Chapter 13: The Walkout

I looked at the forty-one dates on her screen for a long time.

Then I closed her laptop very gently and put both of my hands on top of it.

"Don't show this to anyone yet," I said.

"Why not?"

"Because the second Lyle knows it exists, he'll come for it."

She nodded slowly.

"Send me a copy," I said. "Send your mom one."

"My mom already has one," she said. "She has copies of my grocery lists."

On Monday morning, there were five white envelopes in the studio.

Pip got one. Both artists who'd brought the space heater got one. So did the colorist and one of the designers.

The junior writer didn't get one.

Neither did I.

Pip opened hers standing up.

"Lunch," she read. "Today, twelve thirty, the hotel across the river. A conversation about your future in Kansas City."

"With who?" I said.

She turned the letter around.

At the bottom, in blue ink, it said Can't wait to catch up! Lyle.

He'd drawn a little smiley face.

Pip tore her letter in half, then in quarters, then dropped it in the recycling.

"There," she said. "That's my future."

The other four didn't tear theirs.

They held them, and looked at each other, and didn't look at me.

"It's a twenty percent raise," one of the artists said quietly. "And moving money."

"I know," I said.

"My rent went up in March."

"I know."

Three of them went to the lunch.

At four, one of the artists came back alone and sat at her desk without taking her coat off.

"How was it?" Pip asked.

"Lyle ordered for everybody," the artist said. "He told us Chicago's a sinking ship and he's the lifeboat."

"He said five of us. Not two. Five."

I remembered the supply closet wall.

I'll bring two. The rest are expensive and sentimental.

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