In November 2000, Hugh and I counted what the business owned and what it cost to keep owning it. Celia had helped check the supplies, leaving her figures beside mine in the open ledger. The workroom was orderly now. Orders went out with fewer corrections, and nobody had to guess where a receipt had gone. I had expected improved habits to produce improved money.
Hugh added the van expenses again. "The work pays," he said. "Transport eats most of what comes after."
I pointed to a month with fewer repairs. He pointed to the next one. We were not arguing about whether I worked hard. That made the figures more difficult to dismiss. The business could pay Celia, buy supplies, and meet its rent, but it could not keep absorbing vehicle costs and still give the household a dependable share.
"We could move the work home," I said.
He looked around the kitchen, where we were sitting. "Where would we live while it did?"
I pictured rails beside the refrigerator and customers at the door during supper. I had already spent too much of our marriage treating room as something that could always be borrowed from Hugh. We wrote down the possibility without calling it the answer. Then we listed collection-only work, reduced delivery days, and higher minimum charges.
Each alternative lost somebody. A customer without transport would go elsewhere. A larger minimum might cost us the small repairs that filled gaps. I wanted a solution that preserved everything and asked nothing. Hugh slid the pencil back toward me when I stopped writing. "We need choices we can actually make," he said.
Gordon arrived at the workroom two days later with more uniforms than expected and an idea about the next renewal. He said Bellamy Site Services would have enough work to justify a larger arrangement. There could be a larger advance too, if we reserved the capacity. He talked about predictable volume, the same words that had comforted me before.
Celia was replacing a zipper nearby. She stopped the machine and asked what quantities he meant. Gordon gave a range rather than a schedule. She asked about turnaround. He said they could settle the details once he knew we were interested. I heard opportunity. From her chair, I could see that she heard additional hours being imagined for her.
"Interested isn't committed," she said after he left.
"I know that."
"Then let me see the terms before you give him my time." She put the zipper flat beneath her hand. "I don't want to find out there's an agreement because a bundle arrives."
I had nearly said he and I could work out the commercial part first. The sentence formed with embarrassing ease. Instead I told her there would be no private agreement. Anything affecting the work would be on the table before I accepted it. She nodded and returned to the zipper, not grateful, simply taking me at my word.
We continued under the existing arrangement while Gordon's larger proposal remained unsettled. I put his projected quantities beside our actual completed work, and Celia marked where another batch would exceed her agreed hours. Hugh asked what extra volume would do to delivery costs. It was less thrilling than imagining a large payment, but it kept us from planning with money we did not have.
One of our smaller customers mentioned a friend who might need regular repairs. I wrote the possible referral in the inquiry book. There was no order yet and no reason to count it as income. Still, the name of an existing customer beside the inquiry reminded me that Gordon was not the whole business, even if his bundles took up most of the rail.
At home I kept our annual count in the drawer with the household bills rather than burying it beneath more hopeful papers. Before bed, Hugh asked whether I was all right. I said I was frightened we had built something that could not carry us. He took my hand without offering a number to make that feeling disappear. We left the drawer shut until morning.