They chose a hotel none of them worked in.
It had a restaurant with tall windows and chairs too low for the tables, so Bev had to move hers twice before she could decide whether it was the chair or her body that was wrong. Jo arrived in a yellow blouse Mara had never seen. Priya came straight from dropping her son with his father and asked for water before she took her coat off.
They had agreed a limit for what they could spend that night. It was more than an ordinary Monday meal, less than Mara had paid to have one tooth taken out. They were using money they actually had. Bev had announced this in their messages so firmly that Jo asked whether she would be standing at the door checking wallets.
Now Bev opened the menu and said, “Oh, they've spent it all on the chairs.”
“I'm having whatever comes with potatoes,” Jo said.
“Several things come with potatoes.”
“Then I've narrowed it down.”
Mara put her bag on the empty seat beside her. For a second her hand stayed on it, remembering the missing pouch. Then she moved the bag to the floor because Elena would need the seat if she came.
“She said don't wait,” Priya said.
“I'm not waiting.”
“You've closed your menu.”
Mara opened it again. She couldn't remember the last time she had been served in a hotel restaurant without knowing where the service door led. Through the glass wall she could see two men carrying a rolled carpet past the lobby. She wondered whether someone had put a wedding chair through the old one, then stopped trying to work it out.
Jo ordered a cocktail with a flower on the edge of the glass. She lifted it delicately to see what supported the flower, then put it down with the petal against her nose.
“It's wearing me.”
“Take it out,” Bev said.
“I've paid for it. I'm having all of it.”
Priya folded the paper napkin that had come beneath her water glass. “I'm having the fish.”
“Good,” Mara said.
“There used to be a place by my dad's with this. Lemon, capers. He'd eat the fish and leave every caper in a little pile.” Priya turned the menu over. “They've got the lemon thing too.”
The server came back. Mara began with the empty seat and Elena perhaps arriving, then stopped when Priya put one finger on her own menu and said what she wanted. Bev asked two precise questions about the steak. Jo asked whether the potatoes could be changed, was told yes, and looked so happy with this small piece of freedom that Mara ordered the same thing.
For a while the conversation stayed on the food. They had spent Sunday saying amounts of money and Monday discovering things that had to happen before any of it could be touched. Here a woman put a dish in front of them and said it was hot, and that was everything they needed to know.
Bev cut a piece of steak, chewed it and closed her eyes.
“Don't speak to me for a minute.”
Jo picked up one of her potatoes and examined it. “It's a very good potato.”
“How would you know?” Bev asked without opening her eyes.
“I've known a few.”
Mara laughed. Priya was already eating, her phone facedown beside her plate. When it buzzed, she looked at the name, put it back down and cut another piece of fish.
“Arun?” Mara asked.
“His father. Asking whether he has homework. He can ask Arun. They're in the same building.”
She did not look at the phone again. Mara took a drink of water and thought of all the little things that would have to be reallocated if nobody could say they were too tired from work. She was usually the person who knew which phone to call next.
Elena arrived with her coat over her arm. She had changed out of her work shoes and was wearing small silver earrings. Mara recognized them and was glad without knowing why: Elena had had them for years, and there they were, still belonging on her.
“Sit here,” she said, moving her glass.
Elena moved the glass the rest of the way and hung her coat over the back.
Elena sat. Jo offered her a taste of the cocktail. Elena took the glass, bent around the flower and drank.
“Oh.”
“Good?” Jo asked.
“Expensive lemonade.”
“That's what I was hoping.”
The server returned with a menu. Elena chose soup and bread, then changed the soup when she heard what was in it. She did not apologize for changing. Mara had heard her apologize for less.
“Do you have to go back?” Bev asked.
“No.”
“Good. Stay.”
Elena smiled at her. “For a bit.”
They talked about a guest who had once left a thank-you letter inside a pair of used shoes, and the elaborate disagreement about whether the shoes were part of the thank-you or something the guest hadn't liked enough to take home. Jo said she would know gratitude when it came in her size. Bev insisted they had been good shoes and that she had worn them until the sole came away. Priya wanted to know why nobody had asked her. Her feet were smaller than Bev's, but it should at least have been a consultation.
“You got the cardigan,” Bev said.
“That was different.”
“It always is when you've got it.”
Elena was laughing beside Mara, one elbow touching hers. She had broken the bread and left half on Mara's little plate. Mara felt the same quick pleasure she used to feel when Leo was small and fell asleep somewhere inconvenient: not because he had become any less work, but because he was safely where you could see him for a while.
“You've got your own bread,” Elena said.
“I've got yours now.”
“Only if you eat it.”
“What am I doing?”
“Waiting for someone to say they want it more.”
Mara took a bite. The bread was warm, its crust thin enough to break without a fight. She sat back in the badly chosen chair and let someone else clear the plates.
When Bev asked about going back to work after the money arrived, the table went quiet in a different way.
“Not me,” Bev said. “I'm not having one of those retirement things where everyone tells you how much you love the job.”
“You love us,” Jo said.
“You can come on the balcony.”
“All of us?”
“One at a time. I'm buying peace.”
Priya ran one finger through a drop of water on the tablecloth. “I don't know what I'll do. I want a few mornings before I say what the rest are for.”
“You could come traveling,” Bev said.
“I could.”
“Is that yes?”
“It's I could.”
Jo wanted to go somewhere with no children's menu. She had not chosen a country, a city or even a season. She wanted to sit down and be unable to order chicken shaped like something else.
“Take Calvin,” Mara said.
Jo considered this. “He'd get chicken anyway. A whole country wasted.”
Elena said, “I'll go with you.”
“Will you?”
“I'm enjoying my soup. Ask me after.”
Jo raised her glass and let her eat. Priya had ordered the lemon dessert without waiting for anyone else to decide. When it came, she took a spoonful and kept her eyes on the dish.
“No,” she said when Jo leaned toward it.
“I didn't say anything.”
“Your spoon moved.”
Jo ordered her own. Mara ordered coffee. Elena asked for a small piece of Bev's dessert, which Bev cut off with such accuracy that there could be no dispute about the size of the favor.
Outside the window a woman was trying to photograph a man in front of the hotel's name. He kept looking at the wrong part of the building, then moving before she had finished. They watched for a while, each supplying an instruction he couldn't hear. Finally the woman put the phone away, took his arm and stood beside him, looking up at the same wrong part.
“There,” Bev said. “They can remember it badly.”
Elena leaned her head briefly against Mara's shoulder. It was so quick that Mara didn't have time to meet it. Then she was upright again, asking for her part of the bill because she wanted to go.
“I'll walk a little,” she said when Mara asked whether she needed a ride. “I've been sitting down.”
“It's dark.”
Elena took her coat from the chair, laughing at something Jo had said too quietly for Mara to hear, and touched Jo's shoulder on the way past. She left her share of the bill and tip, including the bread she had given Mara, put on her coat and went through the lobby. Mara watched her pass the window outside. She was not hurrying. At the corner she stopped to let a car turn, then crossed with the other people.
“She's all right,” Bev said.
Mara looked back at the table. “I know.”
Priya had finished her dessert. Jo was still working on hers. Bev was asking for another coffee, making it clear she intended to sit in the uncomfortable chair until she had got something like value from it.
Mara turned her cup in its saucer and stayed with them.