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I don’t call Vera. I don’t text her. I sleep for three hours on a bare mattress. Then I call Anton about Monday’s truck.
Rosa lets me in herself at one minute past nine and locks the door behind me. Vera is at the little table by the window with the folder closed in front of her. She doesn’t get up.
Rosa sits down across from her and points at the third chair.
I sit.
“Is my shop safe?” Rosa asks.
“Safer than it was on Sunday,” I say. “Daniel’s creditor has already sent someone in to sit at one of these tables.”
Rosa takes this in without blinking. “He had a key once.”
“He doesn’t have a key now.”
“I’m asking whether you think he’ll try.”
“I think he might be told to.”
Vera watches me, and doesn’t look away when our eyes meet. I’ll take it as a win.
“Then here’s what I want,” Rosa says. “When something is about my shop, I want to hear it. Not from Vera after the event, and not when you’ve finished deciding whether I can stand it.”
“Agreed,” I say.
Rosa stands up, pushes her chair in, and goes into the kitchen without saying another word. Through the swinging door I can hear her running water into the mop bucket.
Vera and I sit at her table.
“Monday I’ll be following the freight truck,” I say. “I may be away overnight, but Grisha will drive you.”
She nods once. Her hand is on the table; I reach across and entwine my fingers with hers, and she doesn’t pull away.
“You’re beautiful, pchelka.”
She licks her lips, watching my mouth as she does so, and my heart soars because I know I haven’t completely screwed up the best thing that has ever happened to me.
15
VERA
I ask Rosa on Friday, after close, with the spiral notebook open on the steel table between us and the mop bucket still steaming by the sink.
“I can pay thirty up front,” I say. “But then I can’t replace the oven or keep anything back.”
Rosa is wrapping the last of the rye. She finishes the loaf she’s holding, folds the paper under at both ends, and sets it on the rack.
“You’re asking me to wait for my money.”
“For part of it.”
“How much?”
I turn the notebook around so she can read it. I’ve reworked this page four times since Wednesday. “Fifteen at signing. Fifteen later.”
“How much later?”
“The second year. I need to get through the first one.”
