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“Do you have a question?” he asks.

I have about thirty. “What are you doing?”

“Checking the room.” He holds up the rope. “Every line in this building, I’ve checked. Every ring, every bolt. There’s a booking in here on Wednesday. I don’t let anyone into a room I haven’t checked.”

“Is that a security thing?”

“Yes.” He runs another foot through his fingers. “And it’s mine.”

I look at the rope, and at the rings in the ceiling, and at his hands. I think about his hand turning to stone around mine. I think about him in Merek’s kitchen this afternoon saying I’ll still be here.

I look at his hands again.

He sees me do it. I watch him see it. His fingers go still on the rope, and for a second, the gray of his knuckles dulls toward stone.

Then he looks back down and goes on with his work, as if I’m not there, and I’m left standing in the doorway with my face hot and no idea what to do with my hands.

“Wednesday,” Lenart says behind me, mildly. “The roof.”

The last door Lenart opens isn’t numbered.

“This one’s mine,” he says.

It’s smaller than the others, and quieter. There’s no X on the wall and nothing hanging from the ceiling. The walls are dark wood. The floor is covered in a rug so thick my boots sink into it. Heavy curtains, deep green velvet, hang along one wall, though there’s no window behind them, only more paneling. There’s a wide chaise in dark leather, a bed against the back wall with a black iron frame and plain white sheets, and a pair of armchairs facing each other across a low table, close enough that two people sitting in them would be nearly touching knees.

A mirror runs the length of one wall. A tall cabinet stands in the corner with its doors closed.

That’s all. It’s spare, and expensive, and very, very deliberate, like him.

He closes the door behind us, and it’s suddenly much quieter in here than anywhere else downstairs.

He doesn’t come toward me. He goes to one of the armchairs and sits, and he gestures to the other one, and after a second, I sit down across from him. Our knees are four inches apart.

“Billy Bob,” I say. “I should check...”

“Merek came for him at a quarter to six, while you were entering renewals. You told him to feed him what the bag says and didn’t look up. He sent me a photograph.” Lenart takes out his phone and shows me. It’s Billy Bob on Merek’s couch, flat on his back with his legs in the air, next to a bowl of his prescription food. The caption says EXACTLY WHAT THE BAG SAYS.

I laugh. My shoulders come down an inch.

Lenart puts the phone away. Then he folds his hands on his knee and looks at me.

“What interests you,” he says, “about this floor?”

“The open bar.”

“Tara.”

“The recovery room snacks.”

He waits. He doesn’t smile, and he doesn’t move on. He just sits there and lets the joke run out, until I’m the one who has to fill the quiet.

“Okay,” I say. “Okay. Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“The rules.” I look at my hands. “That wall. That you can stop any time and it just stops. That everybody down here knows what they’re walking into.” I make myself say the rest. “And the part where you let somebody else drive for a while. Where you trust them enough to let go. I’ve never let go of anything in my whole life. I don’t know what that would even feel like.”

He doesn’t say anything. He’s listening the way he listened to the bartender the first time I saw him, head slightly bent, completely still.