At the store Mara put two bananas and a carton of milk on the counter before remembering she had already bought milk for Daniel. The clerk scanned them while she searched for the ticket slip in her bag.
It was folded around last week's losing ticket. She opened both, carefully separating the papers, and set the old ticket to one side. The clerk waited. Behind Mara, someone put a basket down so heavily that a jar rattled against the plastic.
“Four plays,” she said.
The clerk looked at the marked slip. “This one and three Quick Picks?”
“Yes.”
Usually she asked for five. She could still ask for five. There was money in her wallet, enough for another two dollars without taking it from anyone. Elena would not have to know that Mara had paid for her, and by tomorrow the quarrel could be a quarrel rather than a thing they had done to their Saturdays.
She watched the clerk turn to the terminal.
“Just the four?” he asked.
“That's right.”
The paper came out. Four lines, the familiar numbers at the top: 4, 12, 21, 37, 58, and the red 9. They had chosen them so long ago that she could remember a quarrel about the thirty-seven but not whose number it was. At one point Jo had suggested changing them. Bev had said that was how people spent the rest of their lives watching television in a car.
Mara counted eight dollars onto the counter, using Jo's four quarters last. She paid for the groceries separately. When the clerk gave her the change, she tucked it into her wallet and put the new ticket inside the folded slip.
Outside, Bev was examining a bag of apples with the hostility she usually reserved for something she intended to buy.
“Three ninety-nine,” she said when she saw Mara. “For bruises.”
“Why did you get them?”
“It was quicker than growing a tree.”
Mara adjusted the groceries against her hip. “Have you just finished?”
“A while ago.”
Bev lived a few streets from Daniel and Elena. She walked to the hotel when the weather was good, which was not as often as she told people. A canvas tote hung from her shoulder, with a library book sticking out.
“I saw Elena,” she said.
Mara looked at the bag of apples.
“Did you?”
“She was going the other way.”
“Home?”
“Away from it, I would have said.”
Bev waited. The clerk had put the bananas in a small separate bag, though Mara could have carried them with the milk. She folded the plastic between her fingers until it became a narrow rope.
“She's upset,” she said.
“I noticed.”
“It's not something I want to talk about on the sidewalk.”
Bev looked past her at a man trying to get a stroller through the store's door. She reached over and held it while he lifted the front wheels. He thanked her without looking, then backed into the apples. Bev moved her bag out of his way.
“Have you bought them?” she asked Mara.
Mara touched the side of her bag. “Yes.”
“The tickets.”
“Yes.”
“Right.”
Mara could have taken the slip out and shown her. Instead she asked whether Bev needed a ride. Bev said she'd been sitting down for ten minutes and wasn't about to start again. She said it kindly enough that Mara couldn't decide whether she was being allowed to go or sent away.
“I'll put the picture up,” Mara said.
“Do that.”
Bev carried the apples toward home. Mara watched her stop to move the canvas tote to her other shoulder. The book nearly slid out, and she caught it without looking. For a moment Mara wanted to call her back and tell her what Elena had said. Then she imagined Bev asking what Mara had said first.
At home she put the second carton of milk in the refrigerator. There was already half a carton on the shelf. She stood with the door open, annoyed by the waste, until the light began to make her feel watched.
She signed the back of the new ticket with her own name and added Saturday Club beneath it, as she always did. At the kitchen table she took a photograph of the front, moving her mug out of the way. In the picture the edge of her thumb was large and pale beside the numbers.
The club chat was the first conversation on her phone. Beneath the morning's photograph of Jo's son holding the peanut butter, there was a small notice that Elena had left the group.
Mara read it twice. She had told Elena she was out. She did not see why Elena had to announce it to the telephone too.
She sent the photograph to the three who remained. Nobody answered immediately. Then Jo put a picture of two crossed fingers underneath it. Priya sent a thumbs-up. Bev said she could read it without her glasses, which was praise.
Mara slid the ticket and slip into the zipped document pouch where she kept the current club tickets, in the kitchen cupboard beside the recipe books. Last week's loser went into the paper recycling. She put the bananas in the bowl and found that two still lay there, softening under a grocery receipt.
Her apartment was quiet enough for her to hear the woman upstairs filling a bath. She had a room to herself now that Iris had moved out, though moved out had not meant moved everything out. In the smaller bedroom there was a box of mugs, a canvas bag of shoes and a framed photograph Iris said she wanted but always forgot. Mara had dusted it that morning before leaving for work.
She took her work clothes off and put them in the wash. Her collar had left a mark at the base of her neck. Elena would have told her to stop buying the same shirt in the wrong size, and Mara would have explained that it was the cut, not the size, as if that made the mark more comfortable.
Iris called while Mara was cutting the soft bananas into a bowl.
“Did I leave a green jacket at yours?”
“Hello to you too.”
“Hello. Did I?”
“Which green jacket?”
“The one you don't like.”
“That doesn't help.”
Iris laughed. Mara heard another voice in the background and the click of a door.
“I'm in a hurry,” Iris said. “I've looked everywhere.”
“It might be in your room.”
“It's not my room anymore.”
“It hasn't been told.”
Mara put the knife down and went to look. The green jacket was hanging behind the door, one sleeve inside out. There was a bus ticket in its pocket, a lip balm and a tissue rolled so tightly that it felt like a pebble.
“Found it,” she said.
“Thank God. Can I get it tomorrow?”
“You could stay for something to eat.”
“I can get it tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks. Love you.”
The call ended before Mara could ask what time. She straightened the sleeve and hung the jacket on the front of the closet, where Iris couldn't miss it, then went back to her bananas.
After dinner she washed her hair and sat in a towel while it dried. The television showed people visiting a house they didn't like and being polite to somebody who thought they ought to. Mara ate the banana slices with peanut butter because the only alternative seemed to be admitting she had bought too many bananas.
She opened Elena's separate conversation. There were photographs of a lamp they had seen at a flea market, a recipe, a message from Wednesday saying Daniel had bought six bath towels when asked for two.
Mara typed: I'm sorry it got like that.
She read the sentence. Elena would say it had not got like that on its own. Mara would have to say something bigger, before Elena had said anything about being grateful, or how easily she had taken the money.
She deleted it and put the phone on charge in the kitchen.
Before bed she went back for a glass of water. A new message had appeared, from Daniel.
You left your milk.
Mara looked at the unopened carton in her refrigerator and laughed, alone, more loudly than the joke deserved. She sent him a picture of it. He answered with three question marks, and she could almost hear him asking how many people she thought lived in her apartment.
She turned the kitchen light off. In the dark the phone lit again, briefly, on the counter. She did not go back to see who it was.