As a therapist, Imani would claim the key to a good marriage was mutual respect. As a friend, she’d append a caveat, and avoiding temptation. As she shut her bedroom door behind Philip, Imani couldn’t help but think that he’d staked their relationship in a greedy gamble to keep their home. Tonya was fit and blond—a youthful, Bette Davis–eyed idealization of Philip’s own mother. Freud had studied Oedipus for a reason.
Imani walked through the room to the sliding glass door leading to the slip of balcony overlooking the postage-stamp patio behind their house. Jay and Vivienne had heard them fighting the other day. This conversation needed to take place as far away from the hallway as possible.
She gestured to their bed, inviting Philip to sit and start explaining. She intended to stand.
“We need help with the mortgage.” Philip walked past the mattress, positioning himself in front of her. “And I know eight hundred might not seem like a lot given the size of our loan, but it could really help once her unemployment checks start coming in a month and—”
“Wait.” Imani shook her head, shaking off the verbiage buzzing around it. “What do you mean once they start coming? Are you saying she can’t pay now?”
“She’ll clean in the restaurant for free this first month until her unemployment kicks in.”
Arguments flooded Imani’s throat, threatening to choke her if she didn’t immediately spew them out. “I understand the desire to be charitable, Philip, but we’re financially drowning. This isn’t the time for us to be throwing anyone a life preserver.”
“It’s not charity, honey. She’s a hard worker, and she’ll eventually pay eight hundred a month.”
“A drop in the bucket. We—”
“Nearly all commercial loans have a force majeure clause for unforeseeable acts of God,” Philip interrupted. “The pandemic has to count. I’ll renegotiate the loan, get it down to something that can be paid with her rent and whatever the restaurant is bringing in.”
“And if you can’t, then what?” In spite of her promise to keep the kids from hearing, Imani found her voice rising. “The bank takes the house, kicks us all out, and all we’ll have gained from bringing in another family is additional exposure to a deadly virus. It’s not like we can tell a grown woman who she can and cannot see and how cautious she should be outside our home. What do you really know about her and who’s in her bubble, huh? Does she have a boyfriend? What job does he have? Does Layla see her father multiple times a week? Are we actually exposing ourselves to two families? To three?”
Philip pointed to the ceiling, indicating their new tenants’ quarters and, perhaps, reminding her to keep her voice down. “Tonya’s not going to take any risks with her health or her kid’s well-being. I’m sure she’s more afraid of contracting the virus than we are. She’s the one who won’t have health insurance soon. One of the reasons she took us up on this deal is because she’s grateful not to be living in a hotel with a bunch of COVID patients.”
Imani turned her attention to the window. She needed to both calm down and come up with another way of framing her objections that wouldn’t seem cruel. Of course, she didn’t want a single mother and her young kid renting a room in some hotel booked with infected folks who were recuperating away from healthy loved ones. But Philip’s employees shouldn’t be her problem. She had enough on her plate working to keep food on the table and make a dent in Philip’s massive loan while trying to find her missing best friend. She couldn’t add Airbnb host to all her other responsibilities.
A snowy film coated the windowpane and potted trees in their strip of backyard. Imani had once found such frost beautiful, a glitter coating on the gray city. The sight now made her feel withered. It resembled dust, she thought. They were all rotting away inside while the world went unused.
Warm hands landed on her shoulders. Before she could turn around, Philip enveloped her in his arms. His chin lowered to the top of her head. “Please give it a chance. She’ll pay rent, and I’ll renegotiate.”
A sob stopped his words. Imani separated from him to see his face. The fire was out of Philip’s typically intense blue eyes, finally doused by real tears.
“Babe.” His voice was pained. “I want to do something good. I’ve been firing and furloughing people who have dedicated so much to my restaurant, taking away live—” He coughed, fighting the emotion that had reddened his fair skin. “Livelihoods. Upending lives. I need to do something good.”
Imani wanted to argue that all Philip needed was to be there for his family. But she knew it wasn’t true. Her husband valued the people who worked for him in the same way that she considered her own dear friends, she supposed. He could no less ignore a loyal employee’s predicament than she could forget about Melissa’s disappearance.
The last of Imani’s objections evaporated in a long exhale. “Only a month of this labor-for-rent arrangement, though, okay? You don’t need an indentured servant. If she can’t start paying a reasonable rent in a month, she has to go elsewhere.”
Philip pulled her in for a tight hug. “I love your heart.”
Imani collapsed into him. She’d given in not because of her heart but because of insufficient energy. After everything that had happened, she lacked the stamina for a long, emotional argument. It was easier to let Philip do what he wanted and hope to God he was right.