No Notebook
(A kitchen in a shared apartment in Rochester, New York. The heating bill is on the table between them.)
Meera: Two hundred and forty dollars, Chike. For one month.
Chike: I saw it. I’m not arguing about the number.
Meera: Okay. Then what are you arguing about?
Chike: The way you put it down on the table. Like it’s evidence.
Meera: It is evidence. The radiator in your room was on all week. Your window was open on Tuesday.
Chike: Because it was thirty degrees in there! You can’t turn that thing down, it’s either off or it’s a volcano.
Meera: So turn it off.
Chike: Fine. It was me. Take it off my share, whatever that means. A hundred and forty, a hundred and sixty — you decide.
Meera: I’m not trying to punish you. I’m trying to work out a fair number.
Chike: You always want the number.
Meera: What’s that supposed to mean?
Chike: At home, nobody does this. If my uncle stays with us for a month, my father doesn’t sit down and calculate his share of the electricity. You’d insult the man.
Meera: In my house there was a notebook on the fridge. Milk, bus fare, my sister’s shoes. Everything, every month.
Chike: That sounds exhausting.
Meera: It wasn’t. It was safe. When my dad’s hours got cut, that notebook was the reason we kept the apartment.
(Chike moves the bill an inch to the left, then leaves it where it is.)
Chike: I didn’t know that.
Meera: Why would you?
Chike: Where I grew up, if you’re counting, it means you’re planning to leave.
Meera: Where I grew up, if you don’t count, you leave anyway. Later, and with nothing.
Chike: Okay. Look — I’ll take this one. The whole thing. You take the next one.
Meera: The next one might be forty dollars.
Chike: Then I made a bad deal and you’ll feel guilty about it until March. I can live with that.
(Meera picks up the bill and puts it on the fridge, face down.)
Meera: Fine. No notebook. But it’s staying on the fridge.