Five Hours a Year novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: What I Didn't Ask

"Go to our apartment," Alec told the clerk. "Tell the doorman I sent you. He has a key, and he doesn't work for the firm."

"The boxes are heavy, sir."

"Then take a cab, and take them all. Don't open the door for anyone you don't know."

He hung up and stood looking at the phone.

"Our apartment," I said.

"I haven't changed the lock." He met my eyes. "I didn't know what else to call it."

I didn't answer that.

I put my shoes on instead, and I took the complaint and my laptop across Sansome Street to the flat he had rented.

It was bare in the way a place is bare when a man has slept in it for a week.

There was a table, two chairs, a lamp, and a legal pad with my name written on it forty times.

He saw me see it.

"I do that when I'm thinking," he said.

"Write my name?"

"I've done it since the second year."

I sat down at the table and opened the laptop, and I decided not to say anything about it.

We worked until midnight.

I wrote and he read, and every so often he said a date, and I typed it.

He was a better witness than I expected.

He didn't defend himself.

He gave me the plain fact each time, and he let it sit there.

At eleven thirty, he put the pad down and said, "Can I tell you something that isn't about the complaint?"

"Is it billable?"

"It's overdue."

I took my hands off the keys.

"In the first year," he said, "I thought you were happy."

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