Chapter 4
Paul Adebayo read the phrase foreseeable cost of service twice, then carried the page into the greenhouse to read it a third time under better light.
At South Branch Cooperative, better light was abundant. Everything else required a rota.
The late-afternoon sun turned the greenhouse roof white-gold and caught on the broad leaves of peppers, chard, and the experimental dwarf citrus trees that Malik insisted would survive Chicago if they were loved with sufficient engineering.
Members moved between raised beds with harvest crates.
Someone laughed near the wash station. A forklift beeped beyond the loading doors.
"You planning to compost that or marry it?" asked Imani Cole, the cooperative's operations manager.
Paul folded the invitation sheet. "Neither. It has excellent boundaries."
"Better than your last three dates, then."
"Cruelty from an employee during work hours. I will consult the handbook."
"Co-owner," she corrected. "And the handbook says you have to leave by six. Your sister's birthday."
Paul checked the time and discovered it was five forty-eight.
"I was leaving."
"You were becoming one with the basil."
At forty-nine, Paul had a powerful build that caused strangers to assume the cooperative's physical labor was effortless for him and friends to assume one more favor would not matter.
He had encouraged both mistakes. Usefulness was a language he spoke fluently, sometimes long after anyone had asked him to.
The Society's letter appeared to regard that fluency as a possible hazard.
His intake interview occurred the following morning in a private office at the cooperative, before the day's first member meeting. A woman named Rina described the proposed courtship and asked what he understood by the service rule.
"That every nice thing comes with a bill," Paul said.
"Is that what you believe?"
"No. It says the bill should not be hidden. Different claim."
Rina nodded.
Paul leaned back. The office chair complained. "If I offer to cook supper, the cost is not ingredients alone. It is shopping, preparation, cleanup, and the fact that I may have used energy promised somewhere else. If I arrange a farm visit, staff time counts even if no cash changes hands."
"Exactly."
"And the woman can refuse without selecting another man."
"Yes."
"Can staff stop me?"
Rina studied him. "Explain."
"If I offer something beyond the capacity I declared. Can the facilitator say, Paul, that is not the cost you gave us?"
"They can flag the discrepancy and pause acceptance. They cannot manage your life for you."
"Good. I do not need a new mother."
"Neither do you need to make a stranger responsible for detecting your exhaustion."
Paul's booming laugh startled a flock of sparrows from the gutter outside.
"You people are alarmingly direct."
"You asked for a safeguard."
"I did."
He had grown up between Birmingham and Lagos, in families where care was action and action was rarely counted aloud.
His mother could transform a visit into a feast while denying she had done any work.
His father repaired everyone's appliances until his own back forced a different accounting.
Paul loved the communal abundance of that inheritance.
He also knew how easily affection became an economy where the person who stopped working feared he would stop belonging.
"Usefulness has been my price of admission," he said. "Not always because people charged it. Sometimes because I arrived at the door waving it like a ticket."
Rina's expression softened, though her attention did not.
"What do you want from the proposed experience?"
The easy answer was a woman who enjoyed being cared for. The truer one arrived more slowly.
"To offer without trapping her," he said. "And to find out whether I remain interesting after the useful part is done."
"What would you need from the other men?"
Paul considered three chairs around a fourth, three forms of wanting brought to one table without permission to fight for the best position.
"No contempt for service," he said. "Some people think practical care is less sophisticated than words. Others think a spreadsheet is colder than a meal. If we start ranking the forms, we have simply moved the auction into a nicer room."
Rina recorded his answer.
"The suppers are nonsexual," she said. "Private intimacy, if it ever occurs, would require unanimous continuation after Supper Four and a separate sober threshold meeting."
"Four months is a long time to discover someone dislikes my laugh."
"It is an efficient laugh. They will know quickly."
He grinned.
At the end, she asked for his choice.
Paul thought of the invitation's careful language.
No fee purchased access. No gift purchased gratitude.
No service purchased permanence. The woman might meet him and prefer Hector's conversation or S?ren's clarity, though he did not yet know their names.
She might want all three differently. She might want none.
The uncertainty frightened the part of him that solved fear with labor.
"Yes," he said. "Provided my service can be refused cleanly."
"Her refusal is protected. So is yours."
After the call, Imani appeared in the doorway with two coffees.
"You look pleased," she said.
"I have agreed to four dinners I have not been invited to attend."
"Efficient."
He took the coffee. "Also, I will not cover the Saturday delivery route."
Her eyebrows rose.
"I am at capacity," he said, testing the words.
The greenhouse did not collapse. No member appeared to revoke his key. Imani merely nodded.
"Good," she said. "I already assigned it."
Paul laughed again, softer this time, and felt something inside him make room.
At his sister Bisi's birthday dinner that night, Paul arrived fourteen minutes late and empty-handed except for the gift he had purchased a week earlier. Ordinarily he would have brought two trays of food despite being told not to, then spent the party repairing whatever seemed insufficient.
Bisi opened the door and looked behind him. "Where is the emergency catering?"
"I was instructed to bring myself."
"Who are you?"
Her house was loud with cousins, aunties, teenagers, and the British-Nigerian habit of arguing across three simultaneous conversations. Paul hugged his mother, accepted a plate prepared by someone else, and sat.
Sitting proved suspiciously difficult.
When an uncle asked him to examine the loose back gate, Paul heard himself say, "Tomorrow. Not tonight."
The uncle nodded and returned to football.
No tribunal convened.
Bisi joined him on the sofa. "You are practicing something."
"Rest. Apparently it requires technique."
"A woman?"
"Potentially."
"How potentially?"
"I have agreed to be described to someone I have not met."
"That sounds like arranged dating with legal counsel."
"Not entirely inaccurate."
Paul explained the four-supper concept in broad terms. Bisi's curiosity focused less on the number of men than on Paul's declared boundary.
"You told strangers you overwork so people keep you?"
"I phrased it better."
"Of course you did. Does she know you are impossible when tired?"
"She will."
"Will you let her know before you become impossible?"
He looked across the room at his mother carrying a stack of plates despite three people offering help. Usefulness ran through the family as affection, pride, and defense.
"I want to," he said.
Bisi touched his shoulder. "You are loved here when you sit. We simply forget to show it because you stand before anyone asks."
Paul swallowed.
Later, the birthday cake arrived from a bakery. He had not baked it. No one lamented the absence of his labor. Bisi blew out candles while the family sang off-key.
Paul watched the room hold without him at its center and imagined a woman who might want his warmth but not require him to become a utility.
The fantasy felt more intimate than the sexual possibilities he had carefully discussed at intake.
He took a second slice of cake and let someone else clear his plate.