Graham moved the clearance pickup to Thursday before Nora had finished telling Mae about the price.
The message arrived on both their phones. A revised collection sheet, no explanation. Mae opened it first, holding her phone at arm's length to see the small print.
“Tomorrow noon,” she said.
Nora took out her own phone.
“The whole lot?”
“What do you think twenty-four means?”
They were standing in a little office off the returns floor. Someone had removed the filing cabinets, leaving dark rectangles on the wall and an unexpected amount of carpet. On the desk sat a ceramic mug containing one spoon and no pens.
Nora called Graham. He answered with noise around him, somebody asking for a signature.
“Why have you moved the clearance collection?”
“Space. We need the floor clear for Friday.”
“The plan had it later.”
“The plan changes. That's why I've hired somebody.”
“People are still working through the lot.”
“They've got today. What else?”
She looked at Mae. Mae's face didn't change.
“Nothing.”
“Good. I'm on my way in.”
He hung up. Nora put the phone down.
Mae reached for the mug, discovered it was empty, and put it back with more force than necessary.
“Still thinking he'll forget the stuff's here?”
“I didn't think that.”
“You wanted time.”
“Yes.”
“Well, we got a number instead.”
Nine hundred and sixty thousand. Mae had said it once when Nora told her, then not again. She hadn't looked relieved. She had asked how much Felix normally made on a lot that size, and Nora had admitted she didn't know.
“Tonight,” Nora said.
Mae looked toward the floor. “Not till everybody's heard the price. Not till Jamal says he's doing it. And not because you just said tonight.”
Nora nodded. Her pulse was doing something unpleasant in her throat.
“Go find the others,” Mae said. “I have actual freight coming.”
The actual freight was a man named Vince Arnett, who arrived with an empty flatbed, a thermos, and a dog asleep in the passenger footwell. He parked where he was told and came into the dock office carrying a folder held together with a blue elastic band.
“Mae,” he said, leaning through the doorway. “You wanted trouble.”
“Not yours. I've got some.”
“You always say that. Then I find it outside.”
He was in his sixties, heavy through the shoulders, with a beard that looked as though he'd trimmed it in a moving vehicle. He took a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket and peered at the collection list. Nora stood beside him, trying not to look as though she needed him to leave.
“These racks?” he asked.
“Empty fixtures. Over by the old test room. They've added two benches.”
“They always add two benches.”
He turned a page.
“Can't take them now. Got a recovery over in Huber Heights. Need the space.”
“You said tonight.”
“I said I was looking now. Looking's free up to a point.”
Mae introduced Nora. Vince gave her a nod, then looked at the visitor badge she had put back on.
“You organizing this?”
“Among other things.”
“Then tell them what's on the paper needs to be what's there.”
“I can do that.”
“And if a thing's attached to the wall, it's not freight yet.”
Mae made a noise. Vince looked at her.
“Last time,” he said. “Three men, all waiting for me to unscrew a shelf.”
“I wasn't one of them.”
“No. You were the one laughing.”
They walked to the old test room. Vince measured nothing with a device, but looked carefully at everything. He tried one bench to see if it would roll, discovered the wheel had been tied in place, and stared at Nora until she found someone who could release it. Mae went back to the floor when her radio called. Nora stayed with him.
Outside the open door, Ellis was helping a woman carry a microwave between them. They were arguing about whose end was heavier. Vince watched until they set it on a cart.
“Much easier after you find wheels,” he said.
“I'm beginning to notice.”
He smiled. “Office?”
“Mostly.”
“Everybody's got a job.”
Nora liked him for not making hers a joke. She also wished he wouldn't ask whether a row of boxed espresso machines was part of his collection.
“No,” she said. “Different lot.”
“Good. Doesn't look like empty racks.”
He took a photograph of the fixtures for his own office, then checked the list once more.
“Ten thirty,” he said. “Unless the recovery finishes early. If you're shutting, you'll want me through.”
“We'll be here,” Nora said.
“Somebody with authority.”
“That would be me.”
“Lovely. Don't go home.”
He walked back toward his truck. Nora followed far enough to see the dog lift its head, look at him, and go back to sleep.
“Employee of the month,” Vince said. “Every month. It's rigged.”
After he'd gone, Nora found Graham in the old showroom beside the office entrance. He was talking to a woman from the retailer's team. A chrome mixer stood between them, gleaming beneath a light that made its price look reasonable.
He finished the conversation and turned to Nora.
“What now?”
“I need a minute.”
“You've used a lot of them this week.”
“So have you.”
The woman glanced back as she left. Graham waited until she was out of hearing.
“If this is about the money again—”
“It's about clearing people out before the work's done. You can't move every collection forward and expect the same staff to do it in less time.”
“Then prioritize.”
“Friday launch comes first.”
“Exactly.”
“And if they don't stay?”
“They've agreed.”
“They've indicated. It's overtime.”
“Are we having a problem?”
Nora could hear the opening he was offering her. She could tell him the problem was his, tell him she'd just sat in Mae's kitchen and heard a better plan than her own. She could explain that he was not the only person in the building who could change a collection sheet.
Instead she said, “I'm trying to keep us from one.”
“Then we're on the same side.”
He picked up the mixer and moved it two inches to the right. A clean rectangle showed where it had stood.
“My mother used that model,” he said. “Not this one. The old one. She made bread every Sunday till she couldn't stand at the counter.”
“My mother had the toaster.”
“Everybody had the toaster.”
He smiled at it, then at her. Nora felt the same reluctant pull she had in his office: a man was not easier to dislike because he could remember something tender.
“Graham, put some of it back.”
His smile disappeared.
“We're not doing this in the showroom.”
“Then come somewhere else.”
“I have a call.”
“So do six hundred people.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “Your job is to get us to Friday. If you want a different one, finish this first.”
He left her beside the mixer. She realized she'd been holding the green promotional pen in her hand since the outlet. She put it in her bag.
Dana found her there ten minutes later, looking at her phone without reading it.
“You wanted the provider window,” she said. “I've got them on the line.”
They went back to Dana's office. A woman's voice came from the speakerphone, brisk and cheerful in the way Nora associated with a desk that had not been moved for years.
“Hi, Nora. I'm Christine. Dana says we're still waiting on funding.”
“Yes.”
“Then Friday's still available. Same files. Company authorization and receipt by one fifteen. Philip's team knows the contact.”
“Could we have a smaller allocation ready?”
Dana looked at Nora sharply.
“We can stage a revised proportional run,” Christine said. “Dana has the formula. We'd need the company's instruction. We're not changing anybody's earned pay.”
“No. Separate.”
“Right. Send the revised instruction before Friday, please. We need the file ready before the cash comes in.”
Nora wrote that down. For a moment she imagined asking about stolen money, whether there was an approved menu option for a communal felony. She kept the question where it belonged.
“Thank you,” she said. “We'll get you something before then.”
When the call ended, Dana shut the office door.
“Do we have more money?”
“Not yet.”
“Then why do you look as though you're keeping a cat in a bag?”
Nora looked down at her hands.
“I'm trying to find something.”
“Find it before you ask me to announce it.”
“I haven't asked you to announce anything.”
“No. You've asked me to keep being available. That's how it starts.”
Dana sat down and turned back to her screen. The photograph of the priest-biting dog had been moved to make room for a stack of final envelopes. Nora stayed by the door, wanting Dana to look up and give her one more opportunity to say something useful.
The phone rang. Dana answered, put on her glasses, and started helping someone else.
Nora went downstairs.
In the corridor Mae was on her own phone, walking fast enough that Nora had to hurry to keep up.
“No, Luis. I'm not asking you to be lonely for a year. It's a week.” She listened. “Because every time I say three days, somebody finds a reason I need to be back on the fourth.”
She saw Nora and held up a finger.
“Book your fishing thing. I'll feed myself.”
She ended the call. Nora waited a prudent second.
“How'd that go?”
“I've married a man who can survive in the woods but not the house.”
“Useful distinction.”
“Only if you live in the woods.”
Nora told her about Vince, about the provider window, about Graham not shifting. Mae listened, then took the collection sheet from her hand.
“Tonight,” she said, looking at it.
“If the others agree.”
“Yes. That's why I'm going to ask them.”
She went toward the floor. Nora stayed where she was for a moment, then followed.