The Woman He Traded Is Now His Equal novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Grovel

Porter was sitting on the third step of my building's stairs when I came in that night.

He wore jeans and a gray sweater I had never seen.

He had no phone in his hand, no folder and no lawyer.

I had told Byron to wait in the car.

"Ten minutes," I had said. "If he's alone, I want to hear it alone."

"I'll be here."

Porter stood up when he saw me, and then did not seem to know what to do with his arms.

"Thank you for coming," he said.

"It's my building."

"Right."

He sat back down. I stayed on the landing above him, with the rail under my hand.

"I'm going to say it plainly," Porter said. "I'm not going to do the voice."

"Which voice?"

"The one that works." He looked at his hands. "I read your mail because I was scared you would leave. The first month, a recruiter wrote to you. I read it, and I thought: she's better than me. And I answered it myself."

I said nothing.

"After that I couldn't stop. A dozen times. The Tuesday after your mother's funeral, I sat in my car outside the funeral home and sent a no to Brooklyn, because I could not stand to be alone in the office."

"You could have asked me to stay."

"I knew what you'd say."

"You didn't know. You never asked."

His face twisted.

"I answered 'Deal' because I thought it was a trick," he said. "I thought Costello wanted to see if I'd do it. I thought you'd come back by Sunday, like you always did, and it would be a story we told."

"Always did?"

"You never left. Not once in four years."

"I never had anywhere to go," I said. "You made sure."

He nodded slowly.

"I'll give you anything," he said. "Half the company. Your name on the door. I'll marry you, tonight, at City Hall, if you want."

I looked down at him.

I had spent four years waiting for him to say a sentence like that.

It sat there in the stairwell and meant nothing at all.

"No," I said.

"Tash."

"Don't call me that." My voice was steady. "You can listen now, since it's finally quiet."

He listened.

"I want three things. They're mine, and they're not Byron's. I want a signed statement of the eleven refusals sent to your board and to every firm you wrote to in my name. I want my files and my passwords, all of them, handed to my lawyer on Friday. And I want you to see a doctor about your stomach."

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