But then one of the women she asks says, in a whisper, “I’m sorry…. We just don’t want any trouble.”
And Vivian finally understands: They are reluctant to tell her. What has her friend gotten himself into? Whatever it is, Vivian can’t shake the suspicion that it’s related to the Knox.
Taylor
Taylor is nervous when she reports to the Knox that Monday for her first day of work, and this intensifies when Rose leads her to an upstairs office and presents her with an extensive confidentiality agreement she is required to sign. It’s a thick mass of papers, emitting an off-gas of Xerox. Still warm to the touch, the pages so fine she has to wet her fingers to separate them.
“We all sign our lives away here,” Eduardo, the kind-faced Colombian, jokes. He’s a waiter, along with Jerry, a short, muscled man. They stand at the doorway of the office, where Taylor sits with the document Rose has left her to review.
“So you had to do this, too?” she asks.
“We are still signing,” Eduardo says. His accent is strong. “When they make updates, we have to sign the new one. It says the same thing, more or less: Don’t talk to anyone about anything having to do with the Knox.”
“Do ya have yer own place?” Jerry cuts in to ask. His face is beefy, and the narrowing of his eyes makes them look like they’reabout to be folded into his skin. Taylor wonders what he did before coming here—was he a wrestler? An MMA fighter?
“You mean, like, my own apartment?”
Jerry nods.
“Yeah, I do. Why?”
“So yer not coming next door?”
“What’s next door?”
“The quarters.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”
Eduardo jabs Jerry. “Give her a chance to settle in. And no, she’s not.” Then he says to her, “Some of us live next door. Jerry, me, and—”
“That’s it,” Jerry interrupts, frowning at Eduardo.
“Anyway,” Eduardo continues, “the Knox owns that building, too. It used to be the old servants’ quarters, and, well, I guess it still is.” He chuckles. “If you live there, they cut you a pretty good deal. But it sounds like you already have your own place.”
“Yeah, I do. In the South End.” She wishes she hadn’t been so quick to say she did. To not only work on this fancy street, but live on it, too? That would be nothing short of amazing. But judging from Jerry’s territorial glare, perhaps it’s better to keep her distance. She is the new girl, after all. Besides, she’d miss Sam if she moved—wouldn’t she?
“How’d ya hear about the Knox?” Jerry asks.
This one is persistent. “My landlord, actually.” Then she adds, because she knows he wants the name, and she doesn’t see any reason not to share it: “Anna Varga.”
Jerry shrugs, like the name means nothing. “Who interviewed ya?”
“Um, Peter. Peter Wales.”
“And ya walked through the box? In the hall?”
Taylor starts to shake her head but then remembers the sticky pad. “Maybe?” she offers.
“Did they get your footprint?”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“Jerry,” Eduardo now says, putting his hand on Jerry’s shoulder. “Let’s give Taylor here some time. It’s only her first day. We don’t want to scare her away.”
Taylor assumes she’ll be orienting to Canton’s, the restaurant upstairs, where members apparently dine most weekdays for lunch, but she assumes wrong. Instead, Rose directs her that first morning to the adjacent wine cellar to unpack boxes and take inventory. Taylor doesn’t want to do this; from there she can’t get a good view inside Canton’s, where the action will be—all the members. Perhaps handsome Peter Wales, who interviewed her. But she immediately pastes a bright smile on her face.
“No problem,” she says.
