Early December
Luis offered Willa a Saturday that began at seven and ended after dark. She took it, then asked if there was anything closer to her old pattern.
“Not yet,” he said. “People have filled it.”
“I know.”
“I'll tell you.”
She believed him. She wrote the Saturday in her calendar, along with two early mornings and an evening that meant eating dinner on a bus.
The money for the opener had arrived. So had the pilot money. Ten thousand dollars was still ten thousand dollars after you'd lost the thing you thought it was the beginning of. She paid the rent, left most of the rest where it was, and bought the train ticket to see Beth.
Rafi gave her eight minutes the following week. He asked what she was doing. She said she didn't know yet.
“Find six you know, then.”
She wrote that down without meaning to.
On Friday she taught a woman who had moved back to the city after twenty years away. The woman kept turning toward places that no longer existed. A grocery store, a school entrance, the road to a house she'd sold.
“The street's still here,” Willa said.
“I can see that.”
“I mean we can just use the street.”
The woman looked ahead. They drove another block.
That afternoon, she took the key out of the dish.
It had left a little clean shape among the dust and coins. Willa wiped the dish, put the coins back, and placed the key in the small pocket inside her bag.
The train was crowded at first, then less crowded. Willa sat by the window with a sandwich she'd made herself and a notebook she didn't open. Fields appeared between buildings. Somebody in the next row was watching something funny without headphones, little bursts of laughter from a place Willa couldn't see.
Beth had sent the address of the theater and a time. She had forty minutes before the next job, if Willa wanted food.
Willa wanted to come.
At the side door, she had to say Beth's name. A man wearing a wool hat let her wait inside while he went to find her. The passage was cold and full of cases. One had a strip of white tape with Beth's number on it. Willa recognized the handwriting.
Her sister came out carrying a phone and an unopened bottle of water.
“You made it.”
“Yes.”
“Food?”
“Please.”
They walked to a place around the corner that sold fried things in cardboard boxes. Beth knew what she wanted. Willa followed her lead. They took the food outside because the little shop had only two stools and one was occupied by a man with a shopping bag on his lap.
There was a low wall by the theater. Not comfortable, but dry. Beth sat, put the water between them, and opened the box.
“Hot,” she warned.
“I've met fries.”
“You've met them. You haven't learned.”
Willa took one and burned her tongue. Beth didn't say anything. Her face said enough.
The key was in the pocket where Willa had put it. She took it out and held it toward her sister.
“Here.”
Beth looked at it. Then she wiped salt from her fingers onto a napkin and took it.
“You could have mailed it.”
“Yes.”
“You should have.”
“Yes.”
Beth turned the key once between finger and thumb, checking the shape without seeming to mean to. Then she opened the zippered pouch in her bag and put it in an inside pocket, beside the square adapter marked with yellow tape.
Willa watched it disappear.
“Thank you,” Beth said.
“Sorry it took so long.”
Her sister nodded and reached for another fry.
“How's the show?” Willa asked.
“Good. One night terrible. Mostly good.”
“The terrible one?”
“The dog didn't inflate.”
Willa smiled.
“They tried to go on without it?”
“They tried to make it a plot point. Lena was furious. You could see her deciding whether she'd spent twenty years training to mime disappointment at a dog.”
Willa laughed. Beth laughed too, mouth full, then covered it with the napkin.
“What did you do?”
“Found the leak.”
“Of course.”
“It was the valve. Pat had a thing.”
“Pat's got things.”
“Pat is largely made of things.”
They ate. The food was too salty and very good. Beth took a drink of water, offered it to Willa, and Willa drank from the same bottle without asking.
“Still teaching?” Beth asked.
“Yes.”
“The old shifts?”
“Some. Getting others.”
Beth nodded.
“And the other work?”
“Not doing the series.”
“I heard.”
“From Mom?”
“From Mom.”
Willa waited, wanting to know which account had reached her. She didn't ask for it. Beth didn't offer.
“The pilot was good,” Willa said.
“I believe you.”
She said it plainly. Willa looked at her, then back at the box.
“It was.”
Beth took another fry.
“How's she?” Willa asked.
“Home. Moving things.”
“What things?”
“Everything. Apparently the lamp looks wrong now.”
Willa smiled. She could see the lamp on the dressing-room table, the yellow circle it made, the room changing around it.
“She texted me about a plate,” she said. “Wanted to know if I'd taken it.”
“Had you?”
“No.”
“Had she?”
“Probably.”
Beth laughed. Willa let herself enjoy being the person who'd given her that small sound.
A man came out of the stage door and called Beth's name. She lifted a hand.
“Five minutes.”
He nodded and went back in.
Willa folded the empty sandwich wrapper she'd carried all the way from home and put it inside the food bag. Beth saw it.
“You brought a sandwich?”
“For the train.”
“Then why were you hungry?”
“It was a bad sandwich.”
“Your own?”
“Yes.”
“Tragic.”
They smiled at each other. Willa had a line ready about the sandwich being in the family, a neat little thing that would turn her mother and sister into a place the audience already knew. She could hear how it might work at Rafi's.
Beth reached for the last fry and broke it in half.
She gave one half to Willa without looking, already reading the message that had lit her phone.
Willa ate it. Her sister kept reading. The water bottle stood between them on the wall, cap balanced loosely on top.
When Beth put the phone away, Willa held the box out so she could shake the salt from the bottom into her palm.