Daniel answered on the fourth ring, breathless and sounding put out to find that he was still capable of surprise.
“Is it on fire?” he asked.
“What?”
“Your washing machine. You only call me at this time for things that leak or burn.”
Mara sat in her car outside the staff entrance. Her feet were still trying to take the shape of her work shoes.
“I call you for your lovely nature.”
“That's Sundays. Saturday, something's on fire.”
“I'm calling about Elena.”
At the other end a tool touched a hard surface. He did not answer at once.
“What about her?”
Mara looked through the windshield at the back of the hotel. A vent was blowing two dead leaves around without giving them anywhere to land.
“She wants me to come on Thursday.”
“Come where?”
“To yours. To help with some things.”
“What things?”
“She's got a room, Dan.”
The leaves fell, then rose again.
“So she's said.”
“Have you seen it?”
“She hasn't asked me to see it.”
There was no anger in his voice. That made it worse. Daniel angry could be argued with. Daniel quietly trying to understand could make her feel disloyal before she had done anything.
“I'll be over in a bit,” she said.
“You don't have to come over.”
“I said I would.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Yes.”
“Have something anyway. There's enough.”
He asked her to get milk, as though she were going for the milk and might as well stop. He always did that when he was glad she was coming.
At his house the side door was open. A washing machine stood on a rubber mat in the garage, stripped of its front panel. Daniel was crouched beside it in shorts with one paint mark on the knee. He was holding a flashlight in his mouth.
Mara put the milk on the bench and took the flashlight from him.
“You could have asked.”
“I was saving it for a real emergency.” He pointed. “In there. See the clip?”
“There's more than one thing.”
“The silver one.”
“Wonderful. That narrows it down to the garage.”
He reached for her wrist and moved the beam. His hands were warm and slightly oily. There was a small bandage on his thumb with a cartoon strawberry on it, bright pink against the dirty skin.
“Where'd you get that?”
“Mrs. Russo. I was bleeding on her dryer. She said it was what she had.”
“It suits you.”
“Do you think so? I was worried it was young.”
He found the screw he wanted and backed out, one knee cracking. Mara raised a hand to help him up. He ignored it until he was nearly standing, then took it for the last unnecessary inch.
“There you go,” she said. “Try the other leg next time.”
“I'm keeping that one good.”
The washing machine belonged to a man who rented a room on the next street. Daniel had agreed to look at it after the man described a noise that had turned out not to be a noise but several objects trying to become one. On the bench, beside a mug of cold coffee, lay a child's plastic ring and a dull silver coin. It was not the machine from his photograph. There was always another machine.
“He paying you?” Mara asked.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“What I asked him.”
She turned her head. He smiled with one side of his mouth.
“You haven't married me. You don't get the books.”
He took her phone while she washed her hands and wiped a smear from its case with a clean corner of cloth. When she came back, he had put it on charge beside his own.
In the kitchen there was bread and a pan of eggs. He reheated them and cut her a slice from the loaf, the good thick end he would otherwise have taken. She sat in the chair where he used to sit when their mother was alive and this house still belonged to her. He sat opposite and reached over for the salt without asking Mara to pass it.
“It's free,” she said. “You could say please.”
“Then we'd start charging for things.”
She was tired enough for the eggs to taste better than they should. He watched her eat, looking pleased when she took a second piece of bread. The last of her afternoon irritation began to come out of her shoulders.
After Mara's divorce, Daniel had turned up with a small refrigerator he had repaired, because her old one was making a noise and she could not stand another thing in the apartment asking for attention. He had carried it up a flight of stairs with a friend and refused to take the old one down until she had got the food out. For weeks afterward she had opened the quiet refrigerator just to hear it not needing anything. Elena had filled its freezer with little containers of food neither woman mentioned now.
“So,” he said. “Thursday.”
Mara put down her fork.
“I told her I could come at two.”
“Is that when she gets the room?”
“I don't know. She's got the keys.”
He looked toward the back door. On the windowsill Elena had three pots with things growing in them that Mara could never keep straight. One was dead, but she had put a little painted bird beside it, so it seemed to have been done on purpose.
“You should ask her about it,” Mara said.
“I do ask her.”
“Then listen to what she's saying.”
“I listen. She tells me what needs doing, I do it, and somehow that isn't what she meant.”
“That's not only you. That's everybody.”
He gave a short laugh.
Mara said, “If you could be out for a bit.”
Daniel looked at her. “You think I'm going to stand in the doorway?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Let her see what it's like.”
He sat back, relieved by the sentence she had found for him.
“All right,” he said. “If that's what it takes.”
Mara took her plate to the sink. Behind her, he was talking about boxes. He knew a man with a stack of good ones. No point using the thin kind that collapsed when you lifted them. He could get them by Wednesday.
“Ask her first,” Mara said.
“I'm allowed to get a box.”
He had given her an easy small thing to agree with, and she was grateful enough to agree.
Elena arrived while he was wrapping the remaining bread. Mara heard her at the side door, putting her work bag onto the bench. Daniel called that there were eggs. Elena said she had eaten.
“She's had two lunches,” he told her. “You'll have to make up for it.”
Elena came into the kitchen, still wearing her work shoes. Her eyes went first to Mara's empty plate, then to her husband's face.
“Mara says Thursday,” Daniel said. “I'll get some boxes. We'll do it properly.”
Mara dried her hands very carefully.
“She does?” Elena asked.
“We were talking.”
“I can see that.”
She asked Mara to come outside with her. Daniel began to say that nobody needed to go outside to talk. Elena looked at him until he stopped, then went through the side door. Mara collected her phone from its charger and followed.
At the bottom of the steps there was a blue tub full of rainwater and a chair Daniel had promised to take to the dump. Elena moved the chair out of the way. One leg caught on the tub, making it slosh over her shoe.
“Damn it.”
“Are you all right?”
“It's water, Mara.”
Mara stood on the path. Behind them, through the screen door, she could hear Daniel washing the plates. He had the water too high. She could hear it hitting the bottom of the sink.
“I was trying to help.”
“I asked you not to tell him.”
“He knew about the room.”
“He didn't know when I was going.”
“He's not going to stop you.”
“Then you didn't have to get his permission.”
“I didn't get his permission.”
Elena looked at the kitchen window. “You had something to eat. You decided what he could manage. You came out with boxes.”
“There aren't any boxes.”
“You know what I mean.”
Mara did know, which made it difficult to keep hearing it said as though she didn't. Elena had a way of flattening a thing until all the parts that had made sense while Mara was doing them disappeared.
“He's my brother.”
“I know who he is.”
“He's trying.”
“I know.”
“Then don't talk as if none of it matters.”
Elena rubbed the wet toe of one shoe against the dry heel of the other. She looked worn out, older than she had in the meeting room. Mara wanted her to stop now so that she could ask whether she had a blister. They could put something practical between them and look at that instead.
“I'm going on Thursday,” Elena said. “I'm not trying the room to see if it makes me nicer when I come back. I'm going.”
“And I'm supposed to tell him that.”
“No. I was going to tell him that. You were supposed to be my friend.”
“I am your friend.”
Elena laughed once, without amusement. “Only until he wants something.”
“That's a rotten thing to say.”
“Which one of us did you ask to wait?”
Mara opened her mouth, then closed it. A car passed at the end of the driveway. She could not see who was in it, but she turned her head as though she needed to know.
“You've got it very straight in your head,” she said. “All the things people have done for you. All the ways they got it wrong.”
Elena went still.
Mara said, “You could be a little grateful.”
The screen door clicked. Daniel was coming out with a roll of paper towels, holding it up as if water had become a neutral subject both sides could accept.
“I saw the tub—”
“Not now,” Elena said.
He looked from one woman to the other. Mara wanted him to stay, then was ashamed of wanting it.
“We'll be a minute,” she said.
He went back in. Elena waited until the inner door closed.
“I won't be doing Saturdays,” she said.
“What?”
“The tickets. The plans for when we all live next door to each other. I'm not doing that.”
Mara unzipped her bag. The folded money was still where she had put it beneath the table. She took out two dollars, straightened them against her thigh and held them out.
“There you are.”
Elena looked at the money, then at her.
“You can have your own plans,” Mara said. “You're out.”
Elena took the notes. She folded them once and pushed them into the front pocket of her pants.
“Good,” she said.
It was not loud enough to reach the kitchen. Mara almost wished it had been. She wanted somebody else to hear how easily Elena could say it.
She went around the side of the house to her car. Elena did not follow to explain or soften it. At the gate Mara looked back. The wet chair was still halfway across the path. Elena had picked up the roll of towels Daniel had left on the step and was wiping the water from her shoe.