"The restructuring."
"Among other things." He stops at the door, his gold rings catching the hallway light. "She's going to hate you. You know that."
"I know."
"And you're doing it anyway."
"Yes."
He nods. "If you need me, call." He leaves. His footsteps go down the stairs, unhurried, and the building goes quiet.
The placement network is tightening protocols. They could relocate Grace. The window just narrowed from comfortable to urgent, and I'm standing in a shit apartment with a knife in my hand and blood on my boots and the woman I came here for is three hundred feet away pouring coffee and tapping her finger on plates and she has no idea how close she is to disappearing again.
Not happening. Not while I'm breathing.
I go to the window and watch her work and think about timelines.
Chapter Six: Grace
HecomesbackonThursday. And Friday. And Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
By the second week, I stop checking the door when it opens because I already know when he's going to walk through it. Dinner shifts, between five thirty and six. Always alone. Always table four if it's open, and if it's not, whatever table has its back to the wall and a sightline to the door. He orders the pork shoulder now, every time, because I told him it was better than the branzino and he listened. Coffee, black. Cash. Thirty percent.
I still don't know his name.
He doesn't offer it and I don't ask because asking would mean this is something, and it isn't something. He's a regular. I have dozens of regulars. Arthur and Helen on Wednesdays. The two lawyers from the firm on Broad Street who split a bottle of Barolo every Friday and argue about law shit loud enough for thewhole dining room to hear. The woman who comes in alone on Sundays with a paperback, orders the risotto and stays for two hours, never looking up from her book.
He's one of them.
That'sall.
Except I've started walking past table four when I don't need to. The efficient route from the kitchen to the bar runs along the left wall, past tables one through three. Table four is on the right side, against the opposite wall, and there is no reason for me to cross the dining room to pass it on my way to refill a water pitcher.
But I cross anyway, and when I pass him, I can feel his attention shift. Not his head. Not his eyes, as far as I can tell. Just the quality of his focus changes, I can feel it on my skin when I walk through the edge of it. He tracks the room constantly, but when I pass, the tracking narrows, and I'm inside it.
This should bother me.
Men have paid attention to me before and I've never liked it. The ones who stare at my chest while I'm taking their order, the ones who touch my arm when they ask for the check, the drunk guy last year who grabbed my wrist and Javi had to come around the bar. I've never had a problem stepping back, creating distance, shutting it down.
Yet, I keep walking past table four.
Tonight, he's eating the pork shoulder and I'm carrying a bread basket to table seven when I pass him. Deep down, I want to start a conversation, but instead I look down at his hands while I walk. He's holding the fork in his right hand, and his left hand is resting on the table, palm down, and his index finger is tapping the wood next to his plate. The same thing I do, the same kind of absent rhythm that means nothing and everything, and my feet stop moving for a half-second when I see it.
Is he mimicking me, or does he have the same anxious tic I do?
I keep walking. I deliver the bread basket and go back to the bar to pour two glasses of the house red and bring them to the lawyers. I ask if they want to see the dessert menu and they say yes, they always say yes, and the entire time I'm thinking about his index finger tapping the table the way mine taps everything. It’s such a small thing, and for some reason I can’t stop ruminating over it.
"Grace."
Javi is looking at me from behind the bar. He's holding a cocktail shaker in one hand and a rag in the other and his face has the expression it gets when he's about to say something I don't want to hear.
"What."
"You're doing the route."
"What route."
"The route past The Rhino. You've done it four times tonight and you only needed to do it zero times."
