“She’s your boss’s wife. Bonuses are decided in two months. I don’t have a job right now.”
Matteo hesitated, then asked, “What’s your deal with Dawn? It feels like, a little weird.”
“Whatever,” I said. “She kept asking. I feel sorry for her.”
“Okay, fine. But you need to deal with the flights, the hotel, everything,” he said. “I told you I have no bandwidth this week.” He went to hop in the shower.
While I was on the phone with the airline, I stood near the window, watching the slow progress of cargo and ships. Matteo and I fell in love during college and we’d grown like vines around a stake, embracing, lifting, choking. When absorbed in work, he lobbed practical tasks in my direction, a vestige of his professor father’s habits. Perhaps accepting Dawn’s invitation was a way to throw a wrench in the smooth works of our plans. And yet, here I was, smoothing them again.
As a recorded voice touted the most legroom in coach, I saw something fall from the mid-deck of a massive cruiser directly across from the hotel. A figure thrashed in the fuel-slicked port waters and my own skin felt cold, wet, stinging. I thought of hanging up and calling the hotel’s front desk, but I’d been on hold for twenty minutes and didn’t want to lose my place in the queue. Another person waved his frantic arms over the railing. Surely help would come quickly. I became involved with the airline agent and then Matteo, still annoyed, came out of the bathroom.
“It’s not like I want to go with them,” I said.
“Right,” Matteo said. “If you did, I would be fine with it. But you’ve stolen a day from us. In service of what? Your Midwestern girl manners? Some old fear? I don’t work at the one factory in town that Howie owns or whatever.”
Matteo’s last comment felt like a slap, as he knew it would. My father had worked a second job at an asphalt factory during the years our farm didn’t produce enough to break even. When it closed, we sold our land and moved into a one-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Kansas City where the high schools were decent. Every night, I’d lain awake on the plaid pull-out couch next to my sister, mind racing with fear of further displacement. I’d worked at McDonald’s to pay my expenses in high school, excelled at state college, moved to Chicago and sent money home. But my father still died on the same pull-out where I’d made my plans, after several years unloading pallets at Home Depot.