Priya Anand was crying in the third-floor copy room when August found her at seven-fifteen on a Tuesday night.
She wasn’t making noise.
She had her back to the door and one hand flat on the glass of the copier and her shoulders were shaking.
The machine was halfway through a job.
Two hundred and sixty pages collated, stapled, three-hole punched.
The counter said it had four hundred left to go.
August stopped in the doorway.
The copier’s fan hummed.
Priya’s breath hitched once and then she straightened and wiped her face with the back of her wrist and turned around.
“I’m fine,” she said.
Her eyes were red.
She had a stack of binders on the table behind her and an open box of tabs and a legal pad covered in margin notes that looked like a flowchart.
The red pen she’d been using had bled through to the second page.
“You’re Priya,” August said.
“I know who I am.” “You started three weeks ago.” “Four.” She turned back to the copier.
It jammed.
The error beep sounded twice and the display flashed a code.
Priya made a sound that wasn’t quite a word and yanked the paper tray.
August crossed the room and opened the side panel.
The torn half of a sheet was wedged under the drum.
He pulled it free and closed the panel and reset the job.
The copier started again.
Priya was staring at him.
“David Lee gave you the Haverton closing binders,” August said.
“How did you” “He gives every first-year the Haverton binders.
It’s four hundred pages and twelve exhibits and he wants it by midnight and he checks in every hour to make sure you’re still breathing.” Priya’s shoulders squared.
“I’m breathing.” “Are you?” She didn’t answer.
She picked up the legal pad and looked at it and set it down again.
“I have the binders collated.
I have the tabs labeled.
I don’t have the exhibits indexed because two of them are spreadsheets and the rows don’t match the summary he gave me and I can’t find the reconciliation and he said if I bother him before eleven he’ll assume I can’t handle the work.” “Did he say that?” “He said new associates who interrupt him after seven p.m.
to ask questions they should have figured out themselves don’t make it to February.” August looked at the binders.
Looked at the flowchart.
Looked at Priya’s hands.
She’d chewed the cuticle on her left thumb raw.
“Show me the spreadsheets,” he said.
“I don’t need” “Show me.” She hesitated.
Then she pulled a folder from the pile and opened it.
Two spreadsheets, twelve columns each, the rows labeled by quarter.
The summary David Lee had given her listed eight quarters.
The spreadsheets only had six.
August looked at the summary.
Looked at the date in the header.
Looked at Priya.
“He gave you last year’s summary,” August said.
“What?” “The template’s from the last Haverton closing.
It has the wrong quarters.
The spreadsheets are current.
The summary’s not.” Priya stared at the folder.
Her face did something complicated.
“He gave me the wrong template.” “He gave you the template his assistant printed.
His assistant printed what was filed under Haverton.
What was filed under Haverton was last year’s.” “So the rows” “Match.
You just need to re-do the index with the current quarters.” Priya closed the folder.
Opened it again.
Her hands were shaking.
“That’s I’ve been trying to reconcile them for three hours.
I thought I was” She stopped.
“Thank you.” August didn’t say anything.
The copier beeped.
The job had finished.
Priya pulled the stack and started loading the binders.
“I can index the exhibits in twenty minutes if I don’t have to reconcile anything that isn’t broken,” she said.
Her voice was steadier.
“I’ll have the binders done by ten.” “You’ll have them done by nine-thirty,” August said.
“I’m not that fast.” “You are if I collate while you index.” Priya stopped.
She looked at him.
“You don’t have to do that.” “I know.” “David Lee’s not your partner.” “I know that too.” “Then why” August picked up the first binder.
Started loading tabs.
He didn’t look at her.
“Because you were about to quit and the firm already chewed up everyone it’s going to chew up this month.” Priya was quiet.
Then she sat down and pulled the spreadsheets toward her and picked up the red pen.
“I wasn’t going to quit.” “You were thinking about it.” “How do you” She stopped.
Shook her head.
“Everyone here does that.
Knows things they shouldn’t.” “They don’t,” August said.
“They just don’t tell you when they’re guessing.” He finished the first binder.
Started the second.
Priya indexed in silence.
Her pen moved fast and precise and she didn’t ask him any more questions.
The copy room settled into the hum of the copier and the scratch of her pen and the small sounds of someone who’d been on the edge and had stepped back.
August had a brother once.
Nineteen years old and sliding and August had been busy.
Busy managing a roommate’s lease dispute and a class he was failing and a future he’d been so sure he had time to build.
He’d told himself the slope wasn’t steep.
He’d told himself there was time.
There hadn’t been.
He finished the third binder.
Priya finished the index and started labeling tabs.
She was faster now.
The crying had stopped.
The shaking had stopped.
She looked like someone who was going to make it to February.
“Why did you help me?” she asked.
August didn’t answer right away.
He picked up the fourth binder.
Checked the tabs.
Set it in the finished stack.
“I had a brother,” he said.
Priya looked up.
“He needed help and I was busy and I told myself I’d get to it.” August kept his hands on the binder.
Kept his voice level.
“I didn’t get to it.” “I’m sorry.” “Don’t be sorry.
Just don’t quit because David Lee gave you the wrong template and didn’t check.” Priya was quiet.
Then she nodded.
She went back to labeling tabs.
They finished at nine-twenty.
Twelve binders, indexed, collated, stacked in the order David Lee’s email had specified.
Priya packed them into a file box and wrote David Lee’s name on the lid in neat block letters.
“I’ll take them up,” she said.
“I’ll walk with you.” “You don’t have to” “I’m going that way.” They took the elevator to the fifth floor.
David Lee’s office was dark but his assistant’s desk light was still on.
Priya set the box on the chair outside his door and stepped back.
“He’ll check them in the morning,” she said.
“If they’re wrong he’ll call me at six a.m.
and tell me I’m fired.” “They’re not wrong.” “How do you know?” “Because you indexed them and you’re careful.” Priya looked at the box.
Looked at August.
“You didn’t have to help me.” “I know.” “But you did anyway.” “Yes.” “Why?” August thought about the locked drawer in his desk.
Thought about a phone that would never ring again.
Thought about a brother who’d needed someone to notice and a man who’d been too busy noticing the wrong things.
“Because I didn’t want to watch you drown,” he said.
Priya was quiet.
Then she smiled.
It was a small smile and it didn’t last long but it was real.
“Thank you,” she said.
August nodded.
He walked back to the elevator and pressed the button.
Behind him Priya was still standing by the box.
She looked like someone who’d decided to stay.
The elevator doors opened.
August stepped inside.
The doors closed.
The car dropped and his stomach dropped with it and he thought about the fact that he’d just spent two hours helping someone he barely knew and he hadn’t used a single power to do it.
He’d just paid attention.
The car settled on the second floor.
The doors opened.
August walked to his office and sat at his desk and opened his trial notebook to the back.
He wrote: The brother-grief doesn’t go away.
It converts.
You can’t save the one you lost but you can save the ones still sliding.
That’s the trade.
His hand was steady.
The office was quiet.
Somewhere three floors up Priya Anand was walking back to her desk and deciding she could survive one more day.
Somewhere in the sub-basement the Haverton files were still mis-labeled and David Lee would never know his template had been wrong and Priya would get the credit for finishing on time.
August closed the notebook.
Some nights, that was the whole of what he had to give.