Page 5

"You lost one last spring."

"That was a clerical error."

"Five hundred, Roman."

Down on the floor, Rosemary Brewer bends to pick up something that rolled under a loom. "Fine. She'll be on my side by Sunday."

"The board expects a list Monday morning at eight. Don't make me explain a blank page."

"You'll have it."

"Names on every line," Margaret says, and hangs up.

The leads file back in. I've been standing at this window with my forehead nearly on the glass. I turn around. "Thank you. Brief note: the list is under review. Not withdrawn, under review. But nobody hears about their job before Monday. Not from me, not from anyone. Someone tells you different, send them to me."

Nobody speaks. The woman from payroll puts her hand over her mouth. Dolores isn't here. Neither is Rosemary. The only person in this building I need to convince is downstairs ignoring me.

They leave. I open my laptop on the windowsill and pull up the model. The column for loom maintenance is empty. The column for senior weaving is not. I move one number and the whole sheet goes red.

Then I look up. Can't help it. She's down the floor now, crouched beside a loom, talking to a man with folded arms.

By the time she stands, he's nodding. She touches his sleeve and moves on. I check the clock. Forty minutes have passed. I haven't typed anything. I'm just standing here watching through glass like some kind of fool.

At nine fifty-two I close the laptop. I leave the overcoat and my suit jacket on the chair but keep the tie.

The dye house is at the far end of the ground floor. She's waiting by the door with her arms full. Her sleeves are rolled back. Indigo stains on her forearms, freckles on her wrist. When she sees my tie, her mouth does something. She doesn't comment. Just holds out a canvas apron and rubber boots.

"These are a twelve," I say. "I'm an eleven and a half."

"Guessed. Figured you'd round up."

"I do round up." I sit on an overturned crate. She watches me work the boots on. I'm six-two, sitting on a crate, and she's looking down at me. The apron goes over my head. She steps in and ties it at my back without ceremony. Close enough to smell: honey, wool, something sweet. Her knuckles brush my spine through my shirt.

"There," she says. "Now you look like you belong somewhere."

"I'm a quick study."

"You'd like to think so." She pulls the door open.

Heat pours out. The dye house is long and low, full of steel and copper tubs. The air is thick, wet, smells like a barn left in the rain. Hanks of yarn drip from racks in deep blue loops. A low bubbling sound everywhere.

"This is the indigo," she says. She walks to the biggest vat and picks up a wooden paddle. Her sleeves slide to her elbows. "Watch."

She sinks the paddle and lifts. A hank of wool comes up dripping.

It's green. Brilliant yellow-green, wet and shining. She holds it up, arms straining, breathing harder. A curl sticks to her temple.

"Wait," she says.

The green deepens. Darkens. Goes teal, cobalt, the blue of winter sky after sunset. Air, she tells me. The indigo doesn't turn until it hits air. The color happens in the leaving.

"That's Bloomfield Blue," she says. "You can't buy it from a catalog and you can't rush it. People write us letters." She lowers the hank to a rack. Her face is flushed from the heat, pink down her throat. "That's the one thing in your spreadsheet nobody can replace."

"You keep saying that."

"Because you're not listening."

"I'm listening." I lean over the next tub. The rinse water is clear, steaming. I lean farther to see the wool moving in it.