“Think it over until Friday,” he said over his shoulder.

“After Friday, that visa slot goes to the Denver team.”

Traffic on Interstate 90 crawled along at twelve miles an hour past the Mannheim Road exit.

David sat in the passenger seat of my sedan with his knees jammed against the glove box door.

He kept his eyes on his laptop screen while the red taillights flickered ahead of us in the dark.

For twenty minutes neither of us said a word while the wipers swept the dirty road spray off the glass.

At the red light by the off-ramp, my phone lit up in the plastic cup holder between our seats.

A push notification showed an automatic charge from Commonwealth Edison.

Four hundred and twelve dollars had come off my credit card at 4:15 p.m.

“Did you just hit a bump?” David asked, glancing up from his laptop screen.

“That was the electric bill going through,” I said.

“Four hundred is a lot for a three-bedroom suburban house in November,” he said.

“In October it was two hundred and ten dollars,” I said.

I put the phone back in the plastic tray without clearing the alert off the screen.