Somewhere deep in the details of this city is a tiny apartment with a pair of picture windows. There, in the falling afternoon sun, lies an aging French bulldog called Mr. Belvedere, who spends his days gazing longingly into the outside world and lives for encounters with shrubbery and meatballs. When the door swings open and Jack appears, the dog casts a brief but suspicious glance his way and immediately returns to napping.

Hours go by in a listless cable TV vortex. Jack sits on the couch, thumbing through catalogs and drinking wine before he starts ambling around the apartment, adjusting the angles of knickknacks. Outside it is snowing. But only Mr. Belvedere, perched at the window on a turquoise tufted footstool, has noticed it. He is watching and waiting for Michele to come home from work.

There they sit, two stories up, nestled in a nook of the neighborhood. All around, the city’s grid is humming, its arteries and air in perpetual motion, buildings packed with the hodgepodge of history. And just below, Michele arrives on the corner, an unusually tall and freckled Eskimo, wrapped in winter.

She stops, cold air resting on the apples of her cheeks, and looks up. The street is still and profoundly quiet, like a holiday when everyone is already with family somewhere. No cars. No wind. Just the resonant crunch of her boots on the snowy sidewalk. Beyond the glittering white, across the street and through the night that hovers over the lake, she sees a small star-like light on the opposite hillside go dark.

For a moment she feels the urge to flee, to turn around and run at full speed. She wants to dive into the bar around the block and soak in the anonymity of its wooden booths and dingy neon, hit the road like an unhinged apostle of Kerouac, never returning to Jack and the thinning air of their shrinking apartment, free—of what, she doesn’t know exactly.

Meanwhile, Jack is dozing on their 1970s sofa, a worn biography of Miles Davis spread across his chest. He is dreaming of the Fourth of July back in Wisconsin—of dusk and lemonade, of heat still rising from the asphalt—when Mr. Belvedere spots Michele. He proceeds to leap from the footstool, a sudden beacon of enthusiasm, running from the window to the door and back as fast as his little legs can carry him, leaping, yapping (though it’s a bit unseemly), because he knows how to welcome home a lady.

Signaled by this ruckus, Jack pulls himself off the couch and saunters into the kitchen, where he loads leftover Indian food out of its cartons and onto a plate for Michele. As he sets it in the microwave, he thinks of the way things might have been—of life in a small town with homemade four-course breakfasts. Mr. Belvedere sits primly underfoot, supervising.

Two stories below, Michele turns her key in the lock and inhales deeply, almost steeling herself, before pushing the door open and ascending the stairs. Cursing the mottled carpet as she climbs, she wishes for a bigger, better place with a full-size refrigerator and unquestionable water pressure. She closes her eyes before entering the apartment and opens them to find only Mr. Belvedere smothering her with kisses. Listening from the kitchen, Jack marvels at the love his dog has grown to feel for her. He wonders what always holds him back.

When Michele finally joins him in the kitchen, her voice is still rich with the warmth of days spent playing high-stakes Scrabble and watching every last episode of Dallas in bed on Saturdays. She looks at him and longs to wrap her arms around him, to press herself against him. But her limbs will not cooperate, and he does not invite her closer. Still, it is hard to forget the feeling they had before the walls went up, when it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began, when they moved in and made room for two—with a view and a pair of picture windows.

For the next several minutes Jack and Michele rotate awkwardly up and down the galley of the kitchen, exchanging basic pleasantries about the day, her work, his. She thanks him for saving her dinner. And all the while Mr. Belvedere is parked picturesque in the doorway, noting every volley, wearing a brow of concern that only an aging French bulldog can.

They circle this distance and frustration like vultures. Jack chatters idly while loading the dishwasher and Michele watches, her hips leaning against the edge of the gold-flecked countertop, exercising the full force of her free will to prevent herself from criticizing his placement of every plate. Though she says nothing, Jack knows her well enough to feel the disapproval caught in her throat. He grows increasingly obstinate, carelessly stashing glasses on the bottom rack, bowls at all the wrong angles. He does this slowly as she seethes, each of them trapped, sharks divided by a thick pane of glass.

This stalemate threatens to suffocate them as the walls close in. In the silence you can hear them screaming, smashing sledgehammers against the glass in a desperate effort to connect. And yet neither knows the way to let love pass through a lifetime of fortresses. Instead Jack drops the last bit of silverware into the dishwasher, closes it and turns to face Michele. She searches the smooth blue of his eyes for some sign of surrender. He gazes back at her through this forest of stillness and smiles softly before reaching for her hand.

Exhausted by all the commotion, Mr. Belvedere leaves Michele and Jack in the kitchen, returning to the tufted footstool where he resumes his post at the window.