He was still in the alley when the back door opened.

Dottie. Apron on. Arms folded.

She sat down beside him on the step. This was unprecedented. Dottie did not sit. Dottie orbited. Dottie passed and poured and sighed and delivered verdicts in single sentences and then returned to the counter. Dottie sitting was an event on the level of the harbour freezing.

"She told me," Dottie said.

He looked at her. "I told her not to."

"She didn't tell me about the money. She told me about the boys. About the debt. About Declan." Dottie was quiet for a moment. "I've known about the brothers since she started. You can see it. The way she counts her tips. The way she takes the leftover bread home in her coat pocket when she thinks nobody's looking. The way she's always cold because she owns one coat and it's the wrong one."

"You knew."

"I'm Dottie. I know everything. I just don't say everything." She looked at him. The look was not the usual Dottie Greek chorus look. This was something more private. "You gave her the rent money."

"She told you."

"She didn't need to. You've been late on Gerald's rent since November. I know what the gallery pays you. I know what the mural commission fell through on. I can do the maths."

He said nothing.

Dottie reached into her apron pocket. Took out an envelope. Set it on the step between them. White. Sealed. His name written on the front in handwriting that was small and precise.

"Don't open it here," she said. "Don't argue. Don't be noble. The noble thing, as your friend with the scarf keeps pointing out, is catnip and it helps nobody."

"Dottie..."

"I said don't argue." She stood up. Brushed off her apron. Looked down at him.

"You're a good man, Fayiz. Stupid. But good. The two aren't mutually exclusive. I've been married to both for thirty-seven years."

She went inside.

He picked up the envelope. Felt the weight. Didn't open it. Put it in his jacket pocket beside the sketchbook.

Theodore pressed his head against Fayiz's ankle.

"Yeah," Fayiz said. "I know."

☕︎

At home, he opened the envelope.

Cash. Three hundred and fifty dollars. Exact. A note, folded once:

For Gerald. Not for you. Don't let the girl know. She'll try to pay me back and I'll have to let her because she has the pride of a mule and the income of a sparrow. Let her pay you. You give it to me. I give it to Gerald. Everybody keeps their dignity. That's how we do it.

--Dottie.

He read it twice. Three times. Then he sat on the floor of the studio and laughed: a real, full, helpless laugh that startled Theodore off the good cushion and echoed in the cold room.

Dottie. A woman who ran a diner on Duckworth Street and knew everything and said nothing and solved problems with envelopes and single sentences and the quiet, immovable conviction that people were worth the trouble.

He put the money on the counter. Put the note beside it. Stood in front of the easel.

Mollie's face, under the cloth. The left eye still better than the right. He lifted the cloth. Looked at it.

Something was wrong. Not with the technique, the technique was fine, better than fine, the jaw was right and the mouth was close and even the eyes were starting to work. What was wrong was the expression. He'd painted her neutral. Controlled. The funeral-home face. The face she wore when she was holding everything back.

That wasn't her.

That was the version of her he'd painted because it was the version he could see most easily, the surface, the performance, the armour. But underneath it, behind it, was the other one. The one from the fog. The one from the phone call. The one who ordered his coffee and said it might be too hot and meant I'm sorry, I'm here, I ordered your thing before you arrived because I wanted you to walk in and see it.

He picked up a brush. Loaded it with ochre. The warm one. Hers.

He began to work on the eyes. Not scraping. Not starting over. Adjusting. Layer over layer, the way trust was built, slowly, imperfectly, each new layer changing everything underneath.

He thought about the morning. The coffee waiting. Her face when he'd sat down, not the mask, not the wall, but the thing between them, the almost-smile. He thought about Dottie's note. The loop of money. That's how we do it.

He thought about sixteen days.

In sixteen days the contract said they died. In sixteen days the napkin said it was over. In sixteen days he was supposed to stop existing, which was a plan he'd made in a dark room on a dark night when the world was the size of a suitcase and a dog and a bus ticket to the end of a continent.

The world was not that size anymore.

The world was the size of a diner. A booth. A cup of coffee someone had ordered before he arrived. A sketchbook from a teenager. An envelope from a woman with forty-three years of practice at knowing what people needed. A green scarf on a hook. A painting of a face he was learning to see honestly.

He painted until the light went. Theodore slept. The studio was cold. The money was on the counter. The note beside it.

That's how we do it.

He cleaned his brushes. Covered the canvas. Sat in the dark kitchen with dal he'd made from his mother's recipe and Theodore at his feet and the green scarf on the hook and the sixteen days ahead of him like a road that was starting, he thought, starting to curve. Not ending. Not stopping. Curving. Bending toward something he couldn't see yet but could feel, the way you could feel a painting before you started. Something was coming. Something was there. All you had to do was show up with your brush and your hands and your too-much heart and not look away.

Sixteen days.

He was beginning to think they might not be enough.

☕︎