The Distance
The marble corridor carried the click of her heels ahead of her, and Kaylee let it ring all the way to the carpet's edge.
Cooper's driver had set her down at the tower at seven-ten, and the whole ride downtown she had sat with the calm still on her, unhurried, nothing to brace against. Seven-twelve on a Friday, and the building ran half-empty around her.
She badged through without slowing and rode the gold-lit car up through its counted floors.
The building kept its gray and its exactness. She kept hers.
Her desk sat third from the window where it had always sat. She hung her coat, woke the machine, and worked the overnight mail with her hands quiet on the keys. The old drumming was gone from the fingers. The stillness there was hers, built and paid for, and she worked inside it.
By nine the floor had started to notice whatever had changed. Dana looked over twice from the printer. The accounts woman, who had made a project of testing her during Kaylee's first month, nodded first this time. "New coffee? You look awake."
"Something like that," Kaylee said, and returned the nod without performing a thing.
At ten the Henderson man went into the conference room with his revised pricing, and Cooper's door shut behind the two of them, voices moving low behind the frosted pane.
Kaylee sent water in and carried no questions out.
At eleven she caught herself humming over the freight schedule, stopped, and let it start again.
Just before noon, at the elevator bank, a kid from records lost his grip on a file box and wore it.
Paper fanned across the marble in every direction.
Kaylee was already kneeling. She gathered it in long sweeps, squared the stack on her knee, four small taps, and held the box out with both hands. The kid took it the same way, staring.
Some line about the fifth floor being haunted arrived on her tongue, whole and ready, the kind of thing the old Kaylee would have spent to make the corridor laugh.
She weighed it and let it go flat where it sat.
The quiet where the joke would have gone walked back with her to her desk, and it cost more than the joke would have. She paid it anyway.
Autumn came by at four-forty with her tote on her shoulder, dressed for somewhere louder than the floor. She leaned on the cubicle wall.
"Marbella's at five-thirty. I told them four, because you'll be late and I love you."
"Rain check."
"That's three."
"I've been busy."
"You've been glowing is what you've been.
" Autumn studied her for a second, then pulled the guest chair around and sat in it backward, arms folded on the backrest, close enough that the conversation changed rooms. "Okay.
I've been nice about this since the gala, and I'm done being nice.
" Her voice dropped low enough that the floor lost the rest of it.
"I watch you, babe. It's my best thing. Here's what I see.
You walk in early for a man who'd notice a minute late.
You eat when the calendar says food. Your phone buzzes and your whole body sits up.
When his door stays shut all day you used to go flat by five, and lately you don't fold at all, you just glow at the wall, and honest to God I can't decide which one frightens me more.
Clothes, lunches, weekends. Everything you've got runs through that man.
" She let it sit a moment. "One person, Kaylee. All of it, on one person."
The floor went on around them, phones and printers, unhurried. Kaylee kept her hands still on the desk.
"People change jobs," Autumn said. "People get bored. Companies get sold out from under you. What happens to you the day he looks up and it's over?"
Kaylee reached for the old answer, the Chris one, all bridges and housewarmings. Autumn held up one finger.
"And before you say Chris." She said it gently, which was the worst part. "I've had him filed under fiction since the gala. Nobody's imaginary boyfriend buys dresses that fit like that. I don't care who he is. I care what you'll be if he stops."
Autumn had the shape of it right and everything past the shape wrong.
Kaylee gave the losses honestly, to be fair.
The bus she used to sprint for and no longer missed.
Tacos whenever. An apartment where nobody had any claim on her clothes.
Then the other side, the one Autumn had no page for.
Sleep that went all the way through the night.
Lunch that tasted like food. Mornings that started warm and stayed that way.
A name she could say with nothing braced behind it.
"He has good weeks," Kaylee said, and the levity landed short, and she left it lying there.
"Six weeks ago you were the fun one. I liked the fun one.
" Autumn's thumb rubbed the strap seam of her own bag where it hung off the chair.
"So here's all I'm asking. Keep one thing that's yours.
One thing he doesn't hold. A lunch that isn't scheduled.
A Friday." Her voice cracked and she let it. "Me."
Kaylee looked at her own hands, quiet on the desk, and told the truth as far as it would go.
"What if I don't want one?"
The sentence crossed the desk whole and arrived as noise. Autumn's face went kind and shut at once.
"That's what scares me, babe." Lower again. "That's what people say right before—"
She stopped herself. Rolled the chair back a hand's width. The floor's noise filled the space where the rest of it would have gone.
His name was right there. Two syllables, and handing them over would have handed over everything with them. Kaylee left them where they lived.
"You just almost told me something," Autumn said.
"I almost told you your cardigan's inside out. It happens."
Autumn looked down at her own front. The cardigan had been right side out all afternoon. When she looked back up she did it slower, careful now. "Okay," she said, and the word came out gently, and gently was worse. "I'm around either way."
The standing Friday went out of the world inside that either way, no argument attached. Kaylee heard her own excuse about month-end and the penthouse come out thin. Autumn let it be thin.
Autumn walked her to the elevator bank anyway, and pressed the down button herself, a small tired courtesy. They stood in the corridor while the car climbed toward them, and neither of them spent more words on it.
"Eat something this weekend that isn't on a schedule," Autumn said.
"I eat."
"Sure you do."
The doors opened. Kaylee stepped in and turned. Autumn stood where the corridor met the car, thumb hooked in her tote strap, red hair catching the down-light, her mouth already opening on one more thing.
"Text me when you're home. Even if it's only a period."
The gap narrowed to a stripe of red hair, a hand that came up too late, and the doors met.