The kind of mug a household accumulates over years without specifically trying to. I drove up to water her plants and do laundry because my machine's been broken for a month and I haven't had time to deal with it. What kind of machine? She looked at him over her shoulder. What?
Front loader or top loader? Front loader. Why? What's it doing? She set the mugs on the counter and turned around fully.
It stops midcycle. Just stops and then it flashes some error code and I have to manually drain it. E whatever number. E3, I think. Marcus nodded slowly.
Door latch sensor probably. Or the control board. You tried unplugging it for a full 60 seconds and restarting. Olivia stared at him. I spent $40 on a plumber who told me I needed a new machine.
You need a new plumber, Marcus said. Unplug it tonight. Leave it for a minute. Plug it back in. If the error clears, run it empty once.
If it stops again, it's probably the latch, which is a $40 part. She kept staring at him. What? He said, I've been going to the laundromat for 4 weeks, she said slowly. And you just she stopped, shook her head, turned back to the coffee maker.
You still fixing cars? Yeah, got the shop on Delmare. You own it going on 3 years? She turned back around and leaned against the counter, arms folded lightly, looking at him with an expression he couldn't immediately name. "Not impressed exactly, more like recalibrating, like she was updating a mental file that hadn't been touched in a while." "Daniel told me you'd done well," she said.
"I don't think I understood what that meant until right now." Marcus didn't know what to do with that, so he said, "How's your job?" She let out a small breath that was almost a laugh. It's a job, she said. I'm a care coordinator at Mercy General. I do scheduling. I manage patient follow-up.
I'm the person who calls you after your discharge to make sure you understand your medication. It's it matters. I believe that. She paused. It's also exhausting in a way that doesn't really translate when people ask how your day was because the answer is always the same.
Because the answer is always the same. She agreed. The coffee maker beeped. She poured both mugs, brought them to the table, and sat down across from him with the ease of two people who had somehow skipped about 15 steps of social awkwardness and arrived at something that felt against all logic almost comfortable. They talked, not about anything important at first.
The neighborhood, old mutual acquaintances, a woman named Patricia, who had lived three doors down and apparently moved to Phoenix, a tree in the backyard that had finally come down last winter after leaning wrong for years. But then Marcus said something he hadn't planned to say. Fod, he said it. The way a man says things when he's tired enough that his guard comes down without him noticing. You ever get to a point where you wake up and you can't remember the last time somebody asked how you were doing?