Page 32 of Puck Me Like You Own Me

He makes tea. He talks.

The school district walk-through went well, and he thinks it goes to bid in March. Marcus’s baby is fine. There’s a guy up here with forty acres who wants a barn re-sheeted in the spring and doesn’t care that Fin has a bad hand.

“And the drive’s nothing,” he says. “It’s two hours. I’ve driven two hours to buy a table saw.”

“You’re two hours from your own guys.”

“They’re on the school district thing, and they don’t need me standing there.” He puts the mug down. “Kieran. I want to tell you something and I want you to not do the face.”

“What face?”

“The face.” He points at my face. “That Marek guy drove out on Sunday night and told me straight. Sat right there. Told me what was coming, when, who. Didn’t soften one word. Then he stood in my house until midnight lifting boxes with one hand because I’ve got a hand and a half.”

“He said it didn’t add to the debt.”

“That’s what I’m telling you.” Fin leans forward. “The van came at eight. There were two guys. It took four hours. At the end the foreman came in with the machine, and he paid. Him. He put in his own card, punched in his own number. He took both copies of the invoice off the man, put them in his coat.”

The stove ticks.

“Both copies,” I say.

“Both. I said give me one. He said no.” Fin sits back. “Kieran, I’ve been paid by a lot of people. I’ve paid a lot of people. I have never in my life seen a man take both copies. There’s no invoice. There’s nothing. It’s like it didn’t happen.”

I look at the fire.

“Is he all right?” Fin asks. “Whatever he is. Is he all right?”

“He’s a man who works for the people you borrowed from.”

“I know what he is. That’s not what I asked you.” Fin turns the mug around on the table with one finger. “I’ve had four of them in my house since the spring. Four. Two were kids in nylon jackets. One was the gray coat. One was a guy with a clipboard who was almost apologizing. Not one of them ever told me anything before it happened. Not one. That’s the whole method, Kieran. They never tell you before.”

“Fin.”

“So either he’s the worst one they’ve got, or he’s not doing what they want.”

I get up and open the cupboard over his sink. There are four things in it—tea, a bag of rice, a tin of soup, and eleven packets of instant noodles.

“Eat something,” I say. “You’ve got no food in this house.”

“There’s a store in the village.”

“Which is closed.”

“Which is closed,” he agrees cheerfully, and gets the noodles out.

We eat instant noodles at a table with four unmatched chairs. He tells me about a man up here who keeps goats. At four o’clock I get back in the truck and drive two hours south with the sun in the mirror the whole way.

I get home at seven, and I don’t take my coat off.

Every statement since November is in the drawer where Suze made me keep them. I haven’t been able to log into the account portal since the second week. Marek changed the credentials to route the alerts, then gave me new ones. I never wrote them down, and I never asked again.

I use the paper.

Fourteen statements across three accounts, November to now, and I go through them line by line with a pen, on the floor, with my back against the cabinets.

Fourteen statements. I know what I’m looking for and roughly what it costs. A van, two men, two hundred miles. Three or four thousand dollars. It will be under a company name with LOGISTICS or TRANSFER in it, dated the first week of February.

No moving company.