South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [70]
“Huh,” Madeline said disbelievingly.
“I told Emil we’d go to the housing office with him on Monday.”
“Oh?”
“He wants to put in that application for the senior apartments you helped him fill out.” That was the only time Madeline had shown any spirit at all in the last two weeks, and Gladys hoped maybe Emil’s predicament could rouse her again.
“He’s really going for it, then.”
“He hoped they’d back off if he even started talking about moving there, but they haven’t. He says he’s ready to move in. Sometimes I think he’s serious.”
“He’d hate it there. And they’d hate him.”
“Hard to see those old women sharing a washing machine with Emil.”
“That’s what Mary said.”
“So, things do work out.”
“Maybe,” Madeline said.
17
Money evaporated as fast as Paul could earn it. Mortgage payments, utilities, insurance, suppliers, repairs. The heating and cooling guy who’d driven Up from Crosscut said he couldn’t fix the pop cooler and charged him two hundred dollars for the visit. Perfect. With delivery, the new one came to two thousand seven hundred eighty-six dollars and nineteen cents. Plus a seventy-five-dollar fee at the landfill in Crosscut to dump the old one. He couldn’t spare that kind of money, but he didn’t have a choice.
Paul told himself to concentrate on what he was doing before he sliced a finger off. It was late and he was tired and that was a good way to have an accident, but an accident was nothing but carelessness and there was no excuse for that. Ah, lighten up, a voice in his head suggested, and Paul made a sound, a sort of chuff of acceptance. He was forever having these arguments with himself.
“What?” Randi said.
He looked Up. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You laughed, kind of.”
“Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Nothing,” he answered reflexively. After a moment he said, “Actually, money.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
They were quiet for a while, Randi washing dishes, Paul prepping. One thing about Randi and him, they Understood certain basic truths about each other’s lives. Eventually she said, “I think about Grey’s dad sometimes.”
“Yeah?”
She splashed the dishwater with the spray hose. “I wonder who he was.”
“You’re not sure?”
She shook her head. “Not one hundred percent. Pretty bad.”
Well, who was he to say? He’d made plenty of mistakes. Randi was doing her best, just like anyone. She was working for him and at the bar and paying Fran Kacks to look after Greyson. A few months ago—a few weeks ago, even—he wouldn’t have predicted she had all that in her. “Not so bad, probably. Things happen.”
“Sometimes I think I should get out of here, you know? Get a new start.”
“Yeah?” They’d gotten close even faster after Randi stepped in for Madeline on the Fourth, something about being in the trenches together, and Paul thought maybe this statement of hers should give him more pause than it did.
Randi spun around and squirted the spray hose at him. “Gotcha.” She was grinning. “I’m not going anywhere, where would I go?” Paul took off his glasses and dried them on his T-shirt. Her moods changed fast, sometimes.
Paul remembered another conversation he’d had in this kitchen, with Madeline, a week or so before he fired her. She’d told him that her ex-fiancé hadn’t wanted her to come to McAllaster. “We were engaged,” she said. “I got cold feet, I guess. Well. Gladys asked me to come Up here, and I decided I would, and Richard thought it was a terrible idea. He had all kinds of opinions about it. We had a whole series of nasty arguments and in the end we called everything off.”
Paul had been slicing peppers, green and red and yellow ones, admiring the look of them in their slender colorful rows. It was one of his favorite things about making pizzas, the colors and shapes of the ingredients. It wasn’t the kind