“…Thirty-two hundred a month.”

My throat closed.

Thirty-two hundred dollars a month.

Almost twice what he gave his own wife and daughter for everything we needed to live — spent, every month, on an apartment for the woman who had just come off his lap.

For three years I had felt guilty over a cup of coffee.

She had a home he paid for, and a necklace worth more than a house, and a place on his lap in front of thirty employees.

I did the arithmetic in the corridor, the way I did all my arithmetic in those years, and for the first time it did not make me feel careful.