Overhead Costs

A dying furnace, a ruined portfolio, and a misunderstanding that costs more than just money.

The sound wasn’t a splash. It was a rhythmic, torture-chamber *plink... plink... plink*.

Debbie stared at the orange Home Depot bucket in the center of the gallery floor. It was a bright, obnoxious beacon of failure in the middle of the polished concrete—or, what used to be polished concrete. Now, the floor was just cold, scuffed gray industrial chic that felt less "chic" and more "we ran out of money for flooring."

Another drop fell from the ceiling, navigating the intricate maze of rusted pipes and exposed ductwork before committing suicide into the murky water below.

*Plink.*

"It’s getting faster," Debbie said. Her voice bounced off the empty white walls. There was too much echo. Galleries were supposed to have echo, sure, but this was the hollow, hungry sound of a space that hadn’t sold a painting in three weeks.

She turned back to the desk, or rather, the slab of reclaimed wood on sawhorses that served as her command center. The portfolio—the one she had stupidly, idiotically, catastrophically carried out in the slush without a plastic bag—lay open. The leather cover was dark with moisture, a Rorschach test of her own incompetence.

She clicked the hairdryer on.

The Conair whirred to life, a high-pitched whine that sounded like a dying mosquito. She aimed the nozzle at the ledger book inside the portfolio, waving it back and forth like she was wafting away a bad smell.

"Heat rises," Claire said. She didn't look up from her laptop. She was sitting on a high stool behind the counter, wrapped in a scarf that looked big enough to smother a yak. Her fingers pecked at the keys with aggressive precision. *Click-click-click. Pause. Click.*

"Thank you, Claire. I am aware of physics," Debbie snapped, keeping the dryer moving. The warm air hit her frozen knuckles. "I am trying to keep the ink from bleeding into a unrecognizable smudge of red ink. Which, coincidentally, is the only color we seem to be using lately."

"We aren't in the red yet," Claire corrected, her voice flat. She adjusted her glasses. "We are in the 'deep shade of bruised purple.' Foreclosure isn't tomorrow. It's in eight weeks."

Debbie switched the hairdryer to 'High.' The whine grew louder, vibrating in her hand. "Eight weeks. That's two months. That's an eternity."

"That's three rent cycles, two utility bills, and the quarterly insurance premium," Claire recited. She sounded like a lush, depressing audiobook. "And we have sold..." She scrolled down. "Three prints. Postcards, really. To that tourist who just wanted to use the bathroom."

Debbie ignored her. She focused on the paper. The water had wicked into the bottom right corner of the ledger, turning the sharp edges of the pages wavy and soft. It looked like the ocean floor. It looked like rot.

She touched the paper. Still damp. Cold damp. The kind of damp that lived in the bones of this building.

"The furnace is making that noise again," Debbie said, changing the subject.

As if on cue, a metallic *clunk-shudder-groan* vibrated through the floorboards. It sounded like a robot coughing up a lung. The air blowing out of the vent above Debbie's head was tepid at best, smelling faintly of burnt dust and old hair.

"I called the repair guy," Claire said. "He said he can come Tuesday."

"It's Friday."

"He said Tuesday."

"We'll freeze by Tuesday. The art will freeze. Do you know what happens to oil paint when it cycles between freezing and thawing? It cracks, Claire. It alligator-skins. We are selling texture, not reptiles."

"We aren't selling anything," Claire muttered.

Debbie shut off the hairdryer. The silence that rushed back into the room was heavy. It pressed against her ears.

*Plink.*

She slammed the hairdryer down on the desk. "I need to fix the coat."

She looked down at her sleeve. The tear from the door handle at the bistro—no, from the collision outside the Stop-N-Go—was jagged. The lining was poking out, a silky white intestine spilling from the grey wool. She grabbed a stapler.

"Deborah," Claire warned.

"I am not going to staple it," Debbie lied. She put the stapler down. She picked up a roll of scotch tape instead. She peeled off a piece, the screech of the adhesive tearing sounding violently loud. She stuck it over the tear, pressing it down with her thumb. It looked terrible. It looked exactly like a piece of scotch tape on a wool coat.

"It shines," Claire observed. "Under the track lights."

"Only if you look directly at it," Debbie said, turning her arm away. "If I keep moving, nobody will notice. It's about confidence. It's about... kinetic energy."

She walked out from behind the desk, her heels clicking on the concrete. She needed to move. If she stood still, the cold would settle in. If she stood still, she would have to think about the fact that she had just spent her last forty dollars on a bottle of wine she dropped in the snow three blocks ago, and now she was trying to dry a ledger that recorded nothing but losses.

She walked to the window. The glass was single-pane, old industrial glazing that offered about as much insulation as a sheet of paper. Frost was fern-patterning the corners.

Outside, the street was a blur of sodium-vapor orange and shadow. The wind was whipping snow horizontally past the glass. It was a hostile night. A night for staying inside, for watching Netflix, for having central heating that didn't groan like a dying beast.

But people bought art on nights like this, didn't they? Rich people. People who wanted to escape the ugly weather and step into a bright, warm box full of beautiful things. They would come in, their cheeks flushed, shaking snow from expensive furs, and they would see the 'Solitude in Grey' series hanging on the south wall and feel *understood*.

Debbie stared at the empty sidewalk.

"Maybe we should stay open late," she said. "Capture the... dinner crowd."

"There is no dinner crowd," Claire said. "The bistro closed early due to the weather. The only thing open is the pizza place and the liquor store."

"People drink. People eat pizza. People need art."

"People need heat," Claire said, buttoning her cardigan higher.

Debbie leaned her forehead against the cold glass. It burned her skin. She closed her eyes.

*Please,* she thought. *Just one person. Just one person who isn't lost, who isn't broke, who isn't me.*

***

Jack kept his head down. It was the only way to keep the wind from scouring his eyeballs.

The hood of his grey sweatshirt was up, pulled tight with the drawstrings until he was looking at the world through a three-inch porthole. The wind on this street—Cordova, maybe? Or Princess? He’d lost track—was funneling between the brick warehouses like water through a fire hose.

His feet were numb. Not the tingling kind of numb, but the blocks-of-wood kind where you couldn't quite tell if your toes were bending or snapping. The slush from the puddle earlier had soaked through the canvas of his sneakers, through the cotton socks, and had now formed a permanent icy slurry against his skin.

*Squish. Step. Squish. Step.*

He shouldn't have walked. He should have waited for the bus. But the bus stop had been full of people, and after the incident at the store—the woman, the water, the "you're welcome" whispered to the slush—he just needed to be moving. Static objects got buried in the snow. Moving objects survived. That was the logic.

He passed a row of darkened storefronts. A wholesale lighting supply. A boarded-up antique shop. A place that just sold ladders.

Then, light.

Real light. Not the flickering blue of a streetlamp, but a warm, halogen glow spilling out onto the sidewalk, illuminating the swirling snow like gold dust.

Jack slowed down. He didn't want to stop—stopping meant freezing—but the light pulled at him. He looked up.

Large windows. Clean glass, mostly. Inside, white walls. Paintings.

*Canvas & Rust.* The gold lettering on the glass was peeling slightly at the 'R', but it looked fancy. Too fancy for him.

He was about to speed up, to scurry past like a rat avoiding a kitchen, when he saw her.

The woman.

She was standing right there in the window, forehead pressed against the glass.

Jack froze. His boot skidded on a patch of black ice, and he flailed his arms to keep balance, looking like a scarecrow in a hurricane. He caught himself, breath huffing out in a white cloud.

It was definitely her. The woman from the Stop-N-Go. The one with the torn coat. The one he had splashed.

She wasn't yelling now. She looked... tired. Her eyes were closed. Her forehead was resting against the glass like she was trying to cool a fever. The coat was still on her, still torn, though he could see a piece of shiny tape reflecting the gallery lights.

Jack felt a pit open in his stomach.

Guilt was a familiar flavor to Jack—it tasted like old copper pennies—but this was fresh. He had ruined her night. He had been the clumsy oaf who knocked the domino over. And now, seeing her here, in this place that looked so clean and expensive, the contrast made him feel even grubbier.

He looked at his hands. Red, chapped, knuckles cracking.

*Just keep walking,* his brain said. *Miles would keep walking. Miles would laugh.*

But Miles wasn't here.

Jack took a step. Then another. But not away. Toward the door.

Why? He didn't have money. He didn't have a reason.

*Apologize,* a small voice said. *Just tell her you're sorry. Properly. Without the slushie machine whining in the background.*

It was a stupid idea. A terrible idea.

He reached for the heavy metal handle of the door before he could talk himself out of it.

The handle was freezing. He pulled.

The door stuck for a second, the weather-stripping frozen to the frame, then popped open with a sucking sound.

A bell chimed. A cheerful, bright *ding-ding* that sounded completely wrong for 9:00 PM on a Tuesday in a blizzard.

***

Debbie jumped. Her forehead disconnected from the glass with a wet smack.

She spun around.

The door was opening. A gust of wind blew in, carrying snow and grit, swirling around the legs of the figure standing there.

A customer.

Oh god. A real, live human being.

Panic, sharp and electric, shot through her. She wasn't ready. The hairdryer was on the desk. The bucket was in the middle of the floor. She had tape on her arm.