"Keep looking."
He is quiet for a moment and then he sets the folder aside.
"The hotel called," he says. "The one we took Nathalie from. They want to know what should be done with her luggage. Apparently, she had a bag in the room when she was collected."
I tap ash. "Send it back."
"Sending it back creates a paper trail. And confirmation of her stay there." He pauses. "Given the current state of things with Keller I'd rather we didn't."
"Then throw it away."
Renzo reaches into the inside of his jacket and produces a small parcel, brown paper with something compact inside it. He sets it on the desk between us.
"I told the hotel to put her belongings into storage here until further notice," he says. "One of the cleaners found this separately and thought it was important." He stands and straightens his jacket. "You can give the order to destroy the rest whenever you want." He looks at me. "Get some rest. There's nothing that needs doing tonight."
His footsteps cross the room and the door opens and closes and I am alone.
The house is very quiet. It has been this quiet for a week. I had not noticed, before Nathalie, how the house sounded without anyone in it. It had always been quiet and I always preferred it that way, the order of a space that ran on schedule anddemanded nothing. Now the quiet has a different feel to it, like a room where something has been removed. I notice it most at the edges of the day, early morning, and late evening, when there is nothing to fill the silence with work.
I pick up the parcel. It's brown paper, folded over itself, light. I open it, and inside it is a crystal. I turn it in my fingers, the light hits it and throws it in small lines across my palm. It looks like a piece of something larger, a watch or a pendant, or some personal object.
I look at it for a long time. Was this given to her by someone? It felt too ordinary to be a gift but it looked strangely sentimental.
She wasn't coming back. Keller had his deal and I had my access and the arrangement was concluded and she was in New York in her father's house and I was here in mine and that was the correct end to something that had never been anything other than circumstantial.
I toss it across the room. It hits the wall and drops behind the small table near the bookcase. I look at where it landed and I light a new cigarette. I look at my desk and I try to think about the Rotterdam shipment, the Fremont staffing issue, and the three phone calls I haven't returned.
The crystal sits behind the table. A maid appears in the doorway for the evening round and she looks at me and I say, without fully deciding to say it, "There's something behind that table. Throw it away." I pause.
"Yes, sir." She crosses to the table and crouches and picks up the crystal and walks toward the door.
I watch her hand cover it then I feel my heart sting. I call out to the maid and she stops.
I walk over to her and I hold my hand out and she looks at me and she places the crystal in my palm.
"Forget what I said," I tell her.
"Yes, sir."
She leaves.
I stand in the middle of my office and I look at the crystal in my hand then I put it in my pocket.
I pick up my cigarette from the ashtray where it has been burning down on its own and I walk to the window.
Chapter Eighteen
Nathalie
"We need to plan the wedding announcement," Senator Hartley says, leaning back in his chair and swirling his wine. "We have to get it into at least three news cycles. Maybe four if we play it right."
My father laughs, a little too quickly. "I am certain that can be handled."
"We have to build to it though." Senator Hartley points his fork. "I have someone who can get some candid pictures of the couple."
"Perfect." My father points at him. "I like where your head is at, my friend."
I look at my plate. The food is good, yet I have eaten almost none of it. I have been sitting in this chair for forty minutes and nobody has addressed me directly. I want to go to my roomwhere the ceiling is familiar and nobody needs anything from me.
