"Yes."
"Which means they've been watching it for at least a day, maybe more. Close enough to get that angle from the street."
"Yes."
"And you knew that before Hebert got there."
A pause. Not long. "I suspected it."
"So when we walked in this morning, you were already looking for it."
"I look for it every day. I didn't have evidence until this afternoon." He picked up the cup. "I'm sorry about your car."
"It's a car."
"It's yours."
I looked at him for a moment. It was a small thing to say, and he'd said it flat, without any particular weight, but it sat in the kitchen air between us and landed anyway.
"Beth Kessler," I said. "Friday night."
He didn't move. His expression didn't change.
"You told me the professional story," I said. "The operation, the safe house, the failure. And I let you tell it because it's what you offered and I'm not a person who forces doors. But you've been carrying that for three years and it's still right there in your chest and I think it's not entirely about Beth."
The ceiling fan clicked overhead. Bourbon Street pressed through the walls.
"No," he said. "It's not entirely about Beth."
"The man who leaves before it gets real."
He looked at me across the kitchen and his jaw shifted, a small adjustment, and for once I didn't reach for the humor or the deflection. I just let it be there.
"I'm good at this job," he said. "I'm good at it because I keep the wall up."
"You're also good at it because you're actually good at it. Those aren't the same wall."
A pause just long enough to mean he hadn't expected it: "No."
"I built this bar alone," I said. "Handled everything myself, solved every problem myself, because needing someone is a liability and I learned that early and I thought I'd finished learning it." I picked up my cup. "Turns out I'm still in the middle of the lesson."
We stood there in the quiet kitchen and looked at each other and the space between us had no business being as small as it was.
Then his phone buzzed on the counter. He looked down at it. I was almost relieved, because I didn't know what would have happened if it hadn't.
"Hebert," he said.
"I have a shift in two hours," I said.
"I know." He was already reading. "Go get ready. I've got this."
I went.
I PUT ON LIPSTICK INthe bathroom mirror.
This was not a remarkable event. I put on red lipstick every morning, every time I left the apartment, because it was habit and it was mine. But standing in front of the bathroom mirror on Saturday evening, the wrap top new, my hair half-pinned for the shift, I was aware that this moment was going to be different from the other ones.
I didn't know why I knew. I just did.
