“Sorry,” he said, though there was nothing to apologize for.
The cashier hadn’t noticed him yet. The line was moving. Nobody was waiting on him for anything. He said it to the air between himself and the counter, the way other people clear their throats.
His wife used to count them. “That’s four,” she’d say at dinner. “Four since we sat down.” He’d laugh and say sorry, and she’d hold up five fingers, and they’d both laugh, and he’d feel the warm flush of being known by someone who found his defects endearing rather than structural.
After she died he kept counting for a while. Force of habit. He got to eleven one morning before the mail came and realized he’d been apologizing to the kitchen.
“Sorry,” he told the cashier, handing over exact change. She said, “You’re fine.” People always said that. You’re fine. As if the question had been whether he was fine. The question had never been whether he was fine.
The bag was heavier than expected. Cans he didn’t remember choosing. He adjusted his grip on the walk home, and when the handles bit into his fingers he said sorry to no one, and the street accepted it the way streets accept everything — without acknowledgment, without refusal, the way a surface bears weight it doesn’t know it’s bearing.
At the door he paused. The key went in wrong the first time. “Sorry,” he said.
The lock didn’t forgive him. It just opened.