I feel an urge to say more—to say I’ll look him up when this is over, to promise I won’t forget. To suggest we could get lunch or meet up for a walk. Stop into a bookstore to look at books, not to pull some kind of existential emergency self-destruct lever.
We could be friends, maybe. For real. People who may not have much in common outside of a shared fever dream, but are glad to know each other anyway.
Before I can speak, I’m interrupted by a sweet-sounding voice.
“Names, please?”
The young woman at the check-in table smiles at us, her round face framed by multicolored braids and her wrists full of friendship bracelets. She’s the one whoshouldbe the Anna Matthews leading lady. She even smells vaguely like baked goods.
Grant steps forward. “Hoffman,” he says. “Grant. Two of us.”
She bows her head toward the sheet, running a pink fingernail down the list of names, then comes to a jarring halt before she even gets to theB’s. She looks gravely back up, then slaps on a pale imitation of her previous smile.
“Could you give me just one second?”
She leaves us to our confusion and serpentines through the gathering crowd, toward the makeshift stage at the back of the store. A tall, impeccably sleek-haired, silky-bloused woman is setting out water bottles by each of the empty chairs there, turning them logo-out with machinelike precision.
The check-in woman approaches her and whispers something in her ear. Her head snaps up, her steely gaze cutting straight to us.
I’ve heard people who hate roller coasters say that theclick-click-clicking toward the top is the worst part. I’ve never really understood that. Now, hearing this woman’s heels tick closer and closer on the hardwood floor, I think I get it.
“Mr. Hoffman?” Her voice is low and clipped. “I’m Leah Reynolds, Ms. Matthews’s personal assistant. I’m afraid we’re not able to admit you or your guest to this event.”
“What?” His brow is really out-furrowing itself as he digs in his pocket. “But I registered. Over a week ago. I have the confirmation right here.” He taps on his phone to pull up the email, but she puts a firm hand up to stop him.
“I received your registration,” she says sharply. “I also received the eighteen troubling emails you sent to Ms. Matthews claiming that you’re trapped in her story.”
I gape.Eighteen emails?We’ve only been here nine days. I knew he was desperate to get out, but …wow.
Grant is turning vaguely pink. “So she hasn’t seen them?”
“She has not, and she will not.” Leah sets her hands on the table between us with icy professionalism. “I’m handling her communications while she works on her upcoming project, and I assure you, this won’t be going any further. You can understand how dozens of unsolicited messages come off as a bit alarming. So I must ask both of you to leave, and to stop harassing my employer. No more pleas, no more demands, no more inexplicable poetry. Are we clear?”
Grant opens his mouth to speak, and I can feel him preparing to inform Leah that eighteen is not actually dozens. But he coughs out a humorless laugh instead.
“I—this is such a misunderstanding,” he says, raking a hand through his hair. “A funny story, actually.”
“So funny,” I echo.
“I am not interested,” says Leah. “But if you’d like, you can tell it to security as they remove you from the premises by force.”
Grant stares at her in the stunned silence of one who has clearly never been threatened with removal by security before. Leah crosses her arms, unflinching, and I give him a light backhanded tap on the shoulder.
“Come on,” I say, backing away. “Let’s go.”
Returning to the street in a daze, neither of us speaks for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” we both say. Grant’s brow immediately creases at me. He is the only person I’ve ever met who can furrow his eyebrows in at least seven different ways. An anxious furrow, an angry furrow, a judgmental furrow. A very specific refusing-to-admit-it-was-cool-when-I-carjacked-his-Uber furrow. Another one I can’t figure out. The one happening now is somewhere between surprise and confusion.
“I should have tried harder to help you track down Anna,” I say. All this time, I’ve been playing Action Hero and he’s been shooting out flares alone.
“I don’t think it would have made a difference,” he says, gesturing behind him toward the scariest personal assistant in all of London.
“But still. Ofcourseyou want out,” I say. “How could I blame you for wanting to leave a world full of murder and burning corpses and blood and guts—” Even saying it, I wince.
“Careful,” he says softly. I look up at him. Furrow ofuh-oh,don’t pukeconcern.
He doesn’t deserve this. He deserves to have his comfortable life back, to go home and see his cat and never have to claw his way out of a headlock again.
