“Huh,” says Marta. “Okay. That’s great to hear.”
Amy thinks about probing a little, but she doesn’t want Marta to know she doesn’t know what Marta clearly does. She waits until Timothy finishes talking to Don John and Borachio, then stands next to him until he notices her.
“Hello!” Timothy removes his reading glasses, folds the arms, and slips the glasses inside his shirt pocket. Without them he looks younger and hipper, more celebrity than professor, although truthfully he’s at the stage of life when he could easily go either way. “Need me for something?”
“I didn’t get a check,” she says. “Marta’s passing them out now.”
“I see,” says Timothy. He looks startled, like Amy has caughthim with his hand in the cookie jar, his shot glass near the rum bottle. “I’ll have to check with Alexa.”
Thatdoesn’t make sense. “Why would you check with Alexa? She’s in L.A., right?”
“Amy,” Timothy begins.
“Yeeeeees?” She draws the word out, because Timothy’s expression is grave, like he’s a doctor about to deliver a diagnosis, and, honestly, she’s a little nervous.
“Never mind.”
“Never mind what? Why are you acting like a weirdo?”
“I’m just going to come right out with it.” But then he doesn’t.
“What?” She’s starting to get irritated.
“I’m paying you, Amy. The production isn’t. Your paycheck is late because Alexa needs to send it from my account in California, and there was a delay with the processing. I wasn’t going to tell you, I swore to myself many times that I wouldn’t, but I changed my mind. I don’t want it to become a thing.”
It takes Amy a few seconds to catch up. This is the terminal diagnosis? “You’repaying me? For this job? Out of your own pocket?”
“Well, out of my own bank account, I guess it’s not technically a pock—”
She cuts him off. “Butwhy?”
“Because Blake budgeted a specific amount of money for the production, and there was no salary for a production manager, only a stage manager. Gertie determined pretty quickly that we needed a PM, and I agreed. So, here you are.”
She squints at him. “Why did you think I’d care ifyouwere paying me, versus Blake?”
Timothy knits his eyebrows together. “Because I thought if you knew you would think it was a charity job.”
“Hmm.” She considers this. “Well,isit a charity job?”
“No! Of course not. But I’m paying you more than this job would normally pay—”
Aha! She’d thought the salary was generous, but she’d never worked for a summer theater, so she didn’t know for sure. “So itisa charity job.”
“No!Of course not. It’s a job. That I happen to be paying you for. Paying you well.”
She tries to take all of this in. When she really thinks about it, when she spells it out in her mind, should she be bothered, or should she be grateful? Their collective relationship with money—hers and Timothy’s—and their relationship to each other’s money, or lack of, has always been complicated. When their mother was sick and Amy took on the lion’s share of the care, Timothy offered to compensate her. She refused—it felt weird, and wrong, to profit from their mother’s suffering—but to be honest, itwasa lot of work, and she and Greg could have used the money, and there were times when Amy was mad at herself for refusing.
Then there were the Christmas gifts he used to send: lavish to the point of being ridiculous. Once, a three-thousand-dollar set of kitchen knives. They had a perfectly good set of mid-range Wüsthofs they’d gotten when they were married! Another time, an Hermès blanket. She’d made the mistake of telling Greg she’d googled the blanket: it was $700. Greg, who was low-key about so many things, was livid about the blanket.
“Timothy,” Amy said when they spoke after the holiday. “What in the world do you think I’m going to do with a seven-hundred-dollar blanket?”
“Sleep under it?” he suggested.
She snorted. “No. I’m going to fold it up and be too scared to touch it, that’s what I’m going to do with it. Why’d you give me this?”
He admitted that his assistant had picked it out, and he didn’t know the price—he didn’t, in fact, know if $700 was a lot for a blanket.
“Seriously?” Amy had been incredulous. “Did we not grow upin the same household? Do you actually not know that seven hundred dollars is a lot for a blanket?”
