33. Maren
MAREN
He comes back the next morning.
I catch sight of him through the glass at eleven-ten.
No suit. Dark jeans, a white henley, a canvas jacket that doesn’t belong to any version of him I’ve known.
In his hand, a coffee from the little bakery two miles up the coast—the red-bird sleeve gives it away, and they don’t deliver here.
He stands beneath the green sign outside the wing, hesitating like someone who hasn’t had to approach a door and choose whether to ring in nearly a decade.
The lobby is, currently, empty.
The lobby is empty because it is eleven ten on a Tuesday in late September, and because the morning rush is over, and because the desk woman who trained me yesterday has, in fact, gone to lunch.
He is, I will note, alone. There is no Sebastian. There is no car at the curb. There is, behind him, only the long lower service road I walked down yesterday, and the small white pebble path he came in by foot on.
I do not move from the desk.
He sees me through the glass. He sees that I see him.
He does not, this time, open the door. He stands on the small stone step in front of it, and he lifts the coffee in his hand a quarter inch in a way that is, currently, not a wave, and his eyes are the small silver-edged gray they go in the morning when he has not, in three nights, slept, and his mouth does a small set thing that is,the only thing on his face that is asking permission.
I look at the small bell sitting on the desk.
I hold it in my sight for a slow count.
I press the little numbered button marked available.
He opens the door, and the wind chime above him answers in that soft green tone.
"Maren."
"Cassian."
"May I."
"That depends, Cassian."
"On what."
“On whether you came in here to tell me something, or to ask me for something. The first I will hear, at this desk, on a Tuesday in late September. The second I am not offering you.”
"All right."
"All right?"
"All right. Then it is a thing I came to tell."
"All right, Cassian."
He crosses to the desk. He doesn’t lean. He doesn’t, in fact, put the coffee on the counter, because the counter is, currently, mine. He stands with that small, careful pause he’s had for nine years—still learning the shape of a desk when he’s on the guest side of the lacquer.
"I am sorry."
"Mm."
“That is the thing I came to say. I am sorry. For the call on September fourth, when I wrote your initials on a piece of paper without your knowledge. For the call to Henri on the thirteenth, when I asked him to start a rumor I had already set in motion. For the office on September seventh, when I let you walk into something I’d been preparing without telling you I’d been preparing it.
For the appendix Sebastian wrote at my instruction.
For the conservatory. For the bed in the wing on Tuesday morning.
For the desk on Friday night. For blocking the suite on August thirty-first. For the pier.
For the contracts And—Maren—especially for the way you found it.
For making the discovery itself the thing that told you.
For standing in the kitchen on Tuesday, knowing I had let it become real, and still not saying it then, when there was, in fact, a chance to tell you in a room you might have stayed in.
That is—Maren—that is the part I am, right now, most sorry about. ”
"Cassian."
"What."
“You’re apologizing for a lot of things. Most of which I know are true. I’m not—Cassian—I’m not arguing with the list. The list is correct.”
"Maren."
"Wait. Let me — let me ask you a thing."
"All right."
"Why, Cassian. The kitchen. Tuesday. By the kitchen — you have, in this lobby, just said, I knew by the kitchen that I had let it become real.
By the kitchen — Cassian, by the kitchen — you had, in fact, had a real conversation with me on a leather couch.
You had a real conversation with me on a bed.
You had one week in front of you. Why did you not, in any one of those seven days, tell me.
Why, Cassian. The thing — the thing I am, currently asking.
Is the thing you have known about yourself, for two weeks.
Tell me, in this lobby. Without preparing it. Why."
He stands at the counter with the coffee cup in his hand.
He stands the way someone stands at a podium they never rehearsed at.
After a count of three, he puts the cup down—not on the counter, on the narrow window ledge by the door, the small careful placement that comes from being told the counter isn’t his.
He turns. He looks at me.
"Because I thought I could keep you and the deal."
"Mm."
"That is the entire answer. I thought I could keep you and the deal.
I thought — Maren — I thought I could, by the right calibration of the conversation, by the right placement of a fact at the right hour of a Thursday in late September — I thought I could, in fact, tell you, and tell Becca, and tell Roland, and tell your mother, in such a way that none of the four of you, in any one room, ever had to be told a thing that would,change what you knew about the other three.
I thought I could be the man who pulled it off.
I have, in two weeks, been the man who pulls it off.
I have, in nine years, been the man who pulls it off.
I thought — and this is, Maren, the thing I will tell you without making it sound any better — I thought that the rules of the building applied to you, and that you would be the easiest fact to keep in the air.
I was, in fact, wrong. You were the hardest. You were — you were the only fact in the air that, in two weeks, kept trying to come down. "
"Cassian."
"Maren."
She exhales, bracing a hand against the counter. “Let me tell you one thing, and then I need you to step out of the lobby.”
He nods.
“The apology stands,” she says. “The list stands. The reasons stand. I’m not fighting you on any of it. I don’t have the fight left. Eight days emptied it out.”
"Maren."
"Wait. I am — I am also going to tell you the apology is, currently, insufficient."
"All right."
“It isn’t enough, Cassian. Not here, not at this counter on a Tuesday in late September at eleven sixteen.
What you’re giving me is a string of sentences.
Beautiful ones. The best you’ve spoken in two weeks.
But sentences are your native currency. They’re what the world pays you for.
They cost you nothing. And I’m not taking the thing that costs you nothing.
Not after learning, these past two weeks, exactly how easy it is for you to hand me a sentence. I want Cassian, the next thing."
"What is the next thing, Maren?"
"I do not know."
"Maren—"
"Cassian. I do not know. That is the answer.
I do not know. I am — currently — not the woman to write it down for you.
I am, currently, the woman behind the desk of a property I have asked, in writing, to be moved to.
I am, currently, the woman who lives in a staff cottage.
I am — Cassian — I am, currently, the woman who is, in fact, not going to give you the spec sheet for how to be a different man.
You are going to be a different man. And then you are going to come back.
And I am going to see the difference, currently, before I, in any other hour of my life, sit on a couch with you again. "
"Maren."
"Cassian. I am — I am asking you to leave the lobby. I have a guest in 14 in approximately twenty minutes. I would like to be, in twenty minutes, at the small ceramic dish, with my hand on a pen and a card, and the small considered face of a woman whose Tuesday is, currently, hers."
He turns. He picks up the coffee from the small narrow window ledge. He does not, on his way out, ask for an hour, or a day, or a Saturday. He does not, in fact, ask for anything.
He opens the door. The wind chime, above his head, in the soft green typeface, chimes.
He leaves.
I sit down. I give myself only what the rules permit. I press the small numbered button next to the bell for available.
The lobby is, in front of me, still. I take, from the small ceramic dish at my elbow, one of the sugar-free lavender mints. I put it in my mouth. The mint, like everything else in this lobby this morning, is the small clean menthol of a building I have, currently, chosen.
The wind chime, above the door, is still.
I press, lightly, the inside of my wrist where the small gold chain has, in eight days, almost stopped catching at things.
In approximately seventeen minutes, the guest from 14 will be at the desk.
I will, in seventeen minutes, be ready.