The papers were flopping off the edge of his desk

The papers were flopping off the edge of his desk, trembling in the breeze from the window; her hand reached out to stop them. He did this with dishes too, slid a plate onto the counter so it jutted off the side, asking to be wrecked. She liked putting things to rights. Putting something to rights was an untranslatable phrase, he might say in a pedantic mood. No, she would think; you could come pretty close in a Romance language. Mettere a posto, to put in place. She figured that a lover who hung the moon was actually untranslatable, but neither of them believed that of each other anymore.

A blue jay at the feeder warned off finches with a curdling squawk. May was already hot in Chicago. Leonie swiveled in his chair, its kittenish squeak a sound she associated with deep thought. He’d said he was working on another translation for Edizioni Sur, but she knew her way around Italian, and this was gibberish. “Eesh shmara mazurka.”