Page 31 of Across His Line

I don’t know what to do with that, so I stand there. She writes an address on a label in small, square handwriting. She checks it against her phone. She puts the mailer on the scale and looks at the number and makes a note on the spreadsheet with her thumb.

“How much do you make?” I say, noticing the numbers on the spreadsheet.

Her thumb stops. Her shoulders come up, just slightly, like I’ve put a hand somewhere I shouldn’t.

“Enough.”

“Enough for what?”

She takes a second. I watch her decide how much to give me.

“Christmas,” she says.

“Christmas?” I look at the table again, at the folded jeans and the used tissue paper and the scale, and I do the math I’ve never had to do in my life.

She’s doing all of this to go home.

To buy a ticket. A bus, probably. Presents. Whatever else. She’s buying other people’s old belts at a thrift store and cleaning them and taking pictures of them and wrapping them in tissue so she can get on a bus in December. I don’t know what a bus ticket costs, but I’ll be surprised if all this random shit can pay for it.

I pick up the wooden box. She watches my hand, something passes on her face, but she doesn’t say anything.

“What’d you pay for this?” I ask.

She looks weary. “Three dollars.”

“What are you selling it for?”

“Thirty-five.”

“And what did it cost you?”

She gives me a look like I’m stupid. “Three dollars.”

“No.” I turn it over. The latch clicks. “You cleaned it?”

“Yes.”

“Took the pictures. Wrote the thing. Answered some woman in Ohio asking if you’d take twenty. Wrapped it. Walked it to the post office.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“How long?”

“I don’t know.” She pushes a piece of hair out of her face with the back of her wrist. “An hour. Maybe more.”

“So it’s thirty-two dollars minus an hour of your life.”

“It’s thirty-two dollars.”

“You’re pricing off what you think. You’re not paying yourself for the time.” I put the box down in front of her. “You’re underpricing.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I spent a summer in my father’s office watching people get fired for less.”

She opens her mouth to say something, and then she doesn’t. She looks at the box. She looks at her spreadsheet. I watch her eyes go down a column, and I watch her get to the bottom, and I watch her realize I’m right.

“Then what would you price it at?” she says. Sharp. A dare.