At ten past nine on Saturday, a woman in a purple hat asked Iris whether everything was really going.
“Everything in the sale,” Iris said.
“Including that?”
She pointed at the brass service bell.
“No. We still need that.”
The woman rang it, apparently to confirm the judgment, and went upstairs in search of bed linen.
By half past nine the store had acquired the peculiar, buoyant noise of people spending money while telling each other how much they were saving. Shopping bags rustled. The register at homewares kept opening with a tired metallic cough. Someone had brought a dog in a wheeled shopping basket, which seemed harmless until the dog began to bark whenever the elevator arrived.
Iris moved between floors with a clipboard she had stopped consulting. She knew the problems by sound. A high, cheerful voice meant Priya was selling; a low, insistent one meant someone expected a discount for buying more than two of something. Silence by the registers usually meant a machine had stopped.
At ten, she found Daniel helping Hugh carry cartons of pillowcases out of the elevator.
“I thought you weren’t due until Monday.”
“I wanted to see the first day.”
“Don’t let him fool you,” Hugh said. “He likes the dog.”
From the basket came a commanding yap.
“I respect his commitment,” Daniel said.
Iris took the top carton before her smile could become too conspicuous. “Careful. Hugh collects apprentices.”
“Only ones who can carry their own weight.”
Daniel lifted the remaining stack. “Is this an assessment?”
“It is now.”
They were interrupted by an elderly man who wanted six matching pillowcases in cream, which they no longer had. His wife had died in February, he explained, and the laundry kept mixing up his linen at the assisted-living residence. Daniel listened, found a staff pen and wrote the man’s initials on the cloth labels of four pillowcases while Iris checked for two more upstairs.
It took seven minutes. Daniel didn’t look at his watch.
When the man had gone, Iris said, “You could have sold him blue.”
“He wanted cream.”
“Blue wouldn’t have been mixed up.”
Daniel capped the pen. “I thought about that after the second one.”
It was a ridiculous thing to find charming, but she did.
Near noon, Mrs. Hallet from the pharmacy emerged from a fitting room wearing a coat the color of a ripe tomato. It had broad lapels, a generous belt and the sort of confidence Iris associated with women who could order wine without reading the description.
“Too much?” Mrs. Hallet asked.
“For what?” Iris said.
“Me.”
“Are you planning to be less visible than usual?”
Mrs. Hallet looked at herself. She was sixty-six, recently retired and accustomed to beige.
“My sister says red is difficult.”
“Does your sister have to wear it?”
“No.”
“Then that seems workable.”
Mrs. Hallet turned sideways. Iris brought the belt around her waist and showed her a looser way to knot it. The woman in the mirror straightened. She put her hands into the pockets, lifted her chin, and smiled at a version of herself she appeared to recognize with surprise.
“It’s a beautiful coat,” she said.
“It is.”
“I used to have a red car.”
“What happened to it?”
“Had children. Needed room.”
Iris stood beside her while she looked. Nobody hurried her.
When Mrs. Hallet decided to buy it, she kept it on, asking Priya to cut the tag. She left carrying her beige jacket in a bag, smiling through the front doors as if the street had been put there for her.
Daniel stood at the end of the aisle.
“How long have you done alterations?” he asked Iris.
“Since my grandmother got tired of me ruining her good fabric.”
“Professionally.”
“A few years in my twenties. Before Beth was born. I helped here when they needed someone.”
“Why did you stop?”
“Customer service paid more.”
That was true. It left out the part where a steady schedule had suited Colin’s hours better, and the part where she had found being good at a new job easier than admitting she missed the old one.
“You have an eye for it.”
“Mrs. Hallet has an excellent eye. She just needed someone to leave her alone with it.”
He looked toward the doors. “Maybe.”
She glanced at her clipboard. There were three things she could reasonably do next. For a moment she wanted to do none of them and stay here talking to him about red coats.
“Have you eaten?” he asked.
She laughed.
“What?”
“Nothing. You’re becoming consistent.”
“I make no apologies.”
He’d bought sandwiches from the bakery across the street. They ate in the staff room with the door open. People came and went, complaining about their feet, comparing sales, asking Iris things she could answer in five words. Daniel ate patiently while her own sandwich sat between questions.
Finally she said, “This is why people in management grow strange.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. You need to enjoy small amounts of power enough to compensate for never finishing lunch.”
He picked up the two remaining halves of their sandwiches and put them back in the paper bag.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Somewhere you don’t have jurisdiction.”
“I have responsibilities.”
“For ten minutes?”
She considered the question. Then she told Priya where she was going and followed him out.
They walked to the little triangular park behind the library. A bench faced a bed of crocuses and a statue of a man whose bronze expression suggested he’d been disappointed in Wrenford from the beginning.
“Thomas Wren,” Iris said as they sat. “Founding citizen. He owned a mill.”
“He looks very concerned about it.”
“He’s facing the parking meters.”
Daniel handed her the sandwich. It was chicken with a sharp mustard she hadn’t asked for and discovered she liked.
“What would you do?” he asked. “After this, if you didn’t have to take the first sensible job?”
She looked at him. “That’s a dangerous question to ask someone who’s had two bites of lunch.”
“Should I wait until three?”
She took another bite to give herself time.
There had been plans, once. A little shop. Clothes repaired well enough to be loved again. A rail of good secondhand pieces, altered to fit people instead of asking people to become the shape of them. Nothing grand. Somewhere with a window and a door she could lock at six because she had made enough.
“I’d sew,” she said.
“You still do.”
“For myself. For Winnie. For people who need something by Friday.”
“What about people who paid?”
“I used to think about it.”
He waited. She watched a man try to convince a small terrier to relinquish a glove.
“A studio,” she said. “Alterations, good resale pieces. Not bridal. I love a bride, but I don’t want a deadline with six aunts attached.”
Daniel laughed. “Reasonable.”
“It would need to be small. Low rent. I’d need time to build it up.”
“Do you have any customers?”
“A few. Not officially.”
“Official ones start somewhere.”
She could hear the advice arriving, a loan offer perhaps, a business contact, the brisk male pleasure of making a woman’s tentative idea into a project.
Instead he ate his sandwich.
It was confusingly attractive.
“What would you do?” she asked.
He wiped a trace of mustard from his thumb. “Less.”
“That’s not a job.”
“It is a goal.”
“Less of what?”
“Travel. Work that requires me to stay in other people’s empty houses for weeks.”
“That sounds lonely.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s interesting. People keep remarkable things.”
“Such as?”
“An entire drawer of hotel shower caps.”
She laughed. “How many?”
“A hundred and fourteen.”
“You counted.”
“That was the job.”
“You could have said approximately a hundred.”
“Then I’d have been wrong.”
His smile appeared just before hers, as if he’d been waiting to give it to her.
They were late getting back. By four minutes. Nobody had died. Priya had sold two more coats.
The disagreement happened at three.
A customer named Mrs. Vale had bought curtains on special order before the closure announcement. They were arriving Wednesday. She wanted to collect them Saturday, but worked until four-thirty and lived twenty minutes away.
“We’ll keep someone here until five,” Iris said.
Daniel looked up from the fixture inventory.
The woman thanked her, relieved, and left with a printed copy of the arrangement.
“Who’ll be here?” Daniel asked when she was gone.
“I will.”
“After a full sale day.”
“It’s half an hour.”
“Will the alarm company charge for the change?”
“No.”
“And who else will be here?”
She put her pen down. “I can unlock a door by myself.”
“I know. But the lone-working policy on collections says two staff. If you’re going to make that arrangement, somebody else has to agree.”
He was right. That made her angry before she had time to decide whether it should.
“We’ve done it before.”
“Then you already know who’s staying.”
“No, Daniel. I don’t know yet. I was helping a customer.”
He looked at the printed collection notice beside her keyboard, then back at her.
“I understand. You still promised somebody else’s time.”
She felt herself go still.
“Is this going in your report?”
“No. I’m talking to you.”
Around them, the store carried on. A pair of women compared pillowcases. Hugh pushed a trolley toward the loading dock. Iris wished the floor were empty, then knew she would have hated that too, being alone in her own embarrassment.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll arrange it.”
He nodded once and moved away.
She stood for a moment with her hand on the printer. He hadn’t scolded her. He hadn’t shouted or acted as if she were incompetent. She had simply been wrong in front of a man she had begun to like.
The liking had made it feel much worse.
At four, she asked Hugh whether he would stay until five the following Saturday for an extra paid half hour.
“Can’t,” he said. “My grandson’s got a recital.”
Normally she would have asked what time it finished, whether somebody else could go, if he might just wait until Mrs. Vale arrived. She heard the questions forming and stopped.
“Of course. I’ll ask Priya.”
Priya could stay. She wanted the extra pay. It took less than two minutes to agree and update the schedule.
At closing, Daniel came to the office door.
“Have you found somebody?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She put the clipboard down. “You were right.”
He watched her without looking pleased with himself.
“I don’t always remember to ask,” she said. “Because I usually say yes.”
“I do something similar.”
“Do you?”
“I decide what’s most efficient, then explain it afterward. People don’t invariably appreciate the saved time.”
She looked at him. “How surprising.”
His smile was brief and a little rueful. “I’m told.”
She leaned against the edge of the desk. She was tired. Her feet hurt. The day’s takings were better than projected, and she had eaten an entire sandwich on a bench beside a man who seemed willing to disagree with her without making her smaller.
“Are we still having lunch Monday?” she asked.
“I’d like to.”
“Good.”
Priya appeared behind him carrying a stack of bags. “Thursday. Staff dinner. Winnie’s booked the back room at Leo’s. You’re both coming.”
Daniel turned. “Am I staff?”
“You fixed the rail. There’s a precedent.”
Iris laughed.
“We can probably survive without an estate representative,” Priya said. “But Hugh wants somebody he can argue about baseball with. None of us care enough.”
“Thursday,” Daniel said. “What time?”
“Seven. Iris?”
There would be no trouble finding a reason to decline. Too much work. Too much change. The evening would be for everyone, and she was the manager, and someone ought to stay sober and sensible in case the bill needed checking.
She thought of the green dress hanging upstairs at home, both straps finished now.
“Seven,” she said. “I’ll be there.”
Daniel glanced at her, visibly glad.
She went back to her figures before he could see how much that mattered.