Every Tuesday she sells 41 tickets and 40 people board

"Forty-one."

"Again?"

"Again, Domingo. Eight Tuesdays running. I sell forty-one tickets for the ten past seven boat and forty people walk up the gangway. I count them myself, one by one, from the ticket window."

"Maybe somebody changes their mind and stays in the car."

"Eight Tuesdays."

"Marisa, let it go."

"You've been tying up that boat since before I was born and I've been eight months in this window. Who buys the extra ticket?"

"I do."

"What do you mean, you do?"

"In my brother-in-law's name. He doesn't even know where the port is. Nine euros twenty. Every Tuesday."

"And why Tuesday?"

"Because Tuesday is the day the regional office counts passengers. The contract requires an average of forty on the first sailing. If we drop below forty for a whole month, next year the first boat leaves at ten and the factory shift is left standing on the quay."

"Nine twenty a week. Eight months."

"Thirty-four Tuesdays, Marisa. And don't tell Rosendo, he'd put it in the minutes."

"I don't put anything in writing. But from next Tuesday we split it."