How these two meet
The accusation neither of you has ever made, and that you have both assembled in private, is that the other one needs it more.
It is not true and it is not false. What is true is that there is no audience in this house, and you each built a life on the assumption that there would always be one somewhere in the room.
So the two of you go out a great deal. Not because either of you is shallow: because a room with other people in it has been the only place either of you could give the other one what they came for.
The Sun does not move off its centre and it never turns back. It is one of exactly two bodies here that never goes retrograde, and there is no second ruler in this house to argue with it. Two Suns, one wheel.
And here is what has been going on in the kitchen at eleven at night, when there is nobody to perform for: neither of you has once been bored of the other one. That is the whole of it. It is not a large finding and it is the only one that has held for eleven years.
For one of you, the work is watching the other do the thing, at home, with nobody else there, and saying so afterwards.
For the other, the work is doing it anyway, at home, in the smaller version, and not apologising for the size.
And a third: the accusation is going to keep assembling itself. Say it out loud once and it stops being a private document.
The question
What would it take for one of you to be the audience?
One conscious action
one performance, no audience
This week one of you does the thing you do, at home, for the other one only.
The other watches it properly, phone in another room. That is the entire exercise and it is harder than it sounds for both of you.
Two Suns and no second body anywhere in the house, and after eleven years the finding is that neither of you has been bored, which is small and unglamorous and is not going to make anybody envy you, and it is the thing that has actually held.