Not Perfect(4)

“Any chance I can get it to go?” Tabitha asked sheepishly.

The server sighed, then nodded.

“Sure,” she said, “that will be seventy-five cents.”

Tabitha fished around in her purse. She knew she had the coins in a pocket, and she found them easily, but there must be something else in there. She felt tissues, one tiny stick of gum. Her hand rested on a cufflink—pure gold. She had put it in there for a moment like this. And she realized there were more where that came from at home, in Stuart’s still-very-full closet. She put the coins on the counter along with the cufflink. She knew she could keep it and try to sell it, and she planned to do that with some of the other stuff, but right now she did not want to only take, she wanted to try to give, too. So she left it. The server would probably just throw it away, think she was some crazy lady who was a bad tipper. But maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d get five or ten dollars for it, or even more from one of those gold-melting places. All Tabitha could do was leave it and hope.





CHAPTER TWO

Walk or cab it? Or wait for a bus? Tabitha was pretty sure she wasn’t going to get reimbursed or paid for this—whatever it was. A job? No, not a job. She was still going to have to get a job, obviously. She certainly wasn’t certified to do this and briefly wondered if she could possibly do more harm than good. She shook that off and decided to walk; she didn’t want this detour to cost her money. Besides, if she took her time, there was the chance someone else would have arrived by the time she got there. That would be the best-case scenario.

Two blocks away from Nora’s building her phone rang. She had that moment of grabbing for her phone, hoping it wasn’t about one of the kids, then thinking hopefully it might be Kirk Hutchins calling her back. It was her best friend, Rachel.

“Hey, Rach,” she said, slowing down—she hated talking in indoor public places: coffee shops, stores, lobbies—and would rather walk around the block five times instead to complete the conversation.

“I have a good one,” Rachel said.

“A good what?”

“Joke!”

“Oh, okay—lay it on me,” Tabitha said.

“What do you call a cow that just gave birth?”

“I don’t know, what? Happy? Full of milk?”

“No! Decaffeinated!”

Tabitha laughed. “That’s pretty funny,” she said. “Another one in your cheese-joke arsenal?”

“Well, I have to say something while the customers are tasting and browsing,” she said, referring to her job as head cheesemonger at Di Bruno Bros., a gourmet market near Rittenhouse Square.

“No you don’t,” Tabitha said, walking past the lobby entrance to the building. If she kept going she could be home in ten minutes.

“Well, anyway,” Rachel said. “Where were you this morning? I thought you were coming to yoga.”

Tabitha stopped walking. She’d completely forgotten. Usually she would text Rachel with an excuse, to avoid any questions. It wasn’t like Tabitha to just not show up.

“Oh, sorry, I had a dentist appointment,” she said casually. “I started having this awful feeling on the top of one of my bottom teeth, so I wanted to have it looked at.”

“What did they say? Did you need X-rays? I know how you always refuse them.”

“Oh, well, actually the X-ray machine was down, so now I have to go back. They didn’t say much.” Tabitha was a terrible liar.

“You missed a great class,” Rachel said. “Maybe the best one yet. How about tomorrow?”

“Maybe,” Tabitha said. She still had a reserve of six classes already paid for before she had to reenroll. She wanted to save them. But yoga did sound good.

Tabitha was now at the halfway point between Nora’s building and her apartment. If she didn’t turn back, she’d be home before she knew it, and then she’d never go. She stopped and glanced at the file again, pushed it open, and saw NORA BARTON. She turned around and headed back toward Nora.

“Are you there?” Rachel asked, clearly annoyed. “Did you hear what I said?”

“About yoga?”

“No, about the tasting.”

“Oh, a tasting?” Tabitha asked, trying not to sound too excited.

“Yes, I said we’re doing a goat tasting tonight at six, bring the kids. We’ll have cheese and crackers but also other stuff: goat-cheese crepes, mini goat-cheese sliders. Can you come?”

“We’ll be there,” Tabitha said, sounding more enthusiastic than she meant to. She was hoping to have a chance to stop by Rachel’s apartment to pilfer some dish soap, but a free dinner was better, much better. She didn’t want to sound too eager, though, or Rachel was going to really start to wonder about her. “Let me just check with the kids and I’ll call you back.”

“Sounds good,” Rachel said.



Tabitha tried not to think about her mother, or those horrible last three days of her mother’s life, as she trudged back along the same path she had just walked. Instead, she kept her eyes on the storefronts, always thinking about what might be there for the taking—not shoplifting, of course—but what she was starting to think of as “light stealing.” Not much, she realized as she got close to the building. It was huge. There must have been at least two hundred apartments, maybe more. She had walked by this place so many times but never had a reason to go inside. She entered the lobby, which reminded her of a shabby hotel. There were people sitting in various places, many of them on the older side, and she wondered if Nora could be here. She wouldn’t know Nora if she tripped on her. She walked over to the desk. She was glad Nora didn’t have a complicated last name that she would have to pretend to know how to pronounce.