The Laugh

Chapter 9

I opened the door so fast the toolbox guy flinched.

"You want to hear me laugh?" I said. "Because I'm about to laugh."

"Mia—"

"Thirty days." I came out into the hallway in my socks with the folder in one hand. "Thirty days. You want me to marry you for thirty days. That's a lease. That's a car lease. You want to put me on a month-to-month with a buyout option at the end—"

"That's not what it—"

"Did you write that down? Did you sit somewhere with a pen and write thirty days like it's a subscription? Cancel anytime?"

The delivery kid had his phone out. The woman in the beige coat had her garment bag over her arm and her mouth open. The toolbox guy had set the toolbox down.

I laughed.

It was a real laugh. It came up out of my chest and it echoed in the hallway and it kept going, and I had to put my hand on the wall, and the delivery kid started laughing too, because he was nineteen and somebody else was laughing.

"Thirty days," I said, wiping my eye. "Thirty days with a stranger. Two thousand two hundred dollars for four hours and now you want to make it a month. Do you know what my mother would say? Do you know what my sister would say?"

"I can guess."

"She would say I found my level," I said. "She would say Mia finally figured out what she's worth. Thirty days. A month. A trial period—"

"Are you done?"

"No."

"Are you done," he said, and it was so flat that the delivery kid stopped laughing.

The woman in the beige coat took one step back toward the elevator.

"Say no," Adrian said, "and I'm gone. I've said that. But I'm not going to stand in a hallway and be laughed at like this is a joke I'm playing on you."

"It is a joke."

"It's a contract."

"Same thing," I said, and held the folder up. "You want me to sign a page. You want me to sign a page and then what, you disappear at four in the morning and leave a note? You want to produce a wife for thirty days like a—"

"Page three," he said.

"There's no page three."

"There's a page three," he said. "I stapled it. Look at the corner."

I looked at the corner. There was a staple. I flipped to page three, and I could feel the whole hallway lean in, and I read it out loud because I did not know how to read it any other way.

"Party of the Second Part." I stopped.

"Keep going."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"Read it out loud," he said, "or I will."

I read it out loud.

"Party of the Second Part is currently encumbered by the following obligations, which Party of the First Part will settle in full upon execution of this agreement."

The woman in the beige coat said, "Oh."

I kept going. My voice did not sound like mine.

"One. Outstanding balance on card ending in 4417." I looked up. "That's my card."

"Mm."

"Two. Three months arrears, Hazel Street Medical, in the name of Margaret Brennan."

The hallway was completely silent.

"That's my mother's doctor," I said. "That's — how do you know my mother's doctor? How do you know there's arrears? My mother didn't even tell me there was arrears, she told me she was handling it, she—"

"Keep going."

"Three. Pending eviction action, Baxter and Ninth, apartment 1104, commencing the fifteenth."

The delivery kid said, "Damn."

I stood there in my socks in the hallway of a building I was about to be evicted from and the paper shook in my hand.

"Nobody knows that," I said. "There's a letter. There's a — there's a letter that came and I put it in a drawer and I didn't open it, because—" I stopped. "Because it came the same week as the dinner and I couldn't open it. I couldn't open it. I put it in a drawer."

"I know."

"How do you know?"

"I know," he said, "because I've had somebody reading your building's filings for a week, and I don't like that I did it, and I'm telling you that in a hallway in front of four people because you deserve to hear it out loud instead of finding out later from somebody who isn't me."

The toolbox guy said, quietly, "That's some serious—"

"Sir," Adrian said, without turning his head, "give me a minute."

The toolbox guy picked his toolbox up and went to the stairs and did not go down the stairs.

I put my hand on the wall.

"You read my building's filings."

"Yes."

"You know what's in my drawer."

"Yes."

"You know what I owe."

"Two thousand two hundred wasn't the number that mattered," he said. "The two thousand two hundred was the number you were willing to say out loud."

The elevator dinged. Nobody got out. The doors shut again.

"Say no," he said. "Say no and I'll walk down the service stairs and I'll pay the arrears anyway, and the eviction anyway, and you'll never hear my name again. That's the option where nothing happens."

"Don't you dare pay my mother's doctor."

"Then come to the dinner," he said.

"That's a hostage negotiation."

"It's a negotiation," he said. "I'm not going to pretend it's anything better. You want Morgan Hale to see you with a man who has more money than God and I want a wife for thirty days so my board stops asking whether I'm a flight risk. Those are the terms. That's the whole folder."

"And the dress?"

"What dress?"

"You said my dress was the wrong dress. In a lobby. You said you bought the wrong dress."

"I said you bought the wrong dress," he said. "I didn't say anything about a dress of mine."

The delivery kid said, "Yo, that's cold."

"Nineteen," I said, "go downstairs."

"I live on nine."

"Take the stairs."

He took the stairs. He went down one flight and stopped. I could hear him stop.

"Page four," Adrian said.

"There's no page four."

"There's page four."

"There is no page four!" I shouted it, and my voice came off the walls, and I slammed the folder shut in both hands and held it against my chest like it was something I could throw. "There is no page four. There is no page four and there is no page three and there is no Mr. Voss, there is a man in a lobby who let me call him Daniel and there is a man who made my bed like a hotel maid and left a note saying thank you, and now there's a man in my hallway with a folder that knows about a letter in a drawer. Say no. Say no. That's all I've got. That's what I've got and you're standing there like you already know the answer."

"You're going to say yes," he said.

The woman in the beige coat gasped.

"You don't know that."

"I know you," he said, and my whole spine went cold, and I did not know why, and I would not know why for a very long time.

"You don't know me. You met me on Saturday."

"I met you on Saturday," he said, flat as a table.

And then he did the thing I did not expect.

He turned around and walked to the elevator and pushed the button.

"Hey," I said.

The button lit up.

"Hey."

"I'm going to go downstairs," he said, with his back to me, "and I'm going to sit in a car with a folder that's missing half its pages because I stapled it in a hurry, and I'm going to wait. That's what the next part is. I'm going to wait."

"That's not what the next part is—"

"Ms. Brennan." He turned around. "You're standing in a hallway in your socks telling a man he doesn't know you. You're right. I don't. But I know what's in your drawer, and I know what you said to a hotel clerk, and I know what you did with a check I sent up. That's more than most people ever get."

The elevator doors opened.

"Let her cool off," he said, to the hallway, to the delivery kid on the stairs, to the toolbox guy and the woman in the beige coat and Mrs. Delgado, whose chain was rattling. "She'll be down by Tuesday."

The delivery kid said, "She don't look like she's gonna cool off, man."

Adrian Voss stepped into the elevator.

"Lock the door," he said, and the doors slid shut on his face, and the brass doors of the elevator banged together with a sound like a gavel.

The hallway was so quiet I could hear the woman in the beige coat breathing.

Then Mrs. Delgado's door opened the whole way, and she came out with her reading glasses down on her nose and a folded paper in her hand, and she walked past me and picked the envelope out of the tray under the mail slots — my mail, which she was not supposed to touch — and she turned around and held it up.

"Ms. Brennan," she said. "This came Tuesday. I brought it in because the boy left it on the steps."

It was white. It had a government seal in the corner.

It was the letter from the drawer.

I stood in the hallway in my socks, with a folder in one hand and my neighbor holding an eviction notice in the other, and the elevator went down to the lobby with Adrian Voss inside it.

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Chapter 9 Ends