and punched him. But the moustache was a dare; the whole night out was a dare. He teaches English at Raymond Secondary and his Shakespeare class dared him. Milt got a kick out of it. The kids loved him. Growing his moustache for weeks, grooming it. He bought a kit with a tiny comb and a little pot of wax.

We haven’t seen Milt yet, but Janey said his eye looks ugly. And that it was sad, because Milt was just trying to be funny. He’s such an idiot, she said. I love him so much. On the phone her voice sounded squeaky. This was her Milt voice. What do you do for a bruise like that? she asked.

I don’t know, darling, I said. Ice it?

I thought maybe lemon juice, she said. I use it for my dark circles.

I reach for the paring knife and slice the asterisk of green leaves off the top of each strawberry. I lick red juice off my fingers and wipe my hands on my jeans, and then David is standing up behind me.

You make everything so pretty, he says.

But I hear it like, You make such a big fuss about everything.

When I moved into this apartment with David, one of the first things I did, after unpacking the kitchen and loading up my bookshelf, was replace the brass bedroom doorknob with a crystal one I found years ago in a drawer at an estate sale. It’s been my bedroom doorknob for years. I have actually moved this crystal doorknob from three different apartments. The estate sale drawer also held a handkerchief with the letter M embroidered on the corner, and some crumpled-up newspaper from 1962. I had to buy the whole drawer just to get the doorknob. It’s true that I didn’t ask David if he liked it first. He was at work and I had the day off, and I got out the screwdriver and found the doorknob in a cardboard box in our closet. I just put it on without thinking about how he’d react. It was our first fight.

Let’s stay home, he says to me now.

I want to see his eye, I say. Don’t you want to know how he’s doing?

David lifts the hair off my neck and kisses the skin behind my ears. I can smell cigarette smoke and sandalwood soap. He hasn’t been this close to me all day. His fingers play on my waist. I want to turn around and find his mouth. Then he whispers, his warm voice at my ear: Milt is an idiot.

I push David’s hands off my hips and reach for the bowl of whipped cream. I whipped it with my grandma’s old egg beater while the cake was still in the oven. The beater is an old one with a wooden handle. You turn the crank with your hand and the steel beaters spin together. They’re interlocked. They don’t make things like this anymore.

That’s not fair, I say. Besides, Milt is good for Janey.

David is quiet behind me while I push white cream all over the cake with a rubber spatula. I’m not being very careful with it, but the cream is forgiving. It looks fine. Then he jabs his finger into the top of it.