Two-Step to Truce

The email came in at 4:47 on a Friday, which Dora knew was deliberate. Nobody sends a passive-aggressive note that late by accident. Rhea wanted it sitting in her inbox all weekend like a stone.

From: R. Calloway. Re: Revised efficiency modeling, Phase Two.

Dora, per my last message, the load-balancing figures you submitted don't account for peak transfer windows. I've attached the corrected version. No need to respond tonight. I know Fridays are hard.

Dora read it twice. She read it a third time just to enjoy being angry. I know Fridays are hard. Six months of this. Six months of dueling proposals for the bus scheduling system, of committee meetings where they sat at opposite ends of the table like rival generals, of emails with the word "per" in them.

She typed three replies and deleted all of them. The last one started with "Rhea, per MY last message," which she recognized as a losing move even as her finger hovered over the send key. Instead she closed the laptop, put on her coat, and went to meet a woman named Theresa from Tinder at a wine bar on Eighth Street.

The date went the way most of her dates went, which was fine, which was fine, which was honestly fine.

Theresa was thirty-five, worked in insurance, and had a cat named Noodle. Dora learned this in the first four minutes. She learned that Noodle had a thyroid condition in the next six. By the time the second glass came, Dora had heard about Noodle's diet, Noodle's vet, Noodle's feud with a neighborhood squirrel, and a fifteen-minute story about Noodle and a cardboard box that Theresa herself described as "you had to be there."

"He sounds like a real character," Dora said.

"Oh, he IS. He's my whole world, honestly." Theresa laughed. "Is that sad to say?"

"No, it's, well. It's honest."

Dora was thirty-four and single and she didn't mind it, most days. She had good spreadsheets and a nice apartment and a three-month thing last year with a woman from Facilities that had ended gently, the way a microwave ends, just a soft beep and then nothing. What she minded was that she couldn't remember the last time a Friday night had felt like anything other than an errand.

She got home at 10, fed herself scrambled eggs, and went to bed. She did not think about the load-balancing figures. She thought about them for forty minutes.

* * *

Monday through Thursday were more of the same. The deadlock over the efficiency proposals had gone up the chain, and the chain had sent it back down with a note that said, in effect, work it out yourselves. So they were both stuck, and they both knew it, and neither one of them would blink first.

Friday came around again. Dora stayed late on purpose this time, to finish her counter-model without the noise of the third floor. The transit authority offices at 9 PM were a different country. The desk pods sat behind their low partitions like sleeping animals. The break room refrigerator hummed loud enough to hear from thirty feet away. The only light came from the emergency strips along the floor and two corner monitors, one of which was hers.

She was deep into a transfer-window adjustment when she heard heels on the tile.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Rhea said.

Dora looked up. Rhea stood at the mouth of the pod row with her coat still on and her bag over her shoulder, and she looked as tired as Dora felt and twice as annoyed about it.

"What are you still doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Dora said. "It's after nine."

"I forgot my charger." Rhea held up a phone cable like evidence. "What's your excuse?"

"Work."

"Obsessed with winning, more like."

"Coming from you, that's rich."

Rhea dropped her bag on the desk across the aisle, which was not her desk, and sat down on the edge of it. Dora hated that she noticed the woman was wearing a dark green blouse that actually looked good under fluorescent leftovers.

"I came back for a cable," Rhea said. "You've been here every night this week. Susan told me. She does the helpdesk logs, and apparently your badge has been pinging the third floor reader at ten and eleven PM like a burglar."

"I'm finishing the counter-model."

"The one that's wrong."

"The one that's RIGHT," Dora said, louder than she meant to. The fridge hum filled the pause. "Your model treats the Eastbound transfer as flat across the whole afternoon. It isn't flat. You know it isn't flat. There's a school surge at 3:15 that cascades into the evening peaks, and your beautiful algorithm just, it just pretends it isn't there."

Rhea pulled off her coat, which meant she was staying, which meant this was going to be a whole thing. "Show me the printout."

"There is no printout, I'm working on screen."

"Then print it. I'm not squinting at your monitor from here like a peasant."

"Fine."

Dora hit print mostly to have something to be victorious about. The printer was at the far end of the floor by the stairwell, and while it churned, they both stood there in the half dark, arms crossed, not looking at each other. The machine rattled out four pages. Dora grabbed them and slapped them on Rhea's desk.

"There. Page three. The 3:15 surge. Tell me that's not a hole."

Rhea leaned in. She had reading glasses on a chain around her neck, and she put them on, and Dora waited for her to say something wrong so the evening could continue being an argument.

Rhea was quiet for a long time. She traced one line with her finger, then another. "Huh."

"Huh what."

"That's, hmm. That's a bigger surge than I modeled." She tapped the page. "How did you catch this?"

"I ride the Eastbound. Every day. Twice."

"You ride the bus." Rhea looked up over her glasses. "You wrote a hundred-page efficiency proposal and part of your data collection was riding the bus."

"Where else would the data come from? A dream?"

Rhea laughed. It was a real laugh, short and surprised, and Dora felt it land somewhere in her chest that she didn't have a name for. She decided to ignore it.

At the stairwell, a door clunked. Olivia's voice carried down the pod row. "You two still at it? It's Friday. I'm married to a man who cooks, and I would like to go home and be fed."

"We're locking up ourselves," Rhea called back. "Go."

"Promise me neither of you dies down here. The paperwork for that is a nightmare and it lands on ME." The stairwell door shut behind Olivia with a heavy, final sound, and then the world got very quiet.

Dora looked at Rhea. Rhea looked at the printout.

"So the surge is real," Dora said.

"The surge is real." Rhea took off her glasses and folded them slowly. "Which means my model needs your numbers, which means your proposal isn't the garbage I told the committee it was, which means..." She exhaled. "Fine. You win this round. Don't make a face. I can see you making a face."

"I'm not making a face."

"You're making the face you make at committee meetings. Like you swallowed a lemon and you're proud of it."

Dora sat down on the edge of Rhea's borrowed desk. "You're impossible, you know that?"

Rhea set her phone on the desk and, for no reason Dora could see, tapped it awake and opened her music. A song started playing out of the little speaker, something slow, something with a squeezebox in it, a rhythm that dragged its feet on purpose.

"What is that?" Dora asked.

"Tango."

"Why are you playing tango. At work. At nine PM. On a Friday."

"Because I'm celebrating, obviously. And because I've been thinking about something." Rhea stood up and turned to face her in the dark aisle between the pods. "You know what your problem is, Dora? You've got no flair. None. Your proposal is correct and it's dead as a doorknob. Every chart you make is gray. You dress gray. You email gray."

Dora stood up too. "Excuse me? Your model was wrong. Wrong in the actual real world, on an actual bus I have personally ridden, and you want to lecture ME about flair?"

"Flair is the difference between a model people use and one they print and forget. You couldn't dance your way out of a parking lot."

"I could dance fine."

"Could you." Rhea's eyebrows went up. "Really. Show me."

"It's an office, Rhea."

"It's an empty office. Nobody's watching but the fridge." Rhea held out one hand, palm up, in the dim glow of the monitors. "Come on. One song. If you're so sure."

Dora looked at the hand. She looked at the emergency light strips on the floor, the green little glow of the exit sign, the printout with her name all over it lying between them. She knew she should grab her coat and go home.

"Rhea, you couldn't teach a fish to swim. What makes you think you can teach me to tango?"

"Because I've got flair and you've got two left feet and one of us should be humble. That's a start." The hand stayed there. "Well? One song. It's Friday."

Dora put her hand in it before she could talk herself out of it. Rhea's grip was warm and firm, and she pulled Dora out into the open floor where the light was worst and the space was biggest, and the squeezebox dragged on, and Dora thought, this is the dumbest thing I've ever done at work, which was not entirely true, but close.

"Okay," Rhea said, arranging Dora's arm like she was adjusting a shelf. "Rule one. You don't lead. Rule two. Stop thinking. You're terrible at both."

"Rule two is rude," Dora said. "Rule two is also true."

Rhea stepped in close, closer than any coworker had a right to step, and put one hand flat against Dora's lower back. The warmth of it came right through the fabric of Dora's shirt, and Dora's breath caught in a way she hoped was not audible. It was audible. She could hear it herself over the fridge.

"See, there," Rhea said. "That's your spine unclenching. Good."

"That's my spine objecting."

"Your spine and your mouth have different opinions. I've noticed this about you." Rhea adjusted the hand at her back and took Dora's right hand in her left, holding it out to the side at exactly the height she wanted it. "Now. Basic step. Walk backward when I walk forward. Left, right, left. Then a pause. The pause is the whole thing, Dora. The pause is where the tango lives."

"You can't just say things like 'the pause is where the tango lives' and expect me to function."

"Watch me. Left foot."

Dora stepped back with her left foot and immediately clipped Rhea's knee with her own.

"Other left."

"That WAS my other left."

"Sure it was." Rhea did not sound mad. That was the strange part. All evening she had been sharp in a way that Dora had learned to hate over six months of committee meetings, and now she was sharp in a way that felt more like a hand steadying a cup. "Try it again. Left, back. Slow. There's no deadline. The bus surge will still be there Monday."

"Is that a joke? Did Rhea Calloway make a scheduling joke?"

"Left foot."

Dora stepped. Rhea guided her with the hand at her back, a small pressure, then a release, like turning a page. Back, together, back. Then the pause, which Dora counted too fast and stumbled out of.

"You're rushing the pause," Rhea said. "Everyone rushes the pause. Everybody in your whole gray life is rushing the pause."

"You've said the word gray three times tonight."

"Because it's accurate. Stop talking and listen to the squeezebox."

Dora shut up, which for her was a genuine effort, and listened. The song was slow and a little smug, and once she stopped trying to count it, her feet found the drag of it on their own. Back, together. Back, pause. Rhea's hand moved at her back and Dora followed it, and somewhere in the fourth repetition she realized she had stopped being embarrassed and started being something else. Curious, maybe. Or comfortable. Comfortable in an empty office at nine PM on a Friday with the one person in the building she was supposed to be beating.

"There," Rhea said quietly. "There it is. You're doing it."

"Doing what."

"Not thinking."

They crossed the floor like that, past the pods, past the low partitions, into the corner where the two monitors glowed. Rhea turned them at the corner with a small push of her palm and Dora felt the whole move through that one hand before her feet understood it. It was, she had to admit, not nothing. It was actually possibly something.

"Okay," Dora said. "Fine. You can dance."

"Generous of you."

"And you can teach, apparently. Don't let it go to your head."

"It's already at my head. It's at my head and my whole body."

Dora laughed. It came out of her before she approved it, and Rhea's eyebrows went up like she'd won a prize. "What?"

"Nothing. I've just never heard you laugh before. Six months. You have a mean little committee laugh, but that was a real one."

"You've never given me a reason."

"Neither have you."

The song ended and the next one started without asking anyone, another squeezebox, slower. Rhea did not step back. She stayed where she was, hand still at Dora's back, and looked at her in the dim monitor light. The reading glasses hung on their chain against her dark green blouse and swung a little with the music.

"Your turn to be honest," Rhea said. "Why do you hate me? Real answer."

"You stole my parking spot in February."

"Real answer."

Dora looked at the floor, at the emergency strips glowing along the baseboard like a runway. "Because you came in with a hundred-page proposal and better charts and the committee ate it up, and I'd been working on mine for eight months and you acted like I was a hobbyist. And because you're smug. And because..." She stopped.

"Because what."

"Because you're smug, I said that already."

"You were going to say something else."

"I really wasn't."

Rhea stepped back, finally, and Dora felt the cold spot on her spine where the hand had been and hated that she noticed it. Rhea picked up her phone and paused the music, and the silence filled the whole floor. "We should probably talk about the merger of the two proposals," she said, in a normal work voice, and it was so sudden that Dora felt whiplash.

"Right. Yes. Work. Sure."

"I'll email you the raw model."

"You'll email me the raw model at 4:47 on a Friday again, like a lunatic."

"It's efficient."

"It's unhinged."

Rhea gathered her coat off the back of her borrowed chair. Dora gathered her printouts.