“Two minutes,” Emily said.
“You don’t have two,” Toni said, but she said it without heat, and she went, and the club went with her, and Emily understood that a debt had been opened in the quiet economy of the floor. She would pay it in side work. She would stay through the pie. It was a price she recognized.
Denise had heard. “We are keeping you,” she said. The amusement had changed temperature. It was warmer by a degree, and more dangerous, because warmth from a person like Denise could become a claim. “You could still leave him with the form. He might get there. He is not, despite this morning’s evidence, incompetent.”
“I don’t think he’s incompetent,” Emily said.
“I didn’t say you did.”