We had ordered the towels before we decided to dismiss Lenore. Her initials were already embroidered on the sixth one, and returning the set would have cost more than bringing it.
She arrived at the house while we were eating breakfast. None of us had invited her to the partners' weekend. Each assumed somebody else had told her the address. She stood in the dining-room doorway holding a folder against her chest.
"I want what you owe me."
This was addressed to all of us, but we heard different amounts.
Anthony asked her to come upstairs. He said they could settle it privately. The house was rented, the walls thin enough that we could hear his raised voice without distinguishing the words. Then something broke. Anthony came down with a cut on his hand and said Lenore had locked herself in the bathroom.
We believed the part about the door. We were less certain about everything before it.
By eleven, somebody had suggested a collection. We did not call it compensation. That word would imply an agreed thing had happened, and nobody wished to be the first to name one.
"She's been through a difficult period," Anthony said.
He had wrapped his hand in a kitchen towel. I could see a little red point advancing through the fabric.
We took turns going upstairs. The bathroom occupied the narrow end of the house, above the laundry, with a window too small for anyone to climb through. Lenore did not answer Anthony. She did not answer the managing partner. When I knocked, she asked whether the front door was still unlocked.
"Of course."
"Leave it that way."
I heard water running. She was washing her blouse; Anthony had thrown coffee against her when she opened the folder. The sound we heard was a glass he knocked into the basin while trying to take the papers back. She told me these things in a voice so level that I wondered how long she had been practicing them.
"Come downstairs," I said.
"Have you paid me?"
I had not. My particular debt was small compared with the company's: three months of freelance accounts she had completed after hours while I promised her a separate payment. I had submitted the work as part of my own retainer. The company had paid me promptly.
Downstairs, the managing partner asked whether she was all right. Before I answered, Anthony said we should call a locksmith. He had made the call sound like a practical question. The room became attentive in a way it had not been when we were discussing what she was owed.
"She's washing her blouse," I said.
"She could have done that at home."
Someone suggested turning off the water. Someone else said that would look bad. We kept discussing how things would look while a woman we had underpaid stood behind a locked door trying to clean coffee from her clothes.
The folder was on the dining table. Anthony had brought it down with him. Inside were five sets of papers, each headed with a different name. We had all been using her evenings. We had all thought our arrangement private enough not to affect the others.
"If we each put something in," the managing partner began.
I took out my phone and sent Lenore the amount on my three invoices. It left less in my account than I wanted for the weekend. That was the only practical difficulty. I had spent months treating it as a reason.
When I told the room what I had paid, Anthony said I was admitting liability. I said I was paying for work. The distinction made him angry because it was narrow enough to be true.
Upstairs, Lenore checked her phone. The bathroom bolt moved. She emerged in a cardigan over her damp blouse, holding her towel and mine. They were wrapped around the papers she had managed to keep when Anthony took the folder.
"Your car?" I asked.
"Outside."
We went down together. The others were adding numbers and disagreeing about which entity should pay them. Anthony stood between Lenore and the front door until she said his name, loudly enough for everyone at the table to turn. He moved aside.
After she left, we went back to the meeting. The managing partner asked me to explain what Lenore and I had arranged before she came. He could believe in a conspiracy more easily than in an overdue invoice. By dinner, I was no longer being asked which clients I wanted to retain.
My towel came back a week later, washed and folded. The initials had been unpicked. Tiny holes remained where the dark thread had pulled through the cotton. There was no note. I put it in the bathroom with the others and found myself choosing it first, then turning it so the damaged corner faced the wall.
When Anthony sent the expenses from the weekend, he had divided the cost of the towels among the five people who stayed. I paid my share and kept the receipt with Lenore's invoices.
