“Thank you very much.”
“How much, exactly?” She stood in the doorway, half in and half out of the sandwich shop. The warm air blew out gusts of yeasty prognostication of culinary infidelities to come.
“Oh, um. Very … much?”
“Compared to, I suppose, the normal amount of thanks?” Her tone was cold iron wrought in a forge of impatience. The sinister crinkle of the bag in her hand somehow drowned out the chaotic excesses of the shop in full swing behind her: yelling cooks, hungry diners, and foodstuffs hurled at prep surfaces with alarming abandon.
“Sure, yeah. Um. Thanks more than a normal amount.”
“And how much would a normal amount be worth? Let’s establish a baseline. What level of favor is a normal amount, if opening a door in front of you—a door I fully intend to use and that I opened without even knowing you were lumbering on the other side—merits very much thanks, rather than, say, a lot of thanks or even, just single, if kindly, thanks?”
“What?” Her gaze was a steel skewer between vertebrae, cruelly but dispassionately inserted into an otherwise unexceptional social nicety and pinning it to the cardboard moment. The wafting pull of the shop took on a melancholy, its promise of warm and easy fulfillment impaled on the battle forming in the doorframe.
“Let’s call it what it is. Your gratitude is worthless because you render it worthless by giving it away thoughtlessly instead of portioning it mindfully based on the actual needs of the situation.”
The moment stretched out. The cold of the day whipped in and the possibilities of lunch dribbled out onto the sidewalk, into the street, down the gutter, and out to the sea to join the souls of the damned swimming forever across the turbulent waters of the world.
“I guess… I’m sorry?”
“How sorry, exactly?”