26. Cassian
CASSIAN
The wing is empty at four fifty.
I know this because at four fifty I’m moving down the corridor in yesterday’s shirt, carrying that small wrong pressure under my ribs—the kind that follows waking up alone in a room I hadn’t, two weeks ago, imagined sharing.
I had not thought she would leave from her room.
I had assumed — and the assumption was, I am admitting it inside my own head, deliberate — that the bed she would sleep in for the last three hours would be mine.
She had, twice now, slept in mine. She had, for the count of forty minutes after she let me hold her on the rug of my office, cried with her face in the small folded place between her shoulder and her chin while I stood at the window with my back to her so she could do it without my looking.
She had then, at two thirty, stood up, dressed, and walked out.
I had let her.
I had let her because I don’t have the standing to keep her, and I had told myself, in the small bright chamber of my head where I’ve kept my best lies for two weeks, that she would come back at three or four.
I had taken a shower. I had laid out, on the side of the bed she claimed on Tuesday, the soft folded thing she’d been sleeping in. I had gone to bed. I had set no alarm.
At four forty-six I woke because I heard, through the long quiet wing, the faint hush of the staff service door opening and, a beat later, closing.
I’m up. I’m dressed. The corridor is empty. Her room — the door open, the room bare, the bed made, the dresser clean, the lamp off. The small lacquered tray on the desk where I left the snowdrops and the unopened card is empty. The card is gone. I can’t tell whether she took it or the maid did.
I am in the entry of the wing in twelve seconds.
Sebastian is at the front door in a coat. He is not, I will admit, surprised to see me.
"Sebastian."
"She has gone, sir."
"How long."
"Four minutes, sir. The taxi waited at the lower gate. She walked down the path. The driver — sir. The driver did not, in fact, know who she was."
"The marina."
"Sir?"
"She isn't taking the taxi to the airport."
"The booking she made, sir, was for the six fifteen flight."
“The booking on her laptop was for the six-fifteen. She’s twenty-six, and in the last twenty hours she’s realized I see everything she leaves in this building’s systems. So she would have made another booking on her phone.
The earlier one. She’s headed to the marina for the five o’clock shuttle—the one that connects to the regional dock and the puddle-jumper into the city.
She’ll be in the air at five-fifty. That’s the real booking. The taxi is for show. Sebastian.”
"Sir."
"My keys. The black car."
"Sir, are you — "
"Now, Sebastian."
He does not argue. He throws me the keys.
The marina is at the bottom of the cliff path, and the cliff path is a fifteen-minute walk and a four-minute drive, and the four-minute drive is, this morning, three because there is no traffic and it is, currently, four fifty-three, and I am the only car on the coast road.
She stands at the pier’s far end, the long wooden boards beneath her and her suitcase resting at her hip.
The shuttle is not yet in. The captain is on the boat down the slip.
He sees the headlights. He does not, at this hour, recognize the car.
He does, however, recognize the man who steps out of it.
He is a man in my employ, technically — the marina, the shuttle, the slip, all of it — and he raises a hand the way a man raises a hand to a boss he is not, currently, sure he wants to acknowledge in front of a passenger.
I do not stop walking.
She does not turn until I am four feet behind her.
She does not turn even then, exactly — she registers the shape of me in the small reflective glass of the shuttle's windshield, and the line of her shoulder under the small black coat, which is also a coat I have not seen, does the half-inch lift it has, for two weeks, done in any room I have entered.
"Look at me."
"No."
"Maren."
“Cassian. The shuttle leaves in three minutes, and I’ll be on it. You’re free to stand there until then—I can’t prevent that. What I can do is refuse to talk.”
"Just — three minutes, Maren. I will take three."
"Mm."
"Will you — "
"Cassian. You have three minutes. Use one of them."
"All right." I draw breath. "Stay until eleven Monday."
She turns.
She turns slowly. The movement is the same as it was in my office on Friday, three sheets of paper held tight in her hand, her attention narrowed to a single point.
Whatever she shed in the last day has left her stripped down to something steady and unguarded.
She looks at me, her mouth tightening in that small controlled way, and there isn’t even a flicker of surprise.
"Stay."
“Until eleven Monday, Maren. The signing. You do not—Maren, you do not need to be at the signing. I’m not asking you for the room.
I’m asking you for the building. Stay at the resort.
Stay at the staff cottage. Stay at—Maren, stay at Livian’s, I do not care, stay anywhere within forty miles of Roland Vance for forty-eight hours and then you go.
After eleven a.m. Monday I will not—Maren, I will not, ever, ask you for another hour.
I am asking, in this hour, for forty-eight. ”
"Cassian."
"Yes."
"Listen to me."
"I'm listening."
“I’m not staying forty miles from Roland Vance.
I’m not serving as a forty-mile insurance policy on the signing of a deal you used me to prep on August thirty-first. I’m not remaining—Cassian, I’m not remaining—in any situation, in any building, in any radius in which I fall, in your priorities, below the man you’re signing with.
I won’t do it for you, and I won’t do it for the cliff annex, and I won’t do it for the four hundred jobs. Do you understand me.”
"Maren—"
"Do you understand me, Cassian?"
"I understand you."
"Good."
She lifts her hand. There is a small flat plastic card in it. She holds it out.
"Your access card. The wing. The villa. The office wing.
The conference room I should not, on Saturday, have been able to walk into.
I went in last night and dropped my badge through the slot in the badge office door.
Sebastian will find it on the floor in the morning.
This — this is the villa. I do not, anymore, need it. "
"Maren—"
"Take it, Cassian."
"Maren."
"Take it."
I take it. The plastic is cold. She withdraws her hand. She withdraws it without letting her fingers touch mine, which is, currently, the part I will, in private, in some hour of next year, find not survivable.
"Maren."
"Cassian."
"Last night."
"What about it?"
"You — you let me say it."
"I did."
"And."
"I’m not saying it back. Not here on a pier. Not at twenty-six. Not when I’m already leaving.”
"Maren."
"Cassian. Three minutes is up."
The shuttle behind her drops to idle. The captain pointedly avoids looking their way.
The water at the pier’s end has the flat, metallic tone of a steel pot.
A lone gull sits on the dock-house corner, observing them with the black, impassive stare of something that has watched countless people part ways at five a.m.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I leave it where it is. It vibrates again.
"Sebastian."
"I assumed. Pick it up."
I pick it up.
"Sir."
"What."
"Becca on the line. She is, sir, asking.
Roland is asking. They have, in the last hour, been notified by the kitchen — by the kitchen, sir, I do not know which staff member — that there is a private car, with a suitcase, at the lower gate.
Becca is asking whether the signing is, in her phrase, intact.
She wants to know now, sir. She has said, sir, she will not, in fact, sign a term sheet on Monday morning at eleven if she is asked, in the ten o'clock prep call, to tell Roland a thing that is not true.
I — sir. She is asking. I am not, in this call, capable of answering for you. "
"Sebastian."
"Sir."
"Hold."
I lower the phone. Maren is watching me.
Her expression is one I haven’t seen on her in two weeks—neither sharp nor gentle, something held exactly in the middle.
It’s the look of someone who has just made a decision and is offering me the space to hear myself.
A small, deliberate courtesy, handed over without ceremony.
"Maren."
"What."
"Becca."
"I heard."
"She is asking about the signing."
"I heard, Cassian."
"Maren."
“You get to choose right now. I’m not stepping in.
I’m not cushioning it for you. I’m going to get on the shuttle.
The shuttle is, in approximately thirty seconds, at the dock.
You can, in this thirty seconds, follow me onto it.
You can leave the deal. You can put Sebastian on the line and tell him to tell Becca no.
You can walk away, with me, from a thing that is on a piece of paper that means nothing to you that you could not, in six months, build again.
Or you can stay on this pier. You can stay on this pier and pick up the phone and tell Sebastian to tell Becca yes, and you can sign the term sheet at eleven on Monday, and you can have the cliff annex, and you can have the four hundred jobs, and you can have the building, and you will, Cassian, not have me.
Either of these is a choice. I am not telling you which to make.
I am telling you, only, that they are different.
And that one of them, after thirty seconds, is closed. "
"Maren—"
"Twenty-five seconds, Cassian."
I look at her.
I look at her the way I have, these past two weeks, looked at her in candlelight, in the kitchen, on a leather couch, on the desk in my office, with my hand on her hip and her hand on my pulse.
The silver-edged gray morning light off the water is on her face.
Her chin is lifted. And her hand at her side is—this is the part I will not recover from—trembling, just slightly, with the involuntary tension of someone who has made her own choice in the last half-minute and is bracing for mine not to be the easy one.
The shuttle bumps the dock.
I lift the phone.
"Sebastian."
"Sir."
"Tell Becca the signing is intact. Eleven Monday. As planned."
"Sir."
"Confirm the prep call at ten."
"Sir."
"That is all."
I lower the phone.
She turns. She does not say anything. She does not look at me. She lifts the suitcase. She walks down the small ramp onto the shuttle. The captain takes the bag from her with a small nod. She sits down at the rail.
The shuttle pulls away.
I stand on the pier in the small steel light. The gull lifts off the corner of the dock house. Sebastian, in my ear, on a line I have not, in fact, hung up, says, "Sir."
"What."
"Are you all right?"
"No, Sebastian."
"No, sir."
"Send me the prep brief by seven."
"Yes, sir."
I get back in the car.
I drive back up the cliff road.
I do not, in the rearview, watch the shuttle.
When I pull up the drive, the villa’s eastern wall is washed in gold from the first light. Sebastian is on the front step, coat thrown over his shirtsleeves, and he lifts a hand in greeting. I park the car, climb the steps, and slip into my office without a word.
There is a contract on the desk. There are papers, still, slid across the surface from the night before. There is a small lacquered tray at the corner of the desk, empty.
I sit down.
I begin to read.