Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,60

hall. The women who worked there, all of them mothers, loved Gil most and knew best what to do with him.

Sam passed through the empty dining room, footsteps echoing on the linoleum. The floors had been swept clean. The wooden tables gleamed.

She could hear Maria laughing.

Sam pushed Gil’s stroller toward the sound, and through the swinging doors that led to the kitchen.

It was at least ten degrees warmer on the other side. The windows were covered in steam. Delmi kept plants on the high windowsills—a cascading jade; an array of succulents; aloe that resembled long fingers, which the women cracked open when their hands bled from washing dishes in winter. At the center of all that green, a painted statue of the Virgin Mary peeked out from behind the leaves.

Sam saw them before they saw her. Delmi was at the counter, chopping heaps of peppers and onions. Maria and Gaby stood side by side at the island in the center of the room, breading chicken breasts. Maria dunked each one into a huge silver bowl of raw eggs, then handed it to Gaby, who rolled it in a mountain of breadcrumbs and laid it flat on a cookie sheet.

They talked, as they did all day, every day, rapid-fire and without looking up at one another.

“He should have been fired by now,” Delmi said.

“He’s doing just what they want him to,” said Maria. “He’s playing the role of the bad guy. He’ll probably get promoted.”

“That asshole should try living off twelve bucks an hour,” Gaby said. “See how he likes it.”

“Gabriela!” Maria said. “Watch your mouth!”

Still, Maria laughed. She had tears in her eyes from laughing.

“What asshole?” Sam said.

They all looked up.

The room fell silent.

She felt for the first time like she had barged in on them.

Then they adjusted, relaxed.

Delmi unstrapped Gil from the stroller and took him in her arms. She was his favorite. She made a funny face he loved, filling her cheeks with air, then pretending to pop them. Gil laughed every time she did it, and Delmi was happy to do it again and again.

“I have treats for you,” she said in a singsong voice, carrying him into the pantry.

She returned a moment later, placed the corner of a saltine on his tongue, and let it dissolve there like a communion wafer.

“Who were you talking about? Who’s the asshole?” Sam said, her nosiness getting the better of her.

She had never heard either of the older women swear. Doing so in front of them felt illicit, even if she was just repeating Gaby.

“The head of RADS,” Gaby said. “You know. Barney.”

RADS stood for Residence and Dining Services. Though Sam had technically worked in the department her first three years of school, she couldn’t have named the person in charge until last year, when Barney Reardon took the job.

Gaby had told Sam everything. How Barney was hired to cut the budget and did so by cutting their pay, when the kitchen staff hadn’t gotten a raise in eight years as it was. How the new health insurance plan was useless.

Ironically, Gaby said, she had only left her better paying restaurant job because she had no benefits and Maria had convinced her that, with the baby, she needed decent insurance. She’d had some complications after Josie was born. Super high blood pressure that landed her back in the hospital twice. She was supposed to follow up with a specialist, but she still hadn’t.

“What would be the point of even knowing if I need surgery or whatever,” Gaby had said at the time. “A five-thousand-dollar deductible. Who has five thousand dollars to pay a doctor before getting any coverage?”

Sam shook her head, though she had only a vague idea of what the word deductible meant. She was still on her parents’ insurance and had never had to deal with the specifics.

Maria and Delmi had never once complained to Sam about anything. When Gaby came along, it was a revelation.

Now, when Gaby said Barney Reardon’s name, Maria clucked her tongue, bringing the conversation to an end.

Delmi plopped Gil in the stroller with a new cracker.

“Okay, chiquito. That’s a good boy.”

Maria said, “Sam. Get the cookie dough out of the fridge and scoop it onto some parchment, will you? We’re behind.”

It was kind of ridiculous, how much it meant to her to be asked. To feel like she still belonged among them.

* * *

—

That afternoon, Isabella and Sam laid Gil down on Isabella’s bed with a couple of toys and