Chapter 4

 

This is a prior draft to the version published on X. Changes are minimal.

The General was in my office when I arrived. He had switched on the computer but had not signed in. The screen was waiting for a password, and he was looking at it with the expression he usually reserved for employees who had misunderstood a simple instruction.

“The correspondence,” he said.

“I need to print it.”

He moved away from the desk. I put down my bag, entered the password, and opened the file I had prepared the night before. He remained beside me while the printer woke up in the hallway.

There were fourteen pages. I had considered reducing the size of the type to make them less cumbersome, then decided that fourteen pages were better than nine. I wanted the history of Mercer’s account to possess some physical weight.

The General took them without looking at the first page.

“Come in.”

In his office the blinds were still closed. There was a cold cup of coffee beside the telephone and the installation folder I had surrendered at the hotel. He put my correspondence on top of it.

“What did I tell you yesterday?”

“You told me it was a dinner.”

“And on Monday?”

“Not to send another collection email.”

He waited.

“I didn’t send one.”

As soon as I said it, I understood that I had made things worse. It had sounded considerably better while it was still in my head.

The General sat down.

“Do you think this is amusing?”

“No.”

“Because I spent forty minutes on the phone with him this morning, and I didn’t find it amusing.”

He pushed his phone toward me. An email was open. I could see Mercer’s name and a subject line referring to the two installations.

“Read it.”

Mercer wanted a complete reconciliation of the account, including all additional work, credits, and disputed items. Until it had been reviewed by his operations director, his office would hold payment. He also wanted future correspondence addressed to the General personally.

The email ended by saying that, given their long association, he was disappointed the matter had been handled in such an inappropriate way.

“There aren’t any disputed items,” I said.

“There are now.”

“They approved them. It’s in the emails.”

I reached for the pages. He let me find the message, then looked at the place I indicated.

“I know.”

“The operations director signed the changes.”

“I know that too.”

“Then he’s doing it out of spite.”

The General leaned back. For a moment he looked so much older than he had at dinner that I was ashamed of having noticed it with satisfaction.

“Perhaps. Will that help me pay anyone?”

I had brought fourteen pages proving that Mercer owed the money. The General appeared determined to discuss the fact that we did not have it.

“You can send the approvals again,” I said.

“You’re going to put them together. I’ll send them.”

“I already have.”

“Then you can put them together in a way that doesn’t require the man to read fourteen pages of emails from you.”

He moved the bundle back across the desk. I left it where it was.

“And the new site?” I asked.

“He says they’ll get other quotes before proceeding.”

That was the first thing I had not expected. The payment was already late; another delay, however unpleasant, could be incorporated into my account of how Mercer behaved. The new site had not yet become an invoice. It was a drawing, a preliminary equipment list, and three mornings the service manager had spent measuring spaces that did not quite correspond to the drawing.

“He hasn’t canceled it,” I said.

“No. He’s going to get other quotes.”

The General watched me consider the distinction.

“That may have happened anyway.”

“It may.”

He picked up his coffee, seemed to remember something about it, and put it down again.

“Is that the best you can do?”

I looked at the folder. The corner had bent where he had held it against his side the previous evening.

“I should have stopped after the first question.”

“You should not have asked the first question.”

I said nothing.

“Why did you?”

I had prepared answers, but they all seemed to belong to an earlier stage of the conversation. The balance was real. The requests had been polite. The invoices were approved. None of this explained why I had waited until his wife and several other people were at the table.

I could tell him about Polina. There was no practical obstacle. He had suspected her on Tuesday; he might even be expecting her name now. I imagined saying it and watching the anger change direction.

Then I imagined repeating our exchange exactly. Her asking. My objections. Her saying I needn’t. My doing it anyway.

“He was talking about how easy it was to sort things out,” I said.

“So you thought you’d show him.”

“I wanted an answer.”

“And now you have one.”

He stood and opened the blinds. Across the parking lot the warehouse door was going up. One of the technicians ducked under it before it had finished rising.

“You’re not to contact Mercer’s office again. No calls, no emails, no statements unless I approve them. That applies to his other companies as well.”

“Who’s going to follow up?”

He turned.

“I am.”

“All right.”

“And I want a written account of what happened. Today.”

“You were there.”

“Yes. I was.”

I picked up the papers.

At the door I stopped. I still wanted him to dismiss me. Not quite wanted it, perhaps, but wanted him to believe that I was prepared for it. I had spent part of the drive imagining myself leaving the office without a backward glance and had become attached to the scene.

“Am I continuing here?”

He looked at the clock.

“You’re going to prepare the reconciliation. After that we’ll see.”

There was no clean departure in this arrangement. I was to go back to my desk and improve the presentation of the money I had failed to collect.

I did so.

By half past nine I had the account divided into the original equipment orders, approved changes, credits, and payments received. The additional work came to forty thousand dollars. Mercer’s operations director had signed for every dollar of it, but I could already see which items would be questioned. A compressor replaced under the manufacturer’s warranty had generated a credit against one invoice and labor on another. The two entries were correct. Separated from their documents, they looked like an invitation to argue.

I attached the service report.

There was also the shelving. The original quote had said *by others*. Mercer’s construction manager had later asked us to supply it. I found his email, attached the revised order, and labeled the approval.

It was useful work. That was one of the more disagreeable things about the morning. I could not maintain that nothing useful remained to be done, nor that doing it required me to be treated as I had been treated. Both things were true, and neither canceled the other.

Luis came in to ask about mileage from the previous week.

“It’s in the reimbursement batch,” I said.

“Today?”

“The next one. Monday.”

“Okay.”

He had turned to leave when I remembered the dinner.

“Mercer said you did a good job getting the kitchen ready.”

Luis grinned.

“He ought to have seen it at six that morning.”

“He remembered your name.”

“I wrote my number on the panel. Told him to call if it gave him trouble.”

I nodded.

“He hasn’t called,” Luis said. “So I guess it’s still running.”

After he left I checked the cash forecast again. Payroll had been funded the day before from money already in the account. That was safe. Monday’s supplier balances were another matter. Without Mercer there would have to be a transfer, and the General had not yet told me from where.

I moved two proposed payments into a column marked *Awaiting funds*. This was easier than calling the people expecting them.

At ten twelve Polina answered my message from the night before.

*Yes.*

I looked at it for several seconds. She had reached home. That was what I had asked, and it was what she had told me. I had no grounds for disliking the reply.

I wrote, *He wants a written explanation.*

I did not send it.

Instead I returned to the reconciliation and found I had attached the same service report twice.

Blanche arrived shortly before noon. She had a receipt folded into the size of a business card and wanted to know whether the General had approved her reimbursement.

“For last night?” I asked.

“The deposit. I paid it on Monday so they would keep the room.”

She unfolded the receipt on my desk. Eighteen hundred dollars.

“He didn’t mention it.”

“He said he would.”

“I’ll ask him.”

“Thank you.”

She remained standing. I had expected her to sit, to ask what had happened that morning, or to resume the curious conversation she had begun in the break room on Tuesday. Her businesslike manner disappointed me. It suggested that my disgrace had not occupied everybody as thoroughly as it had occupied me.

“Was the rest of the evening pleasant?” I asked.

“It finished.”

“That wasn’t quite what I asked.”

“No.”

She put the receipt closer to the keyboard.

“I need it by Tuesday. Can you let me know?”

“If he approves it.”

“I understand.”

I looked at the paper. I had made almost three times that amount in a morning. The General had entertained his oldest client in a hotel room secured by Blanche’s credit card and was now leaving her to ask me for repayment.

“If it’s urgent, I could cover it until—”

“Why?”

The question was immediate and entirely without embarrassment.

“Until the transfer comes through.”

“Did you invite everyone?”

“No.”

“Then ask him to pay it.”

She smiled, but not as she had when she was teasing me about the room on Monday.

“You needn’t do that, Alexei.”

“It isn’t a great deal of money.”

“It’s eighteen hundred dollars.”

I could not tell whether she thought the amount large or simply thought it existed.

She picked up her bag. At the door she glanced back at the papers spread across my desk.

“You know, it would have cost you very little to let him say he’d check with his office.”

“He’d already said it before.”

“To you.”

“Does that make a difference?”

“It made one last night.”

She left before I could explain why it should not have.

At twelve thirty I sent the reconciliation to the General. He came in five minutes later, read it beside my chair, and asked whether the credits had already been deducted from the total.

“Yes.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes.”

He checked the subtotal himself. I watched him use the calculator for an operation the spreadsheet had already performed and felt every keystroke as an insult.

The figures agreed.

“Send me the attachments separately as well.”

“They’re in the folder.”

“Separately.”

I sent them separately.

Before he left I gave him Blanche’s receipt. He looked at it and closed his eyes for a moment.

“Monday,” he said.

“From which account?”

“I’m arranging that.”

I put the receipt with the other payments awaiting funds.

Polina came at one forty. She did not bring anything and did not sit down.

“Are you being fired?”

“Not while I’m useful.”

“What did he say?”

I told her about Mercer’s email and the new quotes. She listened without interrupting. When I mentioned the forty thousand in additional work, she asked whether any of it had been unauthorized.

“No. I have every approval.”

“Then send them.”

“I have.”

“All right.”

She moved into the room and put her hand on the back of the visitor’s chair. I thought she would sit then, but she did not.

“Did he ask about me?”

“He asked why I did it.”

“And what did you say?”

“That I wanted an answer.”

She pulled out the chair and sat.

“You did.”

“Apparently.”

“Why didn’t you tell him?”

I looked at her. The question had seemed easier when I had imagined her asking it. I had expected to be able to shrug, or say something that would show how little her protection had cost me.

“Because you told me to do it.”

She was quiet.

From reception came the sound of someone laughing, followed by the copier beginning a long job. Polina looked toward the open door, then back at me.

“That would be a reason to tell him.”

“Not to me.”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?”

She pressed her lips together. I had seen her impatient, amused, contemptuous, and occasionally so tired that speaking seemed an effort. I did not recognize the expression she had now. It was not gratitude. I had to begin there, because I wanted it to be gratitude badly enough to mistake almost anything for it.

“I told you that you needn’t,” she said.

“After you asked.”

“You could have stopped.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

I pushed the mouse away. The reconciliation filled the screen, all its little documents labeled and attached. I had spent half a day making it impossible for anyone to misunderstand the account and had made no comparable progress in explaining myself.

“What would you like me to say?”

“Something you mean.”

“I mean what I said.”

“That you did it because I asked?”

“Yes.”

She stared at me. Then she shook her head, once, and looked down at her hands.

“I didn’t ask you to keep going.”

I could have argued about the first question and everything that had followed it. Instead I remembered Mercer offering to have his office look, and the chance to let the matter disappear. I had been steady then. I had enjoyed being steady.

“No,” I said. “That part was mine.”

She looked up.

For a moment the room seemed less crowded with things I needed to prove. I could have told her that I was frightened of losing the job, despite what I had said to the General. That I had not slept. That the worst part of the evening had been seeing her turn back to de Grieux as though our small, private disaster were over.

“But I’m not going to use you to get out of it,” I said.

The moment passed.

She rose and walked to the window. A delivery truck blocked most of the view. She could see its white side, a mirror, and the branches she had liked on Tuesday.

“You make it sound as though I’ve asked you for something enormous.”

“You asked me for something that mattered.”

“And now I owe you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No.”

“I’ve never said that.”

She turned.

“Then why are you angry with me?”

I stood up. There was not enough room for both of us to move about without appearing to approach the other. I stayed behind the desk.

“Because you act as though none of it means anything.”

“I came here to find out what happened.”

“To find out whether I told him.”

Her face changed.

“If that were all I wanted, I could have sent a message.”

This was true, or could have been. I was so quick to seize it that I nearly forgot the accusation I had just made.

She picked up her phone from the chair where she had set it. The screen lit in her hand. I saw de Grieux’s first name before she turned it away.

“Does he know about this?” I asked.

“He was at dinner.”

“I mean about you.”

She put the phone into her bag.

“There isn’t anything about me for him to know.”

“He seemed ready to settle that hotel charge the other day.”

“That’s enough.”

“I’m only—”

“No. You don’t get to ask everything because you kept one thing to yourself.”

I sat down.

She remained by the chair. For several seconds neither of us spoke. Then she asked, much more quietly, whether the General had said when he would decide about my job.

“No.”

“Will you tell me?”

I nodded.

She reached toward the desk. I thought she was going to touch my hand, and moved it before I could stop myself. She picked up the pen lying near the edge and put it beside the keyboard.

“It was going to fall,” she said.

I looked at the pen.

“Yes.”

After she left I remained seated for some time. I could not decide which part of the conversation to remember first.

At three the General forwarded a response from Mercer. The undisputed equipment balance would be included in the following Friday’s payment run. The forty thousand in additional work remained under review. His office would be in touch if it required further documentation.

One hundred and forty-three thousand four hundred and seventeen dollars and sixty-two cents, in a week, if nothing changed.

I updated the forecast. I could not enter the money as received merely because a man had said it would be sent. I had explained this distinction to the General many times. Now I wanted to forget it myself. A payment date looked very much like vindication if I avoided looking at Monday’s obligations.

The General came back at four. He had a single printed page.

“Read that.”

It recorded that I had raised a confidential account matter at a client dinner despite prior instructions, pursued the question after Mercer offered to refer it to his office, and damaged an important commercial relationship. It stated that future client communications required his approval and that a repetition could end my employment.

At the bottom was a space acknowledging receipt.

“You haven’t got my explanation yet,” I said.

“You can attach it.”

I read the page again. There were phrases I disliked. There were no facts I could easily deny.

“Sign to say you’ve received it.”

I picked up the pen Polina had moved and signed.

The General took the page.

“Laurent is transferring funds on Monday morning. I’ll send you the paperwork. Denise gets the rest, then the other items we discussed. Blanche as well.”

“Another loan?”

“For the moment.”

He said this with enough firmness to discourage a question about the moment’s duration.

“And Alexei.”

I looked up.

“When somebody asks you to leave a subject alone, leave it alone.”

I could not tell whom he meant.

I called Denise before five. I told her the balance was scheduled for Monday and that I would send confirmation when the payment went through. This time I did not make a promise larger than the information I possessed.

Then I began my written account.

The first version was nearly a page. It explained the age of the receivable, the history of unanswered requests, and the approval of the invoices. I read it through and removed most of it. The General already knew those things. So did I. They had been much easier to describe than the dinner.

I tried again.

*I raised the balance during dinner and continued after Mr. Mercer offered to refer it to his office. I should have left the matter for an appropriate business discussion. I understand the instruction concerning future communications with his companies.*

I stopped there.

There was nothing about Polina. There was also nothing about the drawing, the room becoming quiet, or the satisfaction of making Mercer listen to the cents. The paragraph was accurate. It did not explain me. I sent it anyway.

At five twenty-eight I wrote to Polina.

*I’m staying. Written warning.*

She answered while I was shutting down the computer.

*I’m glad.*

I read it standing beside the desk. Then I sat down and read it again.

On the printed forecast, Monday’s payments depended on another transfer from de Grieux. Forty thousand dollars was being questioned that had not been questioned the day before. The General would be reading my customer emails, and my signature was at the bottom of a warning I could not convincingly dispute.

Polina was glad I was staying.

I put the forecast in the drawer, took my jacket from the chair, and carried the phone out in my hand.

Chapter 3

This is a prior draft to the version published on X. Changes are minimal.

By Thursday I had decided that the General had forgotten Tuesday. He had asked me to check a freight charge, approved a batch of payments, and complained that someone kept lowering the thermostat. These were ordinary interactions. I took them as evidence that ordinary relations had resumed.

At half past four he came to my office carrying a tie.

“You have the installation summaries?”

I showed him the folder. Mercer had opened two restaurants that spring, and we had supplied both kitchens. There had been delays with one ventilation system, a replacement compressor, and an argument about whether shelving had been included in the original quote. All resolved. The signed approvals were behind the summaries.

“Good. Just in case he asks.”

He began knotting the tie in the reflection of my window.

“And Alexei.”

I looked up.

“Tonight is a dinner.”

“I saw the menu.”

“Then you understand me.”

I said that I did. He straightened the knot and left.

The balance on Mercer’s account was unchanged. I had checked it that morning while allocating receipts. One hundred and eighty-three thousand four hundred and seventeen dollars and sixty-two cents. The oldest invoice was now eighty-one days past due.

His accounts-payable department had sent a message on Wednesday saying the invoices were approved and awaiting release. No date. I had started to reply, remembered the General’s instruction, and closed the window. There were few things more irritating than being asked to collect money and then forbidden to inconvenience the people who had it.

Nevertheless, I put only the installation documents in my folder. I was going to dinner.

At home I changed twice. The first shirt made me look as though I expected to work behind the bar; the second made me look as though I expected to be mistaken for somebody who could afford it. I chose the second. While dressing I checked the day’s trades, though the positions were closed and there was nothing to do. I had made a little over four hundred dollars. It would pay for the shirt many times, which was a useful thought until I remembered that the shirt was already mine.

The hotel stood above the ocean, behind a low wall and a line of cypress trees. I had been there before to deliver papers and once to correct an invoice with the purchasing manager. On those occasions I had used the entrance beside the loading dock. This time a young man opened my car door and gave me a ticket.

I walked into the lobby holding the ticket as though someone would immediately ask me to account for the car.

Beyond the windows a pale strip of water showed beneath the marine layer. A fire burned in a long stone fireplace despite the mild evening. Everything smelled faintly of cedar. The people sitting near the fire had arranged themselves with a freedom I could not imitate; even their bags occupied chairs without appearing to need permission.

Blanche found me examining a framed photograph of the hotel before its renovation.

“You’re early.”

“Five minutes.”

“Exactly.”

She took my arm and led me toward the private dining room. On the way she asked an employee to check a wine delivery and reminded another that Mrs. Mercer did not eat shellfish. The employee thanked her. I was still uncertain whether she had authority over either of them, but the uncertainty seemed to be mine alone.

The room had a round table, eight places, and doors onto a narrow terrace. There were no name cards. This disappointed me more than it should have.

The General was speaking to a tall man beside the windows. He introduced him as Mr. Astley, one of the hotel’s owners, then introduced me as Alexei, who looked after the accounts.

“We’ve met,” Astley said.

I remembered him now. He had come through the warehouse with the purchasing manager during the renovation. A payment had been held up because the hotel’s order number was wrong, and he had waited while I found the original email.

“You found our missing dishwasher,” he said.

“It wasn’t missing. It was on the wrong order.”

“It seemed missing to the chef.”

He was English, perhaps in his late thirties, with a quiet voice that made the General lower his own. He asked whether the warehouse was still as busy, and listened to the answer. I liked him immediately, then became suspicious of how little had been required.

Polina stood outside on the terrace. I could see her through the open doors, resting her forearms on the railing. She wore a dark blue dress and had left her hair loose. I had not seen her since Tuesday, although I had contrived to pass through reception several times the previous afternoon.

Blanche went to greet another arrival. The General took Astley toward the bar. I put my folder on a side table and went outside.

“You came,” Polina said.

“I was invited.”

“I know.”

There was a dampness in the air. Below us the hotel garden descended in shallow terraces, with small lights beneath the trees. A gardener was rolling a hose behind a hedge. For a moment I was glad to be there without needing anything more to happen.

“Is Mercer here?” I asked.

“Not yet.”

“Your stepfather reminded me that this is a dinner.”

She looked at me.

“Did that help?”

“I had been wondering what the plates were for.”

She smiled and turned back toward the garden.

“I’ve known him since I was a child.”

“Your stepfather?”

“Mercer.”

“I know.”

“He used to come on Sundays. They’d sit outside for hours after lunch, with all the plates still there. My mother would start carrying things in and he would ask her for another coffee.”

“That sounds like him.”

In fact, I had exchanged perhaps twenty words with Mercer in my life.

“He was always very nice about the food,” she said. “Very appreciative. He could keep you carrying plates for another hour by appreciating them.”

She picked a dry leaf from the railing and turned it between her fingers.

“Once I drew a restaurant for them.”

“A restaurant?”

“They were talking about one he was going to open. I was twelve. There was graph paper in the house, so I made a plan. Tables, windows, kitchen. I used different colors.”

“What happened?”

“I brought it out. He put his coffee on it.”

“Deliberately?”

“No. There was a tablecloth. I suppose he thought I was giving him something to put under the cup.”

She let the leaf fall into the planter below.

“I told him what it was. He said, ‘Go find your mother, sweetheart. We’re talking business.’”

“What did your stepfather say?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did he laugh?”

“I said I don’t remember.”

I imagined her standing beside the table with the drawing, waiting for someone to pick up the cup. It was a very distinct image. I could have described the dress she had worn, though she had not mentioned a dress. I found this certainty persuasive.

“Did Mercer ever apologize?”

Polina turned her head.

“For what?”

“Humiliating you.”

“He didn’t know he had done anything. I doubt he even looked at me.”

“That doesn’t improve it.”

“I wasn’t trying to improve it.”

Inside, the General’s voice rose in greeting. Mercer had arrived with his wife. He was broad through the shoulders, gray-haired, comfortably dressed, and already laughing at something he had said in the doorway. His wife handed Blanche a small paper bag, which Blanche opened with evident pleasure.

“Come in before he calls us,” Polina said.

Mercer greeted her affectionately. He placed a hand on her shoulder and said she looked wonderful. She thanked him. Nothing in her face suggested she had just been discussing him; she even asked about one of his children.

Then he shook my hand.

“Accounts,” he said, remembering.

“Alexei.”

“Right. Good to see you.”

His wife asked whether I had been with the company long. I answered, and she asked a second question. I had prepared myself to dislike both of them and found her cooperation insufficient.

De Grieux arrived last. He apologized, greeted Astley as someone he knew, and kissed Polina on the cheek. She allowed it without stepping toward him. I noticed the distinction. I had become extremely proficient at noticing distinctions that did not tell me anything useful.

We sat. Blanche placed Mrs. Mercer beside Astley and the General beside Mercer. Polina took the chair to my left. De Grieux sat on her other side.

I had been given precisely what I wanted and immediately discovered an objection to it.

The first part of dinner went well. Mercer praised the technicians who had worked through a Saturday to get his second kitchen ready. He remembered Luis’s name and asked whether his back had improved. The General promised to pass on the compliment. I said that Luis would appreciate it, and Mercer turned to me with genuine warmth.

“Good people. You have to hold on to good people.”

I could have mentioned that good people expected wages on Friday, but the thought was only a private joke at that stage. I had many such thoughts. Most remained harmless because I kept them to myself.

Astley asked about the new restaurant. Mercer explained why they had reduced the number of tables rather than crowd the room. He spoke sensibly about service, the kitchen’s capacity, and the difference between filling a seat and making a customer want to return. I understood why the General listened to him. He had built something too.

Mrs. Mercer told Polina about a daughter who was moving house. Blanche spoke to a waiter without breaking the conversation. De Grieux asked for water and received it before I had finished wondering whether I should pour my own.

There was no conspiracy. It was an agreeable dinner among people who had known one another for years, and I might have enjoyed it if I had been able to stop measuring how naturally everyone else belonged there.

When the first plates were cleared, Mercer asked about the General’s aunt.

“Much the same,” the General said.

“Still at home?”

“For now. We’re waiting to hear what the specialist thinks.”

“Remarkable woman.”

“Yes.”

“You give her my regards.”

“Certainly.”

The General glanced at his phone beside the bread plate. De Grieux asked Astley a question about the hotel’s summer bookings. The conversation moved on so smoothly that I wondered whether I had imagined the moment of attention that had passed around the table.

Polina leaned toward me.

“Has he paid?”

She spoke quietly enough that I alone could hear.

“No.”

“Since Monday?”

“Nothing.”

She looked across at Mercer, who was describing a lease negotiation.

“Ask him.”

I waited for the smile that would let me treat this as a continuation of our conversation on the terrace. It did not come.

“Now?”

“When there’s a pause.”

“Polina.”

“You know what to ask.”

Her voice was ordinary. She reached for her glass. I watched her take a drink, certain that she understood exactly what she was doing and equally certain that she could not understand it or she would not be doing it.

“Your stepfather specifically told me—”

“I heard.”

“Then you know.”

She set down the glass.

“Yes.”

A waiter came to my right with the next course. I moved my hand from the place where he needed to put the plate and thanked him too loudly.

Mercer was telling Astley that the difficulty with the proposed site was access for deliveries. I knew something about this; I had seen one of our drivers return after being unable to get into a loading bay Mercer’s architects had approved. I could have joined the conversation naturally. Instead I counted the ways in which the General could make my life difficult.

He could dismiss me. He could also do less. He could take away the work I understood and leave me answering phones. He could ask someone else to approve everything I entered. He could tell the receptionist why.

Worse, Mercer might delay the payment. There was nothing abstract about that possibility. I had promised Denise we would pay on Monday. Luis and the other technicians expected their wages. The loan payment would go out whether we had received anything or not.

“If you want the money collected, this is the wrong way,” I said quietly.

Polina looked at me.

“Did I say I wanted you to collect it?”

I stared at her.

“Ask when he means to pay.”

“What difference does that make?”

She turned her fork over between her fingers.

“You needn’t.”

I felt a rush of relief so immediate that I was ashamed of it.

“I’m not refusing.”

“All right.”

Then she turned to answer something de Grieux had said.

For perhaps a minute I was free to eat my dinner. Nobody was watching me. Polina had released me, if release was what I wanted to call it. I cut a piece of fish and found I could not swallow it without drinking water.

Across the table Mercer put down his knife.

“That’s why I’ve stayed with you all these years,” he told the General. “We can pick up the phone and sort things out. Nobody sends me through six departments.”

The General smiled.

“We try to keep it personal.”

There was the pause.

“Then perhaps you can tell me when we should expect the overdue balance,” I said.

Mercer looked toward Astley first, as though the question might have come from him. Then he turned to me.

“I’m sorry?”

“On your account with us.”

My voice sounded unexpectedly steady. I had imagined stumbling, having to repeat a word, the General interrupting before I reached the end. Instead everyone had heard me, and everyone was waiting.

“Which balance?” Mercer asked.

“One hundred and eighty-three thousand four hundred and seventeen dollars. Sixty-two cents.”

The General shifted in his chair.

“Alexei looks after the ledger,” he said. “He takes these things very seriously.”

Mercer gave a small laugh. It was an exit offered to both of us.

“Clearly. Send it over to my office and they’ll have a look.”

I could have stopped there. He had answered; I had obeyed. The waiter at the door could have come in, Blanche could have asked Mrs. Mercer about her daughter, and in a day or two the General might have decided that I was merely awkward.

“They have looked,” I said. “They confirmed yesterday that the invoices are approved. We’re waiting for a release date.”

Mercer’s expression changed.

“Then I imagine they’ll give you one.”

“The oldest is eighty-one days past due.”

I had not been asked for that figure. I supplied it because I possessed it, and because for the first time since entering the hotel I did not feel obliged to make myself smaller.

The General set his glass down.

“That’s enough. We’ll deal with it at the office.”

Mercer looked at him.

“Is there a problem I should know about?”

“No. None.”

The speed of the answer made it worse.

“If there’s a query, you can call me,” Mercer said. He was speaking only to the General now. “You know that.”

“Of course.”

“We’ve been doing business a long time.”

“I know. I apologize.”

The last words came quietly. I heard them more clearly than anything I had said.

Beside me Polina had put down her fork. She was looking at Mercer, but there was no smile on her face. I could not tell whether she was satisfied. I could not even tell whether she wanted me to look at her.

Mrs. Mercer adjusted the napkin on her lap. Astley moved his plate slightly to make room as the waiter finally entered. No one touched the wine.

Blanche asked Astley whether the path through the lower garden would be open by the weekend.

“It opened this morning,” he said.

“Then we should walk down after dinner.”

Mrs. Mercer asked where it came out. He described the steps toward the beach. She said she remembered them from years ago, before the renovation.

Within a minute a conversation had been established to which we could all listen without participating in what had happened. I had never properly appreciated the work involved in this.

The General asked Mercer about the delivery entrance at the new site. Mercer answered courteously. He did not look at me again.

I ate two mouthfuls of fish that had become cold. My hand shook slightly when I lifted the glass, though it had not shaken while I was speaking.

Under the table my phone pressed against my thigh. I wanted to take it out and look at something comprehensible: a number, a message, any screen on which the result of what I had done might be displayed.

Polina spoke to de Grieux. I could not hear what she said.

After the main course the General suggested coffee in the lounge. He spoke with the strained brightness of a man determined to demonstrate that the evening was proceeding according to plan.

I stood when the others stood. Mercer took his wife’s hand to help her from the chair. She thanked Blanche for arranging everything, then turned to me and said it had been nice to meet me.

There was no sarcasm in it. I would have preferred some.

As we reached the door, the General touched my arm.

“A word.”

He waited until the others had gone down the corridor. Through the open doorway I could see a waiter collecting the folded napkins.

“Give me the folder.”

I retrieved it from the side table.

“It only has the installation—”

“Give it to me.”

I did.

He held it against his side. For a moment I thought he was going to strike the folder against his leg or throw it onto the table. He did neither.

“I told you.”

“The money is overdue.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?”

He kept his voice low. This required me to stand closer to him than I wanted.

“He told me to send it to his office. They’ve already—”

“I heard you the first time.”

I stopped.

“Go home,” he said.

“Am I dismissed?”

I hated him enough at that moment to want the drama of it. I had an account with money in it. I had made more on Monday than he paid me in weeks. I could have survived dismissal; for a few angry seconds I even wanted the opportunity to show him how little I needed him.

“From dinner,” he said. “We’ll discuss the rest tomorrow.”

He went toward the lounge carrying the folder I had brought to justify my presence.

I remained in the corridor until a member of staff asked whether I needed directions. Then I went outside to collect my car.

The fog had come in. Water shone on the driveway, and the lamps along the wall had acquired blurred rings. I gave the valet my ticket. He said it would only be a moment, with the same pleasant attention he had offered on my arrival. This seemed almost indecent.

Polina came through the doors while I was waiting.

“You’re leaving?”

“I’ve been invited to.”

She stood beside me beneath the canopy. Behind the glass, de Grieux was speaking to Astley. Neither looked toward us.

“What did he say?” she asked.

“That we’ll discuss it tomorrow.”

She folded her arms. The night was colder than it had been on the terrace.

“You should have stopped after he said to send it to the office.”

“You heard him. He was pretending not to know.”

“Perhaps he didn’t.”

“His people knew.”

“That isn’t what I said.”

I looked at her. She was watching the driveway.

“You asked me to do it.”

“I asked you a question to ask him.”

“Which I asked.”

“Yes.”

“You can’t complain about the answer.”

“I’m not complaining.”

This was unbearable. She would not praise me, but neither would she give me anything firm to resist.

“After what you told me outside, I thought—”

“About the drawing?”

“Yes.”

She looked at me then.

“Alexei. It was a drawing.”

My car appeared at the bend in the driveway. I watched it approach with an irrational hope that the valet would discover some problem and have to take it away again.

“Why did you tell me?”

She did not answer immediately.

“I remembered it when I saw the table.”

“And why did you ask me to ask him?”

“I wanted him to answer you.”

“Well, he didn’t.”

“No.”

The valet stopped beside us and got out. He held the door open.

Polina looked at my face as though she had noticed something she had missed at dinner.

“Did you enjoy it?”

“What?”

“When they were all listening.”

I could have answered at once if she had accused me of stupidity or cowardice. Instead I felt again that brief steadiness, the room waiting while I supplied the cents.

“No,” I said.

She lowered her eyes.

“All right.”

The valet was still holding the door. I gave him too much money because I could not bear to search my wallet in front of them, and got into the car.

Polina stepped back. She did not return to the hotel until I had started the engine. I watched her in the mirror, trying to decide whether waiting had meant concern, regret, or merely that I was looking at her.

At home I took off the shirt and hung it carefully in the wardrobe. There was a small spot near the cuff that I had not noticed before. I rubbed at it with a wet towel until the fabric darkened, then left it hanging on the bathroom door.

The General sent a message at eleven sixteen.

*Eight tomorrow. Bring the full correspondence with Mercer’s office.*

I opened my laptop and found the emails. There were enough of them to make a respectable case. The invoices had been received, queried, clarified, approved. We had asked for payment. They had promised to advise. Every date supported me.

I arranged the thread in order and saved it for printing.

Then I opened Polina’s messages.

Her last message was still *Good*, from Monday. Nothing in the conversation recorded what she had asked of me that evening. It occurred to me that if I showed someone the entire exchange, the only improper thing they would find was the account information I had sent her.

I typed, *What did you expect me to do?*

I read it twice. The question was dishonest. I knew what she had expected; she had told me plainly. What I wanted to ask was what I should have received for doing it.

I deleted the sentence.

After a while I wrote, *Did you get home?*

I sent that and left the laptop open on the table. The emails were ready for the morning. There was nothing else I needed to do, but I sat there in my undershirt until the kitchen light switched itself off.

Chapter 2

The next morning I lost three hundred and twelve dollars and was pleased with myself.

I closed the trade where I had said I would close it. There was no hesitation, no enlargement of the chart, no search for an opinion from somebody who had bought the same thing at a worse price. I entered the loss in my journal and went to work. Taken together with the previous afternoon, it seemed to me evidence of a well-regulated character.

Polina had not written again.

At the office the General asked me to bring the loan schedule to the conference room at eleven. The Frenchman was coming, and there were one or two figures they might need. I printed three copies, although there would be four of us if the General meant me to stay. I had learned to determine the probable length of a meeting by whether he included me in the number of coffees.

“Just the current balances,” he said. “We needn’t make a production of it.”

“The balances are on the schedule.”

“Yes, but you have a way of adding things.”

He meant the maturity dates. I had made them red when there were fewer than thirty days remaining. They were accurate dates in an unnecessarily accusatory color.

I changed them to black.

There was also a message from the supplier who had refused to wait until Monday. Our account had been placed on hold. I called, explained that we had a refrigeration unit due for installation that afternoon, and was transferred to a woman named Denise.

She had the invoice in front of her. So did I. We established this and then spent several minutes discussing everything except the invoice, since neither of us could improve it.

Finally she agreed to release the unit if we paid half that morning.

I took the approval to the General. He signed it while speaking on the phone, without asking whom we were paying. I went back and called Denise.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Please don’t make me chase the rest.”

I promised she would not have to. It was the sort of promise my employment frequently required me to make on another man’s behalf.

At ten forty Polina appeared with a paper bag and placed it on top of the loan schedules.

“You forgot lunch yesterday.”

Inside was a sandwich from the place across the street.

“How do you know?”

“The receptionist said you were here all day.”

“That doesn’t mean I didn’t eat.”

“Then have two lunches.”

She sat down. I moved the bag carefully so that grease would not get on the papers. There was a napkin folded around it and a packet of mustard. I wondered whether she had chosen the sandwich herself. This was a question to which I attached an extraordinary amount of importance for a man who had just demonstrated his command of three hundred and twelve dollars.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She looked around the room. Her gaze stopped at the window, where the upper branches of a tree on the neighboring property could be seen above the parked trucks.

“It’s nicer in here than at the front.”

“There’s still time to exchange offices.”

“I don’t have an office.”

I knew that, of course. She used whichever room was empty, and when a visitor needed it her things were moved into a box. Once I had found the box in the hallway with a vase in it, still full of water.

“You could have this one,” I said.

“And where would you go?”

“The wine room.”

She smiled. It was a small smile, without the usual suggestion that I ought to be careful what I said next. I wanted to keep the conversation precisely where it was.

Naturally, I asked about the hotel.

“Did you get that sorted out?”

She looked away from the window.

“Have you?”

“I left it where it was. You told me to.”

“Then it’s where it was.”

“I can ask him today.”

“Can you?”

There was something in her voice I disliked, especially after the sandwich.

“It isn’t a great undertaking. I ask him about personal charges every month.”

“And what does he say?”

“Generally that they aren’t personal.”

“And then?”

“Eventually he tells me what they are.”

She studied the schedule beneath my hand.

“Is Laurent coming?”

I had heard her call the Frenchman by his first name before. It still made him seem improperly close to her.

“At eleven.”

“Then ask while he’s here.”

“Why?”

“I’d like to hear the answer.”

“You can hear it without him.”

“But I’d like to hear that answer.”

I leaned back in my chair.

She was looking at me now with real attention. A moment earlier I had been willing to give her my office in order to prolong a conversation about a tree. Now that I had her attention I wanted to complain about the terms on which she offered it.

“It’s a financing meeting.”

“So there will be money in it.”

“A hotel bill isn’t relevant.”

“I thought you wanted to settle it.”

“I do.”

“Ask him whether I owe it. Just that. You needn’t make a speech.”

“I wasn’t planning a speech.”

She lifted the corner of the paper bag and looked underneath it, though there was nothing there she had not already seen.

“Never mind, then.”

I could have let her leave. She had brought me lunch. We had had a civil conversation, almost an affectionate one, and there was a supplier to pay. Nothing required me to go further.

“Do you think I’m afraid of him?”

“Which one?”

“Either.”

She released the bag.

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

This was so clearly untrue that I felt obliged to answer it as though it were an accusation.

“You think because I work here I have to agree with everything he does.”

“I think you work here.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Then ask.”

She stood up and straightened the visitor’s chair with both hands.

“The amount is two thousand eight hundred and forty-six,” I said.

“Yes. I remember.”

“And you want me to ask whether you’re personally responsible.”

“If you must rehearse it, do it after I’ve gone.”

She left. I waited a moment, then took the statement from the drawer and placed it beneath the loan schedules.

I did not eat the sandwich.

The Frenchman arrived at eleven ten. He apologized to the receptionist for being late and asked whether her son had recovered. I had not known that anything was wrong with her son. It annoyed me that he knew, and annoyed me more that he appeared to have remembered without consulting anything.

His name was Laurent de Grieux. He wore an open-necked shirt and carried a slim leather folder. I had seen him in the same shoes on several visits, which suggested either that he did not spend much on clothes or that the shoes cost more than I understood.

“Alexei. You had a good break?”

“Very good.”

“And the market?”

“Also good.”

“Excellent.”

There was no reason for him to ask how good. Nevertheless, I resented him for not asking.

The General came to meet him. They shook hands with a warmth that made the extension fee seem like an unfortunate misunderstanding between friends.

“We won’t keep you long,” the General said to me.

In the conference room Blanche was looking at a seating plan on her phone. She had come to confirm Thursday’s arrangements and was waiting for the General to finish. Polina sat at the far end of the table with a bottle of water. Neither had a loan schedule. I put one in front of the General, one before de Grieux, and retained the third.

The General looked at my copy, then at the chair I was pulling out.

“Just a moment, Alexei. We may need you for a figure.”

I remained standing.

De Grieux opened his folder. There were two pages inside, already marked with small tabs where the General would sign. Before he could explain them, Blanche asked whether Mercer’s wife was coming on Thursday.

“Of course,” said the General.

“She hasn’t replied.”

“Put her down.”

“I have. I need to know whether to put down the fish.”

The General laughed and said she was very thorough. Then he turned toward me.

“That will be all for now.”

There was a pause in which I could hear the air conditioning. Polina was peeling the label from her water bottle. She did not look up.

“There’s one item I need clarified,” I said.

“Later.”

“It will only take a moment.”

The General’s hand remained on the document de Grieux had placed before him.

“What is it?”

I pulled out the American Express statement. The paper caught against the bottom schedule, and for a second I was occupied in separating them. This small difficulty seemed to last a very long time.

“The three-night hotel charge. Two thousand eight hundred and forty-six dollars. You’ve marked it personal, with Polina’s initial. Am I meant to record an amount due from her?”

Nobody moved. Blanche lowered her phone.

The General looked first at the statement and then at Polina.

“We’ve dealt with this.”

“I haven’t received an instruction.”

“Then I’ll send you one.”

I should have thanked him and left. I had asked the question. Whatever Polina had required was done.

But de Grieux had turned slightly toward her, and I thought I saw understanding pass between them. I could not bear to have made a fool of myself merely to introduce a subject they understood better than I did.

“So she doesn’t owe it?”

The General put down his pen.

“Alexei.”

“I’m asking where it belongs.”

De Grieux glanced at the amount on the statement, upside down from where he sat.

“If it’s causing a difficulty, we can arrange—”

“It isn’t,” Polina said.

Her voice was so sharp that I looked at her. She had stopped peeling the label. A wet scrap clung to her finger.

“There’s no difficulty,” the General said. “It was a family arrangement. Put it to me. Personal. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then perhaps we could return to what we’re here for.”

I gathered the statement and my copy of the schedule. The General watched until I had them straight. De Grieux had already turned back to his folder.

As I reached the door, Blanche asked the General whether he could check his phone for Mrs. Mercer’s reply. Her tone was exactly what it had been before. He took out his phone with visible relief.

Polina said nothing.

In my office I entered the charge to the General’s personal account. The task took less than a minute. I attached his written note, added the date and substance of the clarification, and saved the entry.

I had done the work properly. No one could dispute that.

The remainder of the morning offered several opportunities to discover whether I believed it. Whenever I heard footsteps I looked toward the door. I moved the sandwich to the windowsill, then moved it back because there was sun on the glass. I answered a supplier’s email twice, deleting the second reply just before sending it.

At twelve the General came in and closed my door.

“What was that?”

“I needed to clear the item.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Speak to me as though I’ve never seen you clear an item.”

He stood with his hand still on the door handle. There was no theatrical rage in him. He looked tired and embarrassed, which was much less convenient.

“You had that statement yesterday. You’ll have it tomorrow. There was no reason to bring it into that room.”

I said nothing.

“And certainly no reason to discuss Polina’s expenses in front of Laurent.”

“He holds a note against the business. He sees considerably more than a hotel charge.”

“That doesn’t entitle him to every conversation in this family.”

This was so reasonable that I began disliking him in a new way.

He pulled out the visitor’s chair but did not sit.

“Did she ask you to do that?”

I looked at the statement. I had laid it face down after posting the charge.

“I asked you a bookkeeping question.”

“Yes. And I’m asking you a different question.”

There were several answers available. I chose silence, partly out of loyalty and partly because I could not bear to describe the conversation in which I had agreed. *Then ask.* It would have sounded worse aloud.

The General released the chair.

“In future, bring these things to me privately. If you can’t manage that, I’ll have to think about who has access to the accounts.”

He opened the door, then stopped.

“And pay the balance to those refrigeration people on Monday. I don’t want the technicians standing around again.”

“I’ve arranged it.”

“Thank you.”

After he left, I went to the break room for a plate. The sandwich had become warm at one end and remained cold at the other. I ate standing beside the counter.

Blanche came in for water.

“He’s finished?” she asked.

“With me, apparently.”

She took a glass from the cupboard.

“He’ll forget it.”

“There’s nothing to forget.”

“Then that should be easy.”

She filled the glass. I expected her to ask why I had done it, and prepared an answer about the inconvenience of allowing personal expenses to accumulate in a company’s books. She did not ask.

“Did you find out what you wanted?” she said instead.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

She left me with the sandwich. I could not decide whether she had been kind.

I found Polina outside, in the narrow strip of shade behind the office. There were two plastic chairs there, a planter with nothing in it, and the remains of a cigarette someone had balanced on a bolt in the wall. She was speaking on the phone. When she saw me, she turned away.

“I said I understood.”

I stopped by the door.

“No. Don’t send anything.”

She listened, holding the phone so tightly that the tips of her fingers had gone pale.

“I’ll call you.”

She ended the call and put the phone in her pocket.

“What?”

“I’ve moved the charge.”

“All right.”

“To his account. There’s nothing under your name.”

She nodded and looked toward the loading area, where a driver was backing between two trucks. I had imagined finding her alone in this way all morning. Now that I had, she seemed to be waiting for me to finish.

“He wasn’t pleased.”

“No.”

“He came to speak to me.”

“I thought he might.”

“He asked whether you told me to.”

At that she turned.

“And?”

“I didn’t tell him.”

She looked at me for a moment, then took out her phone and checked the dark screen without unlocking it.

“You could have.”

I laughed. It was an unpleasant sound, and I wished I had not made it.

“Would you have preferred that?”

“I didn’t say so.”

“You asked me to ask him. I asked him.”

“Yes, Alexei. I was there.”

I could feel the heat from the wall through my shirt. Somewhere behind us a truck gave a short reversing beep and then fell silent.

“At least you have your answer.”

“I had it this morning.”

I looked at her.

“He wrote to me before nine,” she said. “He said I wasn’t expected to repay it.”

“Then why—”

“You offered.”

“I offered to straighten it out.”

“And now it’s straight.”

“You could have forwarded the email.”

“Yes.”

She said it without triumph. This made it harder to be angry. If she had laughed, I could have accused her of enjoying my humiliation. Instead she stood with one shoe resting against the empty planter and seemed to consider what I had said.

“Why did you want me to do it in front of him?”

“My stepfather?”

“Laurent.”

I disliked saying his name as much as hearing her say it.

She looked down.

“I wanted to hear him say it.”

“You just said he’d written it.”

“People write all sorts of things.”

“And what did you want from me?”

She rubbed a small piece of adhesive from her thumb. It must have been left by the bottle label. I watched it roll into a gray speck.

“I wondered if you actually would.”

There it was. She gave it to me as though it were a minor piece of information she had forgotten to mention.

I had prepared for gratitude and even for regret. I could have been generous with either. Curiosity was more difficult. It left me standing outside my own office holding half a sandwich in a napkin.

“And now you know.”

She looked at what I was holding.

“You don’t like it?”

“What?”

“The sandwich.”

“It’s fine.”

“You used to get that one.”

I could not answer immediately. She remembered what I ate. This absurd fact arrived at precisely the wrong moment and prevented me from saying several things I had almost managed to say.

She pushed away from the wall.

“I have to go.”

“Who were you speaking to?”

“On the phone?”

I nodded.

Her expression changed. It was slight, but I knew at once that I had lost whatever permission I had possessed a moment earlier.

“That isn’t something you need to straighten out.”

She went through the door. I remained outside until the driver finished backing in, though there was no reason to watch him. Then I put the rest of the sandwich in the bin and went back to work.

By four the incident had become considerably more defensible in my mind. The General had put her initial beside a charge and later changed his position. She had been entitled to hear him acknowledge it. If she distrusted a private message, she probably had reasons. I had not asked for those reasons; it was therefore unreasonable to conclude that none existed.

As for the manner of asking, some embarrassment was unavoidable when correcting an injustice. That he was also my employer did not make the injustice less real.

I had almost finished this account of events when a technician came in to ask where we kept the replacement fuel cards. I told him, rather sharply, that I had given him one yesterday.

“That was Luis,” he said.

I apologized and got him a card.

At five fifteen Blanche sent the final arrangements for Thursday. The General forwarded them with a request that I attend in case Mercer had any questions about his recent installations. My name appeared near the bottom of the guest list. Polina’s was two places above it.

There was a perfectly good reason to decline. I had work to finish, the service manager knew more about the installations than I did, and after that morning the General could hardly claim that I improved a gathering.

I opened a reply and wrote that I would be there.

Before sending it, I moved the cursor into the guest list and counted the names between mine and Polina’s again.

Chapter 1

On the morning I returned, the General asked whether I had enjoyed my holiday and handed me an overdue notice before I could answer.

I had been away for six working days. My sister had needed help moving, which he knew, but he preferred holiday. It made the accumulation of unopened envelopes on my desk seem generous of him.

“Nothing very urgent,” he said. “That one may already have been paid.”

It had not. I recognized the envelope. The supplier had started using red paper in June, and I had developed a respect for them on account of it. Other companies sent statements marked *Friendly Reminder*, as though the friendliness were what had been missing from the previous three attempts.

“I’ll look at it.”

“And the American Express. There are a few things to sort out.”

He stood in the doorway while I put down my bag. He was wearing a blue jacket I had seen on the statement the previous month, although the entry itself had been less descriptive. He had written *Conference* beside it in a rounded, impatient hand.

“Good to have you back, Alexei.”

For a moment he sounded as though he meant it. Then he asked whether I could have a cash position ready before lunch.

The business supplied commercial kitchens: refrigeration, ovens, replacement parts, and technicians who went out at five in the morning to be abused by restaurant owners whose freezers had stopped working. It was a substantial business. There were trucks, a warehouse, twenty-three employees, and customers who had dealt with the General for longer than I had been alive. Whenever I complained about him, I felt obliged to mention these facts. He had built something. My criticisms, however accurate, had produced no trucks.

The offices occupied the front of the warehouse. Visitors entered through glass doors into a reception area with a stone counter and an enormous photograph of the General shaking hands with a man who had once been governor. Behind reception, the carpet ended. The warehouse smelled of cardboard, machine oil, and the burnt toast someone made every morning in the break room.

My office was between the copier and a locked room containing records no one had requested since 2016. From my chair I could see half the parking lot through a narrow window. The General had once offered to move me closer to the front, then remembered that the room he meant was being used for wine.

Nobody called him the General to his face. He had never been in the military. Polina had given him the name, and I had adopted it with the eagerness of a man being admitted to a private joke. Among the employees he was simply the owner. To the bank he was a personal guarantor. I was coming to think the bank had the most accurate description.

By ten I had reconciled the operating account and found two payments entered twice, a customer deposit posted to sales, and a check to a golf club classified as repairs and maintenance. I corrected the first three. Beside the golf club I left a question mark.

Then I opened the loan schedule.

There were three private notes: four hundred and fifty thousand, six hundred thousand, and seven hundred thousand dollars. Ten percent on the first, eleven on the second, twelve on the third. The monthly payments came to sixteen thousand two hundred and fifty dollars. All interest. I checked the principal balances against the previous month and found them unchanged, as they had been the month before that.

The largest note had an extension letter attached. I opened it. Ninety days, subject to a fee. The signature at the bottom belonged to the Frenchman.

He visited occasionally and was always pleasant to me. He remembered my name, asked whether I still followed the market, and listened to my replies with a composure I found offensive. He owned shares. When something he owned fell, he could wait for it to recover, or collect a dividend, or go to France. I could not see that this entitled him to any particular reputation for intelligence.

At eleven the General came back.

“How are we?”

I turned the monitor toward him.

“If Mercer pays this week, and we hold the equipment order until Monday, we can cover payroll and the scheduled payments. Without Mercer, we need a transfer.”

“He’ll pay.”

“His office said that before I left.”

“I spoke to him personally.”

“When?”

The General glanced toward the parking lot.

“We have a relationship with these people, Alexei.”

I waited. Sometimes, if one waited long enough after such a statement, a date emerged. This time there was no date.

“Don’t send him anything,” he said. “He’s coming to dinner Thursday.”

“I wasn’t going to invite him.”

He looked at me, and I pretended to adjust the width of a column.

“A collection email. Don’t send another collection email.”

I said I understood.

As he left, his phone rang. He answered in the hallway, and I heard him ask whether she was eating. There was a pause, then, in a lower voice, whether the doctor had actually said that or whether it was somebody’s interpretation.

I knew whom he meant. For several months his aunt’s health had been discussed with a solicitude that increased near payment dates. I had met her once. She had asked what I earned and told him, in front of me, that he ought to be ashamed. Naturally, I liked her.

Around noon Blanche arrived carrying two coffees in a cardboard tray. The General came out of his office to meet her, which he did not do for suppliers.

She wore cream trousers and a dark sleeveless blouse. There was nothing elaborate about her clothes, but I noticed them immediately. She gave the General one coffee, retained the other, and greeted our receptionist by name. Then she came to my doorway.

“You’re back.”

“Apparently.”

“Was it awful?”

“Moving furniture for six days? No. I’m considering it professionally.”

She laughed and looked at the envelopes on my desk.

“He’s asked you about the hotel?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ve held the smaller private room for Thursday. It will be better for conversation.”

“How much better?”

“About twelve hundred dollars.”

I looked up. She took a sip of coffee.

“You can tell him it was my idea.”

I had never established whether Blanche worked for the hotel, with the hotel, or merely knew people there who answered her calls. She arranged dinners and appeared at openings; she knew the manager of one private club and had once described a second as impossible since the change in ownership. The General introduced her differently depending on who was listening. She never corrected him.

“He’ll want the larger room,” I said.

“He wants everyone comfortable.”

“Of course.”

She smiled at my tone without joining in it.

“There will only be eight people, Alexei.”

She went down the hall. A moment later I heard the General laughing much more loudly than I had made her laugh, and returned to his American Express statement.

There were business lunches, fuel, hotel charges, a florist, two payments to a department store, and a recurring charge from a storage facility. Some had receipts attached. Several had explanations written beside them. On the second page a charge for a hotel suite had been circled and marked *Personal—P.*

Polina had no company card. I knew this because I had once been asked to arrange one and then, the same afternoon, been told not to proceed.

I put the statement aside.

At twelve fifty I checked my position.

Forty-two percent.

I had bought the calls that morning for eight thousand dollars. They were now worth eleven thousand three hundred and sixty. The stock had broken above the level I had been watching for three days and continued upward, without any of the violent reversals that usually accompanied my being correct.

There was nothing to consider. My rule was forty percent. I had written it after reviewing six months of trades, including several in which an excellent morning had become an expensive afternoon. Forty was not a prediction of how far a position could rise. It was the point at which I had agreed to stop asking.

I opened the sell ticket and selected the entire position.

“You’re gambling.”

Polina stood in the doorway.

I had not seen her since returning. During the six days I was away she had sent me two messages, both questions concerning things she could easily have found out from somebody else. I had answered the first in four minutes and the second in eleven. The eleven had been deliberate, though I had spent all eleven looking at my phone.

“I’m working.”

“Is that our money?”

“No.”

“Then you’re gambling.”

I minimized the window.

She had tied her hair back badly; a loose section kept falling against her cheek. She wore a gray shirt with the sleeves pushed up and held her phone by its edges, as though she had just read something unpleasant on it. She looked tired. I was annoyed that no one had mentioned this to me, although I could not have said who should have done so or why.

“Did you need something?”

“You sound busy.”

“I’ve been gone a week.”

“Yes. I noticed.”

She sat in the visitor’s chair and moved a box of paper clips away from the edge of my desk. I watched her do it. She had said she noticed. There were several possible reasons for this, but only one interested me.

“Did the move go well?” she asked.

“My sister now owns a sofa that can never leave her apartment.”

“Is she happy?”

“About the sofa?”

“Generally.”

I said I thought so. Polina nodded and looked down at her phone without waking the screen.

“You have the card statement.”

It was not a question.

“Which one?”

She looked at the American Express envelope beside my hand.

“Don’t make me ask everything twice.”

I pulled the statement toward me.

“What am I looking for?”

“The hotel. Last month. Three nights.”

I found the entry. Two thousand eight hundred and forty-six dollars.

“It’s here.”

“And what has he done with it?”

“Nothing yet. I’m only entering the statement now.”

“What has he written?”

I hesitated. She reached across the desk, turned the paper, and read the note herself.

“Personal,” she said. “Yes.”

“Were you there?”

“Do you need that for the books?”

“I need to know whose expense it is.”

“Then ask him whose expense it is.”

She pushed the paper back so abruptly that one corner folded beneath it. I smoothed it out. I knew nothing about the charge except the date, the amount, and what he had written. This was suddenly intolerable. I wanted to tell her that whatever had happened, I was not on his side.

Instead I said, “He can’t make you owe something merely by putting your initial beside it.”

“Can’t he?”

“Not in any meaningful sense.”

“That will be a comfort.”

For a little while neither of us spoke. A warehouse cart went past the other side of the wall, one bad wheel striking the concrete at regular intervals.

“I’m not asking you to change it,” she said.

“I didn’t think you were.”

“You did. You looked pleased.”

I began explaining that I had no reason to be pleased, and she interrupted to ask whether Mercer had paid.

“No.”

“Anything?”

“Not since the last payment.”

“How much?”

“Polina.”

She settled back in the chair.

“Is that confidential?”

“It’s a customer account.”

“I know who he is.”

I knew that she knew. Mercer had been at family dinners, company anniversaries, her mother’s funeral. He called the General by a shortened version of his first name that nobody at work used. When his office failed to answer my emails, I was reminded of all these advantages.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Must there be an investigation?”

She stood up. I opened the receivables report.

“A hundred and eighty-three thousand four hundred and seventeen dollars. Sixty-two cents.”

She remained standing.

“You even know the cents.”

“They’re on the screen.”

“How late?”

“The oldest invoice is seventy-eight days past due. The rest varies.”

“Show me.”

I turned the monitor slightly. She came around the desk and leaned toward it, placing one hand beside the keyboard. I could see a small ink mark near her thumb. Her hair fell forward again and she tucked it away impatiently.

“This one?”

“That’s the invoice date. This is when it was due.”

She read the rows slowly. I tried to determine whether she was adding them, looking for a date she recognized, or simply prolonging the conversation. It did not occur to me that I might ask her something ordinary.

My phone buzzed against the desk.

**12:59 — CLOSE ALL OPEN POSITIONS?**

It was my own shortcut, connected to the little order script I had put together after staying in a trade past the close one afternoon and spending the night checking prices that could no longer help me. On regular trading days it asked the question one minute before one. It did not trust me to remember; I retained the dignity of answering.

I swiped **YES** and put the phone down.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

“I wasn’t speaking.”

“You were looking at the March invoice.”

“Was I?”

She glanced at me. For an instant she seemed amused, and I felt that we had been having quite a different conversation from the one the words suggested.

“Send me this,” she said.

“The report?”

“Just his page.”

I should have refused. She did occasional work for the company, had an email address there, and was invited to meetings from which I was excluded, but she had no responsibility for collections. There was no business reason to send her Mercer’s account. I understood this so clearly that I began searching for a business reason on her behalf.

“If you’re helping with Thursday—”

“I’m asking you for a page, Alexei.”

I exported the account detail.

“Your company email?”

“My phone.”

I sent it.

She waited until it arrived, then opened the attachment. I disliked how quickly her attention left me once she had it.

“And don’t mention that I asked.”

“Why would I?”

“Sometimes you like explaining yourself.”

This was unjust. I could have named several recent occasions on which I had said nothing when an explanation would have benefited me. I nearly named them now.

From the hallway the General called her name. She locked her phone.

“Leave the hotel charge alone until he tells you what it is.”

“I was going to.”

At the door she stopped and looked back.

“You don’t have to look like that.”

“Like what?”

But she had gone.

It was one seven. I sat looking at the empty chair. I had intended to ask whether she was staying for lunch; there had apparently been seventeen minutes in which to ask it, and I had failed. Instead I had given her a customer’s financial information and offered an opinion about a hotel bill I did not understand.

Still, she had come to me.

I opened the statement again and entered the hotel charge in the account for items awaiting clarification. Then I picked up the next receipt.

The afternoon passed without incident. A technician needed a replacement fuel card. One supplier agreed to wait until Monday and another refused. The General approved the smaller dining room after Blanche told him it would feel more private. Before leaving, he put his head through my door and said he hoped I understood his position concerning Mercer.

“Perfectly.”

“Good man.”

I could still have told him about the report. Instead I asked him to sign the payment approvals.

At home I put rice on the stove, changed my shirt, and opened my laptop at the kitchen table. My apartment had two windows overlooking the back of another building. In the evenings the neighboring kitchen extractor made a continuous noise that I generally stopped hearing after twenty minutes. That evening it seemed particularly loud.

I opened the brokerage account out of habit.

Then I remembered the calls.

For a second I felt physically cold. I could see the sell ticket, the quantity selected, Polina in the doorway. Had I submitted it? There had been something on my phone. I remembered touching the screen but not what it had said afterward.

No open positions.

I went to the orders.

Filled, 12:59:18.

Proceeds: thirteen thousand three hundred and sixty dollars.

Profit: five thousand three hundred and sixty, before fees.

Sixty-seven percent.

I checked the purchase. Eight thousand. I checked the sale again. Then I brought up the chart and moved the cursor back to twelve fifty.

The stock had continued climbing. Nine minutes. While I had been showing Polina an overdue invoice, the value of my position had increased by another two thousand dollars.

I laughed aloud.

There was nobody to tell. I opened her messages anyway, then closed them. She would say it was gambling; worse, she might take no interest. I did not want either response attached to the number.

The rice boiled over. I turned down the heat and wiped the stove with a dish towel, then came back to look at the order once more.

I had made more in those nine minutes than I would take home from the company in two weeks. This comparison was not quite fair: there had been eight thousand dollars at risk, and taxes to consider, and a month in the previous year I preferred not to include in comparisons. But the two thousand was real. The order had filled. There was nothing theoretical about it.

Polina had come to ask about somebody else’s debt and accidentally improved my finances.

I liked that. I liked it more each time I thought it.

In my trading journal I entered the purchase and sale, the size of the position, the return, and the time. Under *Exit reason* I typed *End-of-day liquidation.* This was accurate.

The next field was *Followed plan?*

Above the journal, in the frozen rows I kept visible while scrolling, were my rules. Take profit at forty percent. Do not add to a losing position. No overnight holds.

I looked at the first rule. Forty-two would have been a perfectly respectable result. I had been prepared to accept it. But surely there was something to be said for allowing a strong position to continue while keeping the safeguard in place. Otherwise, what had I built the safeguard for?

I did not change the rule. One trade was no basis for changing a system. I was quite firm about that.

My phone lit up.

*You didn’t tell him I asked about Mercer?*

*No.*

Her reply came almost immediately.

*Good.*

I left the phone beside the laptop, with the message visible, and returned to the journal.

Under *Followed plan?* I selected *Yes*.