Chapter Eighteen: The Market Runs
899 Words
The market bags were heavy and Betty was not letting Rosalina forget it.
“I carried the big one,” she announced, dropping it on the kitchen counter with the energy of someone filing an official complaint. “The big one with the tomatoes AND the rice AND whatever that thing is—”
“Plantain,” Rosalina said, setting her own bags down.
“Plantain. I carried everything. I want that acknowledged.”
“Acknowledged.”
“Formally.”
“Betty, I formally acknowledge that you carried the heavy bag.”
“Thank you.” Betty began unpacking with the satisfied air of someone who had won something. “Brian!” she shouted toward the living room. “We’re back!”
“I know!” Brian’s voice came back. “I can hear you!”
“Smart mouth!” Betty called, already smiling.
From the living room came the particular sound of Brian — controller clicking, some game doing something dramatic, the easy comfortable noise of a twelve year old in his element. Rosalina stood in the kitchen doorway for just a moment and listened to it.
He sounded fine.
He always sounded fine.
She went back to the shopping.
“So,” Betty said, in the specific tone she used when she was building toward something. “Alexia called me today.”
“Mm.”
“She’s having a thing. At Lux. Friday night.” Betty folded a bag with careful precision. “Music. Dancing. Good people. The full thing.”
“That’s nice for her.”
“She invited me.” A pause. “She invited both of us actually. I may have told her about you.”
Rosalina looked at her.
Betty looked back with the expression of someone who was innocent until proven guilty and intended to remain so.
“Betty—”
“You need to get out Rosie.” Her voice shifted — still warm but real now, underneath the performance. “You work until eight every night. You come home and you check on Brian and you do laundry and you go to sleep. You’ve been doing that for two weeks.”
“I like laundry.”
“Nobody likes laundry.” Betty pointed at her. “One night. Alexia’s thing. We go out, we dance a little, we come home at a reasonable hour. That’s all I’m asking.”
Rosalina looked at her best friend.
At the genuine concern underneath the cheerful pressure. At the eyes that had known her long enough to see everything she tried not to show.
“I’m fine Betty,” she said. Gently. “I’m really fine.”
“I know you’re fine,” Betty said. “I want you to be more than fine. Just for one night.”
Brian appeared in the kitchen doorway with the timing of someone who had been listening and had decided this was a good moment to exist visibly.
“You should go,” he said.
Rosalina looked at him.
“I’m fine here,” he said, with the unbothered certainty of a twelve year old who had decided to be mature about this and was quite pleased with himself for it. “I’ll eat the food in the fridge. I know how the microwave works. I’ve known how the microwave works for three years.”
“You once put a metal spoon in the microwave,” Rosalina said.
“I was nine.” He looked at Betty. “Tell her to go.”
Betty gestured at him with open hands. “The child has spoken.”
Rosalina looked at Brian. At his easy face and his bright eyes and the colour in his cheeks that was good tonight, genuinely good.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
Betty opened her mouth.
“That means no,” Brian told her.
“I know what it means,” Betty said sadly.
She said goodnight to Betty at the door an hour later, Brian already in bed with his book, the apartment quiet in the particular way it got quiet when the day had finished with them all.
She changed. Washed her face. Sat on the edge of her bed in the dark for a moment.
The folder was in the drawer.
She didn’t open it. She never opened it at night — had made that rule for herself a long time ago because opening it at night led to lying awake with numbers in her head and numbers in her head led to the specific kind of tired that sleep didn’t fix.
But she knew what was in it.
The consultant’s report. The timeline. The figure at the bottom of the page that had not changed.
She thought about Brian’s laugh in the living room tonight. About the colour in his cheeks. About the way he had said I’ve known how the microwave works for three years with the complete confidence of someone who had all the time in the world.
He had time.
She was going to make sure of it.
She lay back. Looked at the ceiling.
This job, she thought. This strange, demanding, impossible job on the sixtieth floor with its specific silences and its four-word praise and its green eyes she had absolutely filed under irrelevant.
This job was going to fix it.
She closed her eyes.
Sleep, when it came, came quietly.
*******
- Writer
