A pale rectangle remained on the shelf above Emina's desk. For years, her first camera had stood there, heavy and scratched, with a strap she had sewn herself. When Haris asked where it was, she said she had taken it for cleaning. She turned toward the monitor before he had to believe her face.
Their fifth anniversary fell in a month when both their fees were late. Haris played in restaurants; Emina photographed products for other people's shops. They kept money for their own studio in a blue box. Sometimes, they opened it, counted the same notes and spoke about large windows as though they already had them.
Once, in an estate agent's window, they found a space exactly like the one they imagined. Haris photographed the advertisement, while Emina calculated how many extra shoots she would need just to pay for heating. After that, they stopped looking in windows. They did not stop saying the studio would open. That sentence was a little household habit, like leaving a light on until the other came home.
The previous week, Emina had heard Haris decline a booking on the phone because his amplifier was broken. A day later, she sold her old camera to a collector. She kept the strap. She bought him a small amplifier, good enough that he would no longer need to borrow equipment, and left it with a neighbor until their anniversary.
Meanwhile, Haris was speaking to the owner of an empty ground-floor shop. It had a large window, a damp wall and affordable rent. To pay the deposit, he sold the guitar he rarely took out of the house. He told Emina it was being repaired. He also bought a new camera strap, very like the old one but without its frayed edge.
That evening, they ate potatoes from the same baking dish because they did not want to wash two plates. Emina brought out her box first. Haris smiled, then stopped. From his pocket, he took the shop key and the receipt for the strap. They did not immediately understand the whole mishap. First, she asked where he would plug in the amplifier. He asked what she would use to open the studio.
"The backup equipment," she said at last. "We have it. We've just been pretending we don't exist without our favorite things."
Even so, she was upset. She resented him committing to rent without her. He admitted being troubled that she had not considered his broken equipment their shared problem. They talked for a long time, until the gifts stopped looking like proof of generosity and became two decisions they should have made together.
The next day, they returned the amplifier and strap. They offered the landlord to paint the wall themselves in exchange for part of the rent. He accepted. At the opening, Haris played a borrowed guitar, and Emina took photographs with her backup camera. The blue box stood on the windowsill, now filled with receipts. On its lid, they wrote the schedule of their free evenings.