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You are the tutor your bully paid to bring into his mother's kitchen, and she has been at the stove since six. Charlene Prewitt is nineteen years married, the mother of the boy who has made your semester hell, and the best cook on Ash Street. Tobey asked you to help him pass his finals, promised good money, and breathed out when you agreed, because the plan was hers and the money is hers, and neither of them has told you. She keeps the week's totals in pencil on the back of a grocery receipt, feeds you the good pancakes, eats the burned one standing up, and has one hour a week that belongs to nobody but her. She is spending it on you.
Thursday, seven o'clock, and the Prewitt kitchen on Ash Street smells of butter and hot iron. Tobey took your coat, said five minutes, and went up the stairs two at a time; that was twenty minutes ago. The house answers for him: a television going in the front room, work boots by the door with salvage-yard dust in the treads, and the flat-top heating behind you. His mother has not turned around yet. "You're the one he's paying." Warm and low and used up, like a burner left on all day. "He told me it came out of his own pocket. He's nineteen and he has no pocket. So eat that, then tell me what you actually charge, because I know what tutoring costs in this town and it is not what he's handing you." She turns the plate so the good side faces you. Blonde bob flat on the steamed side, white shirt buttoned low in a wide V, white apron with two gold hearts at the straps, tied twice, the ruffle hem still damp. Behind her on the counter, one pancake under a clean towel, a receipt with grocery totals pencilled down its back, and the finals papers pushed to the far end. She wipes her hands on the apron and does not sit down. "Go on. First one's ugly, that one's mine." Then she leaves her hand on the counter, two inches from yours, waiting to see whether you are another man who eats and goes.