1. ONE #2
But I’d noticed. And I’d counted. And some small, stupid part of me wondered what he’d seen in his four seconds, what file he’d put me in, whether I was filed under staff, concierge, irrelevant or something else, and I didn’t know why it mattered but it had been sitting in the back of my head for eight months and I hadn’t been able to put it down.
Tom Griffin was leaning on my desk when I came back around to it.
He had both forearms flat on the surface like it was a bar and I was behind it in something low-cut. He was reading my name tag with his head tilted, taking his time about it.
I’d dealt with him before. Three times, maybe four.
He’d been a member for eight or nine months, sponsored in by someone whose name I hadn’t cared enough to look up, which meant his money was newer than most of the money in this room and he was louder about it in the way new money sometimes was — not flashy, exactly, but present.
Taking up more room than the conversation required.
Standing a little closer than the question called for.
“Brooklyn,” he said, reading it off the tag. He let it sit in his mouth for a second. “That’s a great name.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Griffin?”
“It’s Tom.” He said it like a small gift, something he was offering because he wanted me to know we were past formalities.
“Only people who want something from me call me Mr. Griffin. Tonight I’m the one who wants something, so.
” He spread his hands. Smiled. The smile had too much in it. “You see the problem.”
“What can I help you with?”
“Dinner. Tomorrow night, table for two.” He named a restaurant. The kind of restaurant men took women to when the restaurant was the point and not the food. “Somewhere that makes it look like I thought about it.”
I started typing. He didn’t give me any room to do it in.
He held his position exactly where he’d planted it, so that I was the one who had to lean back to reach the second screen, and when I leaned, he didn’t adjust. Didn’t step aside.
Stayed right where he was, close enough that I could smell the stale whiskey on his breath.
“You’re new,” he said.
“Not really. Eight months.”
“I’d have noticed you.”
You didn’t, I thought.
“Eight, or eight-thirty, Mr. Griffin?”
“Tom. Eight.” He tilted his head and looked me over.
Not my face. Me. The way you look at something in a window.
“You don’t have to do the whole —” he waved a hand at me, at all of me, at the desk and the lamp and the professional posture and the name tag “— thing. The voice. The routine. I’m not one of them.
” He nodded at the booths, at the men in their suits with their whiskey decanters and their twelve-hundred-dollar shoes. “I actually see you back here.”
I kept typing. My hands were steady. That was one thing I’d made sure of a long time ago — whatever else was happening, my hands did what I told them.
“Your reservation is confirmed for eight o’clock tomorrow evening, Mr. Griffin.”
“What time do they let you out of this place?”
“I don’t discuss my schedule with members.”
He laughed. Not a real laugh — the kind of laugh men do when they’ve heard no and decided it wasn’t a real one. “That’s not a no, though.”
“It’s a goodnight, Mr. Griffin.”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about.” He dropped his voice.
Not a whisper — lower than that, the register men use when they want you to feel like you’re the only two people in the room.
“You’re back here every night, Brooklyn.
Better at this job than anyone in the building.
Running the whole damn show from behind a desk while they —” another wave at the room “— sit there and don’t even know your name.
The only person who’s clocked you is me.
So we should go get a drink somewhere off the books.
Quiet place. Nobody has to know your business. ”
Off the books. Nobody has to know.
He said it like it was a favor. Like secrecy was something he was offering me, not something he was asking for himself. I’d heard this particular construction before, in a different voice, a long time ago. Nobody has to know. Just between us. You don’t have to tell anyone.
I held the confirmation card out between two fingers. He took it. Slow. Made sure to brush his fingers against mine as he grasped it, and I let go the instant I felt contact because my hands were steady but my skin was crawling and I wasn’t going to stand here and pretend otherwise.
“Enjoy your dinner, Mr. Griffin.”
He looked at me. There was something behind the charm — not buried deep, not hidden well.
Just sitting there, right on the surface, like an oil slick on water.
The look in his eye was patient and confident in a way that made the back of my neck prickle.
He wasn’t angry that I’d turned him down.
He wasn’t embarrassed. He was interested.
Like my resistance was the part he’d been hoping for.
“Night, Brooklyn.”
Then he was gone into the room and I was standing behind the desk with my hands flat on the reservation cards and my jaw tight and my pulse up somewhere I didn’t want it. I breathed out. Squared the stack of cards, even though it was already squared.
Nothing had happened.