I laid my blue registration receipt on the counter between us.
“I need to make sure my name is still on the roster for the evening estimating class,” I said.
Martha took the receipt and held it close to her face, her thumb tracing the red stamp at the bottom.
“Leo Hayes,” she said. “The fifteen-hundred-dollar tuition deposit cleared last month.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Your balance is due by the end of the third week of classes,” she said, looking over her glasses. “That is seven hundred and fifty dollars.”
“I will have it,” I said.
“We do not offer extensions, Mr. Hayes,” she said. “If the balance is not paid, you are dropped from the course, and you lose the deposit.”
She stamped the card with a purple ink pad and handed it back to me.
“Class starts Monday at seven in room twelve,” she said. “You will need the standard estimator’s manual, which you can purchase at the bookstore downstairs.”
“How much is the manual?” I asked.
“Forty-eight dollars,” she said.
I took the receipt back and folded it into four sections, tucking it into my shirt pocket.
“Thank you,” I said.
She was already looking at the next stack of index cards before I reached the heavy double doors.
I walked down the wide stairs, my canvas shoes silent on the marble steps. Outside, a woman in a dark blue suit was getting into a black sedan, holding a small leather-bound notebook and a brass pen in her hand.
She looked at me for a brief second, then spoke to the driver.
“The county tax auction is the only way to get those parcels before the commercial developers move in,” she said, her voice clear and sharp in the afternoon air. “We bid twenty-two thousand, not a penny more.”
The sedan pulled away before I could hear the rest of her sentence.
I stood on the sidewalk, the dust from the street settling on my shirt. The name of the school was carved in stone above the archway, but it felt like a wall I could not climb without another eighty dollars in my pocket.
The public library was three blocks away, a large stone building with high arched windows that let in the yellow light of the streetlamps. Nate was already sitting at a long oak table in the back, his car keys resting next to a stack of blue blueprints.
I pulled out a wooden chair opposite him and sat down.
On the table lay three thick volumes of the building estimator’s guide. I opened the first one and began copying the cost formulas into a small paper notepad I had found in Otis’s drawer.
“Did you get the job?” Nate asked, his voice low in the quiet room.
“I start tomorrow at six,” I said, without looking up from the page. “Twelve dollars an hour.”
“That is good, Leo,” Nate said, tapping his fingers against the table. “That pays the rent on the couch and leaves some for the school.”
“I need fifty-five dollars for steel-toed boots before six tomorrow morning,” I said.
Nate stopped tapping. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his leather wallet, opening it to show three worn five-dollar bills.
“That is all I have until Friday,” Nate said. “The radiator on the truck is weeping, and I had to buy two quarts of coolant on the way up.”
“Keep it,” I said. “You need to get back to Dayton.”