The bills were soft and wrinkled, smelling faintly of canola oil and fried chicken batter from eighty Saturday night shifts.

“Forty thousand on the official bank check,” I said, pressing my thumb against my index finger as I added it up.

“And fifteen hundred in cash.”

Mrs.

Gable adjusted her bifocals and snapped a pink rubber thumb guard onto her right hand.

She counted the stack of twenties twice, laying them out in four flat piles of three hundred and seventy-five dollars each on her green blotter.

“You have forty-one thousand five hundred dollars exactly,” she said.