I picked up the utility bill and set it back down without reading it.

They need the five hundred and fifty, I said.

Do they?

I have never asked.

Why not?

And there it was, the real question, the one I had been walking around for three years, and because it was Marcus and because it was late and because the receipts were sitting there in the lamplight looking exactly like what they were, I gave him the true answer instead of the easy one.

Because I have never asked them to take less, I said, because I was afraid the question would sound like I was trying to take something back.