Page 14

Two thousand units of Bloomfield Blue at eight dollars under cost on the first run, break-even on the second, ramped to six thousand by year two with the dead months finally full.

West-wing leases at eleven dollars a square foot. Seven early retirements at a package I could defend to a board, and an eighth line I left blank because I couldn't make myself type Dolores's name in a cell.

At 2:14 a.m. I sent three emails to a buyer in Maine whose out-of-office reply told me she was at a soccer tournament until Sunday, which I decided was a good sign.

By four I'd given up on sleep, and by five I'd shaved and dressed and left the tie folded on top of the order form like a fool.

Now I'm outside a diner in the dark in yesterday's shirt with my sleeves rolled to the elbow, waiting for a woman to turn a sign.

Mae unlocks the door at 5:58. She looks at me the way you'd look at something the cat wouldn't touch.

"You're the forty percent."

"I'm told it was excessive."

"It was a bribe. A good one." She steps back to let me in, bell clattering, and the warmth of the griddle rolls over me. "Sit. You look like the dog's breakfast."

"I haven't slept."

"I can see that." She puts a mug in front of me without being asked and fills it. "You want pie?"

"I want tea. Strong, with honey on the side." I clear my throat. "And a cider doughnut. In a bag. For someone else."

The coffeepot stops halfway back to the burner. Mae turns very slowly and looks at me with an expression I last saw on a venture capitalist who had just been told the actual cost of his project. "Say that again."

"Strong tea. Honey on the side, not in it. A doughnut." I have the grace to look at the counter. "There was a bag from here in her wastebasket Friday, and I watched her make her tea. I'd rather not get the rest wrong."

"You noticed that?"

"I'm trying to notice more. I was hoping you'd tell me what I missed."

For a long moment Mae doesn't move. Then she lowers the pot, wipes her hands on her apron, and leans her forearms on the counter so close that I can smell coffee and bacon grease and the lavender soap she must use on her hands. "Strong enough to stand a spoon in. Honey on the side, because she likes to do it herself, one spoonful at a time, she says it's the only part of the morning that's hers." Her eyebrow lifts.

"I'm aware."

"Rosey Brewer has never asked anyone for anything in her life, Mr. Caldwell. Not for help, not for money, not for a day off. When her father was sick she drove him to Albany for treatments at four in the morning and was on the floor by seven. She's got a faucet in her kitchen that's been dripping for two years because she says she'll get to it, and she never will, because there's always someone who needs her more. I'm not telling you so you'll go fix it. I'm telling you so you'll know what you're dealing with, and she'll want to kill me for it." She lets that sit. "She's not a project."

The word goes through me like a nail. You don't love me. You love fixing me. Vanessa, two years ago, in the doorway of a very expensive apartment with her coat already on.

"I didn't say she was."

"You didn't have to. I've watched men decide she was a challenge. A girl who says no. The first one lasted about as long as the novelty did." She straightens, tucks a pencil behind her ear. "I'm not telling you not to. I'm telling you not to be a man who needs to win."

Something small and cold turns over in my stomach. The bet. Five hundred dollars, on a phone, in a window, on a Friday morning, and I'd forgotten it so completely that remembering feels like finding a stone in my shoe.

It was sport for two hours and then it stopped existing, somewhere between a green hank of wool and a girl's too-big-teeth grin. I'll tell her. When there's something to tell. When it isn't a stone, when it's a joke.

"I'm not interested in novelty," I say.

"Then you'd be the first." Mae turns back to the griddle. "Honey packets are in the basket. Lid tight. And Mr. Caldwell?"

"Yes?"

"If you hurt her I make pie for two hundred people at a time, and I know where every one of them lives."

"Understood."

"Good." She slides the bag across with the cup. I leave her a twenty and she doesn't say a word.