The Robe
(The fourth-floor kitchen, Monday, before anybody has done any actual work.)
Elena: Kwame. You went to Portugal in May, right?
Kwame: Porto. Eight nights. Why?
Elena: Because I've just read my invoice properly for the first time. How much was yours, all in?
Kwame: Eleven hundred. Flights, apartment, food, everything.
Elena: Mine was two thousand four hundred. Six nights.
Kwame: Okay. So what was in it?
Elena: It's a package. The luxury one, obviously. Hotel, breakfast, two tours, airport transport, welcome pack.
Kwame: What's in a welcome pack?
Elena: A robe. A bottle of water. A map from 2019.
Kwame: And the airport transport?
Elena: A minibus. A hundred and eighty dollars.
Kwame: Each way, or both ways?
Elena: Each way.
Kwame: There's a train from that airport. It's about four dollars and it takes twenty minutes.
Elena: I know that now.
Kwame: Read me the rest of the invoice. Line by line.
Elena: Resort fee, ninety-five. Photo package from the second tour, sixty — I never ordered that, they just took the photos. Service charge, forty. Flexible booking, fifty-five.
Kwame: Did you ever change the booking?
Elena: I did not.
Kwame: So that's two hundred and fifty dollars of things you didn't ask for and never used. That's not a holiday, that's spending with extra steps.
Elena: Thank you, Kwame.
Kwame: Sorry.
Elena: So how did you do yours?
Kwame: Booked the flights in February when they were cheap, found an apartment two streets behind the main square, took the train from the airport like a normal person.
Elena: And how long did all that take you?
Kwame: Sorry?
Elena: The planning. In hours.
(Kwame looks at the ceiling and adds it up.)
Kwame: Nine? Maybe ten. There was a whole Sunday with a spreadsheet.
Elena: So you gave up one Sunday and saved thirteen hundred dollars.
Kwame: A hundred and thirty an hour. Best-paid Sunday of my life.
Elena: I'm going to think about that all week.
Kwame: Think about it in the robe.