Chapter 4: Gas Money

I waited until we were in the truck and the doors were shut.

"Five thousand dollars," I said.

"Gas is expensive."

"Don't you do that to me. Not the dry thing."

Elias started the engine.

"Say it was a joke," I said. "Say you took it to keep him talking."

"I took it," he said, "because he was holding it out."

My voice came out thinner than I wanted.

"Half the floor clapped for you an hour ago, and you let that man buy you on the loading dock."

"He didn't buy me."

"Then what is it?"

"Let me drive," Elias said. "And then ask me again."

I turned my face to the window and gripped the door handle until my knuckles went white.

He drove across the river to a street of small brick houses with chain-link fences and a basketball hoop leaning over the sidewalk.

He parked at the third one.

The foreman's wife opened the door in a hospital lanyard, still in her scrubs, with a toddler on her hip.

"Elias?" she said.

"Hi," he said.

"No." She went red. "Elias, no, I told my husband we'd figure out the bill."

"It's not from me," he said.

He took the envelope out of his jacket and put it in her free hand.

"It's from a man who thinks I'm for sale. He's bad at math, so you might as well get the interest."

She looked down at the cash, then at his face, and her mouth crumpled.

She hugged him with the baby squashed between them.

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