Priya was on the phone when Mara arrived. She stood in the open doorway of her old apartment, one hand pressed against the wall and the other holding the phone so tightly that the case had begun to lift off at a corner.
“I am looking at it,” she said. “Yes. I see.”
Mara stepped past her into a room full of boxes. Arun sat on one, holding a roll of tape between his knees. His hair was wet. He had put on clean clothes to move furniture and was already regretting it.
“The van's next week,” he told Mara.
Priya turned her head. He looked down at the tape.
“No, I understand that,” she said into the phone. “I'm asking if there's anything today.”
Mara put the bag of sandwiches on the only visible patch of counter. A paper had been laid beside it. October 2. She looked away before Priya could catch her checking.
There was a long pause, then Priya said thank you in a voice that meant somebody would need to earn the next one. She hung up and stood without moving.
“I did it wrong.”
Arun pulled a strip of tape free. It folded onto itself.
“You said that already,” he told her.
“I'll probably say it again.”
Mara took out her phone. “Which places have you tried?”
“Two. One's full. One has something at half past twelve, but it's smaller. And it's more.”
She gave the price. It was not ruinous. It was the kind of amount that had ruined a perfectly manageable month by arriving in the middle of it. Mara had come with cash for parking and coffee, enough to be generous about neither.
“Can you get it?”
Priya nodded. “I can pay it.”
“Then get it.”
“It's the small one. The long couch won't—”
“We can go twice.”
Arun looked up. “Are we still sleeping there tonight?”
“Yes,” Priya said too quickly. Then she pressed her palm against her forehead. “I want us to. Let me sort this first.”
She called back before she could change her mind about the price. Mara moved the boxes from in front of the couch and began taking off its cushions. Beneath one lay a pen, a battery and half a cracker pressed flat enough to belong to the fabric.
“Useful,” Arun said, picking up the pen.
“Don't eat the other bit.”
He smiled without looking at her. When Priya finished the call, he stood, pulled the tape off his knee and asked what they were doing first.
They took bags to Mara's car. Books, towels, the two short curtains Priya had washed and folded so carefully that Mara hadn't the heart to mention the windows again. Arun had wrapped his game console in a sweatshirt and put it inside a saucepan because he didn't trust it in a box. Priya carried the saucepan herself.
They made the first journey without the van. At the new building she had to try the key twice before it turned. The door opened inward and caught a bag Mara had put down too close to it.
“Leave a gap,” Arun said.
“We've only been here a minute,” his mother told him.
He picked the bag up. Mara followed him upstairs, breathing harder by the second landing. The rooms looked smaller with the first things in them. Priya put down the saucepan and went through to open the bathroom window. A cool draft crossed the hall. Somewhere below, the toast alarm began sounding.
Arun looked at Mara. She put a finger to her lips. Downstairs someone shouted that it was all right, then the sound stopped.
They unloaded the car. Priya left Arun arranging his things in his room while she and Mara went to collect the van. On the way she said, “I've got the text. I read it twice. The date's right there.”
“You know that now.”
“I read it twice then.”
She was staring ahead. Mara turned the car into the rental lot, found a space and waited while Priya got out. Through the glass doors she watched her hand over her license, find a card, sign where she was shown. The man behind the counter spoke without looking up until Priya asked him to repeat something. Then he looked at her and began again.
Mara's phone rang. It was Daniel. She let it finish, then listened to the message while Priya walked around the van with the man. He wanted to know if she'd found the right shelf brackets; he'd got some that might fit. Nothing urgent. He ended by saying to call when she was in.
She put the phone away. Priya was having trouble adjusting the seat. Mara could see her knee hit the steering wheel, her head disappear, then rise again as the seat moved too far. When she finally drove out she was so upright that Mara could almost hear her breathing.
Back at the old apartment they brought the couch down first. It had a thin wooden leg that caught everything it passed. Priya held the high end while Mara backed down the stairs, Arun below them telling her where the next step was. Halfway down the couch turned in their hands. Mara felt the weight shift toward her and said, louder than she'd meant to, “Stop.”
They stopped. Arun pushed from the side. Priya's face had gone red, her mouth hanging open with the effort.
“Put it down,” Mara said.
“There's nowhere.”
“On the stairs.”
They lowered it onto two steps. The bad leg hit the rail and snapped loose at the screw. Nobody spoke.
Then Arun said, “That's the cushion we hate.”
Priya began laughing. She made a horrible breathless sound, part laugh and part something else. Mara sat on the step below the couch, wiping the sweat from her top lip with the inside of her wrist. She would have laughed too, but she wasn't sure she could get up if she started.
They took the leg off. Without it the couch turned easily, which made all three of them angry for a few seconds. They carried it the rest of the way and slid it into the van. Priya put the leg in her purse so nobody could lose it.
“Don't try and pay with that,” Mara said.
Arun laughed. His mother didn't. She was looking toward the apartment, counting things they had not moved.
It was after three when they reached the new place with the first proper load. The couch went against the wall they'd measured. Priya pressed herself into the corner to guide it, then stood back. There was room on either side. The broken leg lay on the floor by her shoe.
“It fits,” she said.
Arun flopped onto it before either woman could stop him. It tilted toward the missing leg, and he slid off laughing. Priya put a folded towel beneath the corner until they could fix it, then moved the saucepan to the counter and took out her son's console. She held it while he found the cable.
Mara called Bev from the hall.
“I'm still at the move.”
“I guessed.”
“I'll be there. I might be late.”
“Seven, I said.”
“I know what you said.”
There was a pause. Mara closed her eyes.
“I'm sorry. I didn't mean that.”
“Come when you can. Anne's choosing songs. She's using you as an excuse to do something long.”
Mara smiled. From the bedroom she could hear Priya calling her. She told Bev she would come, then put the phone away before there was any more afternoon to explain.
They went back for the beds. The single frame came apart. The larger one didn't need to; it was the mattress that filled the little van, leaving room only for the table on its side and a few things pushed into the spaces. The remaining boxes could stay overnight, Priya decided. She had not given up the old place yet. She had wanted it all done, all the doors shut in the right order. Now she took a marker and wrote tomorrow on three boxes, very hard, going over the last letter until the cardboard began to give.
Mara put them by the wall. Arun carried the pieces of his bed down, one at a time, stopping to count the screws every time he came back. His father called while he was taking the last one. Arun held the phone to his ear with a shoulder, said yes, then no, then that the bed was going in the van now. He passed the phone to Priya.
She went into the empty kitchen. Mara began gathering the little pieces of tape from the floor. She could hear only Priya's side, a tired succession of practical answers. At the end she said, “He's staying here tonight. That's what he wants. You can call him later.”
When she came back she had put the phone away.
“Sandwiches?” Mara asked.
Priya looked at the counter, then at her. “We left them here.”
The bag stood where Mara had set it at ten. They ate beside the boxes marked tomorrow, standing because there were no chairs. Arun found a clean sheet of paper to catch the crumbs. Mara sat on a box after all, the same one he had occupied at the start, and discovered it was full of shoes and much too low to rise from gracefully.
“Don't help,” she said when he put down his sandwich. “It'll take more than you.”
He waited until she got up, then offered her the last of his water.
The beds went upstairs in the late afternoon. By the time Arun carried his bike through the door, Mara's hands were trembling a little. He took off the front wheel himself, brought it into the smaller room and leaned the frame where they had planned. The handlebars turned. The door opened. The bed fitted without touching it.
Priya stood in the hall watching. He looked back, waiting for her to say something.
“Yes,” she said. “That's good.”
He grinned and carried the wheel inside.
They made both beds with the first sheets they found. Mara put Priya's pillow against the wall while she fitted the bottom corner, then lifted it to the head of the bed. The short curtains were up, leaving a band of uncovered window above the sill. Across it, the light had begun to turn yellow.
“I'll sort those,” Priya said.
Mara was too tired to say anything. She sat on the edge of the mattress, feeling it settle beneath her. Priya sat beside her. Their shoulders did not touch. For a while they listened to Arun moving around his room, placing things on surfaces that were still strange to him.
“Thank you,” Priya said.
Mara nodded. The thanks had been earned in a way that could not be counted as money, and still she had no idea what Priya would ask a lawyer on Monday. She was glad, suddenly, not to have brought the envelope back into the room.
They returned the van together because Priya didn't want to drive it into the bay alone. Mara followed her in the car, took her home, then drove to her own apartment through streets already filling with people whose Saturday had begun after work instead of resembling it.
At home she took her shoes off beside Elena's stored coat. The shelf brackets Daniel had mentioned would fit inside a small bag; he could have brought them while she was out. She checked her phone. No new message.
It was after seven. She showered quickly, put on the blue dress and sat on the bed to fasten her shoes. The first foot went in. The second one seemed to belong to somebody larger.
She took them off, found a pair that didn't care what her feet had done and called a cab.