On Sunday Nora brought three pages and did not hand them over.
Mae noticed. She said nothing about it. The studio had been moved around, chairs stacked against one wall, the little table near the window instead of under the light. Toby sat on the floor eating noodles from a carton while he tested a piece of equipment that made a faint electrical hiss.
“Ellen called,” Mae said. “She likes the flowers.”
“She does.”
“She likes the scarf more.”
Nora looked at her.
“She told me,” Mae said. “I asked.”
“She didn't need to compare them.”
“I wanted to know if I won.”
Nora almost smiled. Mae took the folded paper out of her pocket, a different set of pages. Nora recognized the old pharmacy sequence, now moved where she'd suggested putting it.
“You want to go first?” Mae asked.
Nora had not expected the offer. She had prepared to fight for time, and it took a second to recognize that she was being given it.
“It's not ready.”
“Then it'll fit right in.”
Toby put the noodles on the table and began moving toward the door.
“You can stay,” Nora said.
He looked at Mae, then back at Nora. “I have to get this working.”
“Good. Then you won't be listening.”
“Perfect,” he said, and sat down again.
Nora took the sheets out of her bag. She stood in the open part of the floor, without a microphone. It was a room she had been comfortable in for years until she wanted something from it.
“We split up the dishes when I got divorced,” she said. “He took half. I took the half I'd always been giving myself.”
Mae listened. Nora tried the bit about the small plate, keeping the real details but making the arrangement of them less righteous. She could hear where she'd moved from observing something into explaining why it made her a good person. The page had not sounded like that when she'd read it alone.
“I used to give him the bigger dinner,” she said. “Then I'd sit there watching him eat evidence.”
Mae laughed. It was a quick recognition, a short open sound.
Nora felt herself hurry toward the next line.
“Stay there,” Mae said.
“What?”
“He doesn't know. He's eating.”
“I say that.”
“Don't say it. Look at him. He's at the other side of the table doing the wrong thing by being hungry.”
Nora looked at the empty chair. She made a face she could feel being a face.
Mae shook her head.
“You think you're being nice. You're very busy being nice. You don't know we can see the bill.”
Nora tried it again. She arranged an imaginary plate, slid it toward an imaginary man, then withdrew her hand with an effort at generosity that made Toby snort over his cable.
Nora stopped.
“Keep going,” Mae said.
“I don't have a line.”
“He doesn't know that, either. He's got a potato.”
Nora watched the man take another bite. She could see Daniel, infuriatingly innocent in this particular scene, going back to the kitchen to ask whether she wanted more.
“He asks if I want another potato,” she said. “And I'm thinking, I want you to understand why I shouldn't have to ask for the potato. So obviously I say no.”
Mae laughed harder. Toby bent over, trying to remain professionally absent.
Nora let the laugh finish. It was easier when she hadn't been waiting for it.
She tried the line again, leaning on understand. Mae's smile went. Nora heard it, too.
“Don't make it a point,” Mae said.
“I heard it.”
“Okay.”
Nora began again. By the fourth attempt she could leave the man alone with his potato. Mae lowered the hand she'd been holding up.
After ten minutes Nora put down the pages. She was warm. A little angry still, but not at the same thing.
“That's useful,” she said.
Mae nodded. She didn't make it larger than that.
They worked on the pharmacy sequence next. Mae still wanted to put a sentence back that Nora thought spoiled the scene. They argued about it without mentioning anything else. The argument was familiar and almost restful. Nora could say no because she meant the word on the page, and Mae could disagree without trying to solve Nora's life.
At one point Mae read the bad sentence with such viciously artificial emphasis that Nora threw a crumpled piece of paper at her.
“Fine,” Mae said. “Subtle note.”
Toby fetched the paper and handed it back to Nora.
“Continuity,” he said.
The three of them laughed, and for a while the afternoon was only that.
They broke to eat. Mae had brought soup, too much of it, in containers that wouldn't stack properly. Nora held a bag open while Mae tried to extract the one in the middle without turning lunch into a floor task. Neither succeeded. Toby found paper towels. Nora knelt to wipe the spill while Mae held the leaking container inside the bag.
“Don't,” Nora said when Mae bent down beside her. “You'll get it on the coat.”
Mae looked at the sleeve. “I could take it off.”
“Or you could stand there and let the staff handle it.”
The words came out lightly. Mae heard the other part anyway.
“I wasn't—”
“I know.”
Nora went on wiping. The floor smelled of tomatoes. Mae stood holding the bag while Nora straightened the sodden towels into a neat angry pile and asked Toby where the garbage was.
Mae took the pile from her hand.
“I can find that,” she said.
They ate at the table. Nora didn't want soup anymore, but she ate it, and it was good. Mae's reading glasses slipped down her nose while she looked at the pages.
“You've done the nice thing already,” Mae said after a while.
“What nice thing?”
“The soup. You want me to rate it.”
Nora looked up.
Mae pulled a fresh paper towel from the roll and held it out flat like a device.
“How was your experience with today's unnecessary martyr?”
Nora laughed into her spoon.
“Don't,” she said.
“Please choose one of the following responses. You shouldn't have. You really shouldn't have. We would have preferred you didn't.”
“And Other,” Nora said.
Mae tilted the imaginary screen. “Other requires a reason.”
There it was. The physical turn from the stolen set. Nora's smile stopped before she could hide it.
Mae saw.
“Can we?” she asked.
Nora looked at the pages she'd kept on her side of the table. For a moment she wanted to say no to every possible thing, to make the room feel what it was like when she stopped.
Then she wanted to know where the joke went.
“Not the dinner,” she said.
“No. This.”
Mae indicated the soup, the floor, the towels Nora had accumulated like proof of a difficult rescue. Nora pushed her bowl aside and stood.
“How did I do?” she asked, holding out an invisible terminal. “I cleaned up the soup you would have cleaned up if I'd let you.”
Mae looked at it, then Nora, then back to the device.
“Is there a button for I didn't ask you to do that?”
“No, we've disabled that.”
“What about Thank you for taking care of a thing before it became a whole thing?”
“You have to choose the premium option.”
Mae pressed it. Nora looked at the result and didn't move.
“That's not enough?” Mae asked.
“It's fine.”
The way she said fine made Mae fold forward over the table, laughing.
“Do that again.”
“It's fine.”
“No, you did a thing. Your whole neck went.”
Nora tried to repeat it. Mae shook her head. Nora rolled her eyes, exasperated, and Mae pointed.
“That. You don't know you're doing it.”
They stood facing each other, with no real object between them. Nora imagined the screen brightly demanding something no reasonable person had promised to provide. Mae stared at the options like a customer beginning to suspect she should have gone somewhere else.
“I just wanted soup,” Mae said.
“And you got soup.”
“I didn't know it came with your afternoon.”
“That's included. The guilt is extra.”
Toby was laughing. He had put down the cable. Nora heard him and added a button that let the customer select a compliment instead of money.
“You're so organized,” Mae read off it.
Nora nodded, not satisfied.
“I couldn't do it without you.”
Nora considered that one.
“My God, how do you find the time?”
Nora's whole body softened into false modesty.
“It's nothing,” she said.
Mae looked at Toby. “We're in. Keep talking.”
They changed places. Mae became the server and Nora the woman trying to settle a bill she'd never intended to run up. Mae's posture was entirely different from the dinner set. She was helpful now, almost painfully so, head tilted, shoulders forward, ready to explain a new charge that had not existed a moment earlier.
“You borrowed my coat,” she said.
“You said I could.”
“Of course you could.” Mae smiled. “And how did that make you feel?”
“Warm.”
Mae waited.
“Is that wrong?”
“There's no wrong answer.” She turned the screen back. “Try again.”
Nora selected Grateful. The invisible machine was apparently dissatisfied. Mae gave a tiny sympathetic intake of breath and referred her to another page.
“I wrote you a thank-you note.”
“We have that.”
“I wore it to your thing.”
“We have that, too.”
“What do you want?”
Mae looked almost wounded. “For you to know you can always ask.”
Toby made a noise like a person being quietly punched. Nora laughed so hard she couldn't keep the scene going.
Mae stayed in character, waiting with the helpless air of an employee whose customer was behaving badly in public.
Nora tried to recover.
“I'd like to speak to the manager.”
Mae didn't move.
“Manager?”
“They're busy.”
“What are they doing?”
Mae looked toward the far corner of the room with enormous concern. Then she left her own body behind the imaginary counter, sidestepped and became a manager arriving from a great distance to address a complaint she had heard every word of.
It was the walk that did it. Too fast to be reassuring, too slow to be useful. Mae adjusted an invisible jacket, folded her hands in front of her stomach and looked at Nora as if a sensible arrangement could still be reached if Nora would stop wanting anything.
“I understand you've had an experience,” she said.
Nora bent at the waist. She couldn't speak. Toby had turned away altogether.
Mae waited, smiling professionally at the top of Nora's head.
When they finally could work again, Nora made the manager more specific. She was trying to get the customer to sign a form saying she'd enjoyed receiving a favor. Mae added the hopeful little pen, presenting it just too early and withdrawing it when Nora began to read.
They found three different ways out. Two explained the joke. The third was merely an increasingly elaborate attempt to find the person who had done the nice thing so the customer could be released from the obligation to admire it.
By then they were both doing it.
“Would you like to speak to the manager?” Nora asked.
Then she turned, open palm toward Mae, offering her the space. Mae entered with the jacket and the pen. Nora collapsed into the role of someone who had thought asking for help would make the complaint shorter.
They tried it again, but Nora said manager too early, and Mae arrived before there was a customer.
“Not just the word,” Nora said, still laughing. “Let me actually hand you the disaster.”
She said the whole sentence, turned and offered Mae the space. Mae waited for the hand, then appeared. Toby made a small, defeated sound before she'd even reached the counter.
They did it once more, and Toby asked if they wanted a recording.
Nora looked at Mae. Mae waited for her.
“Yes,” Nora said.
Toby set up the camera. The next attempt was worse because both women knew what should happen. They pushed too hard for the good parts. Mae did the manager's walk as if she were demonstrating the manager's walk. Nora rushed the request, watching the place Mae would enter instead of the problem in front of her.
“Forget it,” Nora said.
“No,” Mae said. “Don't do it for him. Do it to me.”
They started again. Mae offered the pen before Nora had finished reading. Nora pushed it away. Mae offered it with the other hand, smiling, and Nora heard herself say, “Stop helping me.”
Toby's laugh broke through the first word of Mae's answer. She waited, still holding out the pen.
At the end Nora sat on the floor. She was sweaty, breathless, surprised at how much of a body she still had after years of arranging words for someone else's.
Mae sat beside her. They watched Toby check the file. He was grinning in a way he probably would not have chosen if he remembered they were his employers.
“That ending was yours,” Mae said to Nora.
“Most of it was both.”
“That part was yours.”
Nora looked at her. The praise had come without an audience to impress. She wanted to take it without counting it against anything.
Mae leaned back on her hands, tipped her face toward the ceiling and closed her eyes.
For a minute Nora let the afternoon be good.