One Stall, Two Rivals

For nine years Liesel had sold her honey-cakes at stall fourteen, and for eight of them Anton had sold his roasted almonds directly across the lane, and they had perfected the art of hating each other politely. It was a clean rivalry, the kind a small market needs. He undercut her mulled price by twenty cents; she opened ten minutes earlier; he had once, scandalously, scented his almonds with cardamom, which everyone knew was *her* spice. They never raised their voices. They simply waged a long, courteous war of glühwein and gingerbread across four metres of cobblestone, and Liesel would have told you she preferred it that way. She had been a widow long enough to find the warmth of a feud easier to carry than other kinds. Then the river came up in the night. She arrived in the blue dark before opening to find half the market a wreck — canvas down, stalls buckled, the lane a sheet of black ice and floodwater. Stall fourteen was gone. Anton's, across the way, was gone. And the market master, grey with no sleep, was moving down the row delivering the same flat sentence to everyone: *one stall each that can still stand, two traders to a booth, take it or go home for the season.* He paired them, of course. Of course he did. "Absolutely not," said Anton, at the exact moment Liesel said the same words, which was the first thing they had agreed on in eight years and did nothing to