Chapter 10: Comfortable

The kitchen had a sack of potatoes on the floor, and I sat down next to it.

The cook was shelling peas at the far end of the prep table and looked deeply interested in peas.

She slid me a paring knife without a word.

I peeled a potato in one long spiral and dropped it in the pot, and I was on the second when the door opened.

Arthur came in with his sleeves pushed up.

"I'd like to help," he said.

"There's a sack," I said, and pointed with the knife.

He picked up a potato and a knife.

"Laura, I'm sorry."

I handed him a second potato.

He peeled it from the outside in, taking nearly half.

What was left looked like a hexagon with regrets.

"You're wasting it," I said. "That's still good."

"That's the skin," he said.

"That's the potato," I said. "The skin is the part you throw out. Thinner."

He tried again, thinner, and nicked his thumb.

"In January I was in your kitchen," he said, "and you called a plumber."

"Four times," I said.

"He quoted you nine thousand dollars," he said.

"You said you'd think about it in a bright voice, and your hand was shaking on the phone."

"It was a bad connection," I said.

"It wasn't," he said.

I put down my knife and picked up an onion, because it was next, and I needed it.

"I couldn't stand it," Arthur said. "I took the money before the plumber finished talking."

"I told myself I'd ask you after. Then after was March, and your mother's mortgage notice was on your table."

"I thought, if I ask, she says no."

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