Chapter 7: Thursday Dinner

Dear Marguerite,

I have changed my shirt four times and I don't know what to wear to dinner with my boss.

I know you will say the answer is a shirt.

I would like it noted that I am nervous, in writing.

Late Shift

I left that note on her desk at six, folded under her stapler, and she had left a reply on mine by six-fifteen.

It said, "Wear the green cardigan. I will be wearing something worse."

Marguerite lived on Capitol Hill, on the fourth floor of a brick building with no elevator.

By the time I knocked I was out of breath and my glasses had fogged up.

She opened the door in an old gray sweater and bare feet.

"I told you," she said. "Worse."

"It's a nice sweater."

"It has a hole in the elbow. Come in."

The apartment was small and warm, with books stacked two deep on the shelves and a record player in the corner.

A pot stood on the stove, and the whole room smelled like tomatoes, pepper and smoke.

"Chili," she said. "My mother's recipe. She is Ballard by birth and would tell you mine is wrong."

"Is it?"

"It's burnt on the bottom. That's how you know it's right."

We ate at a tiny table by the window, with the Hill lit up outside and the pot between us.

The chili was the best thing I had eaten in a year, and I told her so, and she looked down at her plate and almost smiled.

She told me about Renton, where she grew up, and her father who drove a cab, and her mother who worked nights as a nurse.

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