Page 154 of Across His Line

EMPLOYEES = leverage. Also cost.

I look at it.

“That’s closer,” I say.

“Closer to what?”

I tap the pen on the page. I try to find the words.

“To something that doesn’t have a ceiling,” I say. “Right now, there’s a ceiling. I can see it. I know exactly how much I can make if I do this every single day for the rest of my life, and it’s not enough. It’s fine. It’s okay for a dorm room. But I’m never going to—”

I stop. I hear what I’m about to say.

I say it anyway.

“I’m not going to become a millionaire selling used sweaters one at a time.”

He looks up from the page.

He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t smile. He just looks at me, and blinks once.

“A millionaire?”

“Yeah,” I say, feeling a little embarrassed. And then I shrug, “Why not?”

It comes out of me before I can stop it. I’ve never said anything like that in my life. I’ve never let myself think it in full sentences. And I said it to him of all people, and I feel my face go hot, but I don’t take it back.

He doesn’t laugh or tell me that’s ridiculous.

He just says, “Okay.”

Like it’s a reasonable thing to want. Like I told him I wanted to be a teacher.

“It’s not about the money,” I say. “I mean, it is. But it isn’t.”

He waits.

“I don’t want somebody deciding what one hour of my life is worth,” I say. “If I get a job, even a good job, somebody decides what I make. They decide the salary. They decide if I get a raise. They decide if I get promoted, or if I get fired, or if they’re going to hire somebody cheaper. It doesn’t matter how hard I work. A job has a ceiling pay. That’s just given. Everybody knows this.”

I look down at the page.

“I don’t want that,” I say. “If I work harder, I want it to go somewhere.”

He’s quiet for a long time.

“You’ve thought about this a lot,” he says.

I almost laugh. “Not really. Not like this.”

He looks at me. And I don’t know how to say the next part without it sounding strange. I say it anyway.

“It was your old house.”

His eyebrows come up just a little.

“I’ve been looking at all of this,” I say, and wave the pen at the room, the windows, the marble through the bathroom door, “like it was a different kind of life. Like you were born into it, and that’s just how it was, and people like me are born into the other thing, and that’s how it was. Like I don’t know, like we’re a different species.”

I look at the page.