Chapter Ten
"ITEM THREE," VALERIO said, over breakfast. "The dates in March. Clarify."
"Sick days," Louis said, not looking up from his cereal. "Mama had the flu. He docked her twice and made her come in on the Thursday to clean the Chainsaw building because nobody else would do the fourth floor."
"She had a fever of a hundred and two."
"A hundred and two point six."
"Excuse me," said Aislinn, from the stove, in her brand-new robe that she still wasn't used to being warm in, "I'm right here, and also, what's happening at my breakfast table?"
What was happening, it turned out, was that her seven-year-old and the man she loved had spent the weekend, between a shopping trip and a chess rematch, comparing notes, and this morning, the first school morning of their new life, had been designated for what Valerio called an errand and Louis called, with relish, item three.
"You're not," Aislinn said, pointing her spatula at each of them in turn, "going to visit Mr. Dominguez."
"No," Valerio agreed. "We're going to visit my new company."
The spatula lowered slowly. "Your what?"
"The sale closed at seven this morning." He sipped his coffee like a man remarking on weather. "Cleaner Than Evah Commercial Cleaning. Forty-one employees, three contracts I intend to renegotiate upward, and one operations manager whose file I've now read twice."
"Valerio."
"The Chainsaw building, Aislinn. A hundred and two point six."
She looked at him, and then at her son, two identical faces wearing two identical expressions of patient, terrifying resolve, and understood that this errand was happening with her or without her, and that with her was safer for everyone, most especially Mr. Dominguez.
"Fine," she said. "But I'm coming. If you're going to loom at people on my behalf, someone has to make sure everybody survives the looming."
"That," said Louis, shouldering his backpack for school, "is why you're on the other list."
She was afraid to ask. She asked anyway. "What other list?"
"People Who Made Mama Smile," he said, matter-of-fact, kissing her cheek on the way to the elevator. "It's longer now."
She had to hold on to the counter for a second after that one.
CLEANER THAN EVAH COMMERCIAL Cleaning operated out of a gray box near the freight yards, and Aislinn had spent three years of five a.m. shifts learning every corner of it.
Walking back in through the front door, in a coat worth more than the annual bonus would have been, if there had ever been an annual bonus, was the strangest thing she'd done all month, and this month included a mezzanine.
Mr. Dominguez met them at his office door with his hand already out and his smile already wrong.
He was a wide, doughy man who wore his keys on his belt like sidearms, and for three years his management philosophy had consisted of two principles, applied daily.
The first was that gratitude was a wage.
The second was that Aislinn Tyndale, who never complained, could therefore be given everything no one else would take.
"Mr. Le Sabre! An honor, sir, an absolute honor. When corporate called this morning I said to my wife, I said, this is the best thing that could ever happen to this company—"
"Sit down, Mr. Dominguez."
Dominguez sat. His eyes found Aislinn, then, standing beside the new owner in her new coat, and she watched him do the math, and she watched the math ruin him from the inside out in real time.
"Aislinn! Look at you. We always said, didn't we, that you were destined for—"
"You docked her sick pay twice in March," Valerio said, "then ordered her in with a hundred-and-two fever to clean four floors alone.
In January you posted her to nights for six weeks after she asked about overtime rates.
Two Decembers ago, you gave the holiday bonus to everyone on her crew except her, and told her, in front of that crew, that she should be grateful for the flexibility.
" He hadn't raised his voice. He hadn't sat down.
"Would you like me to continue? I have dates. "
Somewhere under the office fluorescents, Dominguez's smile finally died of its injuries.
"Sir, whatever she's told you—"
"She's told me nothing." Something Italian moved through the back of Valerio's voice, brief as a fin breaking water, and Dominguez flinched without knowing why. "That's rather the point of her, Mr. Dominguez. She never told anyone. You counted on that."
"I run a tight ship, that's all, I treat everyone the same—"
"Here's what the same looks like now." Valerio set a folder on the desk.
"Every employee in this building receives their stolen overtime, back-dated three years, with interest, by Friday.
Connie Elgin is your replacement, effective this conversation.
You'll be offered a position on the night crew, the fourth floor of the Chainsaw building has apparently gone begging, or you'll be offered the door and a very thorough audit.
And before either of those things, you will apologize to my wife.
You'll mean it, or Minna will explain to you what happens next, and Minna bills by the hour. "
The silence that followed had texture.
And then Dominguez did the one thing that saved him, though not in the way he intended. He panicked, and panicking men itemize.
"It wasn't personal! It was never personal, I got a call, all right?
Years back. A woman. Said she was calling about a welfare concern, about her—" His finger jabbed toward Aislinn and thought better of it mid-jab.
"Said the family had a history, said the school was keeping an eye, said it would be better for everyone if she stayed, how did she put it, stayed humble.
Motivated. There were, sometimes there were envelopes, at Christmas, I never asked—"
Aislinn had stopped breathing. "The school?"
"That's what she said! Calling in regard to the school, concerned parties at the school, I figured it was one of those rich mothers, the ones who run the bake sale like a cartel, I didn't ask questions—"
"No," Valerio said. "You took envelopes instead."
They got the rest out of him in pieces, and the pieces were small.
A woman's voice, no name, calls that came a few times a year, always polite, always knowing, envelopes when he'd done especially well by doing especially badly.
He'd assumed a jealous parent, the party mothers, Amybeth Schnapp's coven.
It had never once occurred to him to wonder why anyone would pay money, real money, year after year, to keep one quiet cleaning woman tired.
The apology, when it finally came, was ugly and wet and possibly even real, and Aislinn accepted it the way she accepted all weather, and then went out to the floor while the men finished, because Connie was on shift, and Connie didn't know yet.
Valerio found them ten minutes later, Connie crying into Aislinn's shoulder with a promotion letter crushed in one fist, half the morning crew crowded around asking if the back-pay thing was a joke, and the woman he loved in the middle of them all, beaming, no gown required, and he stood by the mop sinks of a company he'd bought before breakfast and let himself watch.
It was on the drive back, with the freight yards sliding past, that she finally said it.
"Who does that, Valerio?" Her voice was small. "Who pays money, for years, to keep somebody poor?"
He looked out at the gray morning for a moment before he answered.
"Someone patient."