32. Cassian
CASSIAN
The car pulls into the resort drive at five fifty-three in the afternoon.
I had driven the coast road from the city in a single push, three hundred and forty miles, with one stop at a gas station outside the second pass for coffee I did not drink.
I had thought, somewhere between four and five in the morning, that I would feel something specific when I came up the resort drive.
I had thought there would be — language, perhaps.
There is, currently, none. There is only the small white-pebbled drive I have, in three years, parked at twice a month, and the bellhop at the door I have known since the year I bought the building, whose name is Jace, and who, when I get out of the car, looks at me with a face I have not, in three years, seen him use.
"Mr. Rourke."
"Jace."
"Sir, I — "
"Where is she."
"Sir."
"Jace. Where is she."
"Sir. I — I am instructed, sir, to redirect any inquiry regarding Miss Castellan to Mr. Mitchell. The general manager. Davies. Mr. Davies, sir. He is, I am told, expecting you."
"Expecting me."
"Yes, sir."
"Who told him I was coming."
"Sebastian, sir."
"Of course."
I cross the lobby. I cross the upper lobby the way I have crossed it for three years — without, in fact, looking at anyone — and I see, as I cross, the small white card on the corner of the front desk that has, in small black handwriting, the name MAREN CASTELLAN — relocated to lower wing, and underneath, in red, no schedule lookup.
No schedule lookup.
Whoever put the card there — Livian, almost certainly — put it where I would see it from the door. The card is, I note, in the small calligraphy hand Livian uses for the welcome plates in the suites. I cross to it. I lift it. I put it back where I found it. I keep walking.
Davies is at the door of his office. He is a short, broad man in a polo, wearing that small unreadable look people develop after eleven years of running a property under me—the look that comes from knowing the things you don’t say to a principal are the things that keep you employed.
"Mark."
"Cassian."
"Walk with me."
"All right."
He walks with me. He walks with me, because he was, until this morning, my employee, and because he is, even now, my employee, and because he is the kind of man who, when his principal walks into the lobby of his own building at five fifty-three in the afternoon looking the way I look, walks.
"Mark, where is she?"
"She is at work."
"Where, Mark."
"Cassian. I am, currently, instructed — and you should know who instructed me, you should know, in fact, before I tell you anything else — she instructed me.
Maren herself. On Sunday afternoon. She asked, in writing, that her schedule not be made available to upper management.
She asked, in writing, that she be reassigned to the lower spa wing.
She asked, in writing, that any inquiries about her location, her schedule, or her availability be redirected to me, and she asked, in writing, that I — Cassian — that I, in particular, not, in any case, redirect them to you.
I am, currently, telling you all of this against the spirit of those instructions, but not, by the technicality of the wording she chose, in fact, against the letter of them. "
"Mark."
"Yes."
"She is at work."
“Cassian. I’m not giving you the address of her station at five fifty-five on a Monday, in a building that is her place of work, while she’s on the clock.
I’m not doing that. I’m not doing it because she’s my employee, and because I’m also yours, and because the chain of loyalty, in this hour, runs from her upward—not from you downward. Are we clear.”
"Mark."
"Cassian, are we clear?"
"Mark. I am asking."
"And I am telling you, sir. Without, in fact, telling you."
He stops at the corner of the corridor. He stops at the small framed map of the property by the lobby door, the same map I have, for three years, walked past without looking at, the map that has, on it, the small marked square for Lower Spa Wing — Front Desk Reception, just past the second turning of the lower service road, all the way down by the long pool.
He looks at the map.
He does not point.
He does, after a count, walk back to his office without saying another word.
I stand at the map for the count of three.
Then I leave the upper lobby. I walk down the lower service road.
I walk it slowly, with my hands in the pockets of my coat, because if I walk it fast Jace, at the door, will, in fact, see me walking it fast, and the bellhop network at this property is, currently, more reliable than the morning glory along the wall.
On the front step of the lower spa wing sit two stone planters and a wooden sign in that soft green typeface I’ve seen on every spa I’ve ever thought about buying.
The glass doors stand open. The lobby is small, quiet, curated—part of a building I haven’t walked into in three years.
And behind the front desk is my fiancée.
She is not my fiancée. I am, currently, training my brain to put the word in the past tense and finding it does not, yet, fit in my mouth.
She is at the desk.
She is in a soft blue uniform shirt — resort, embroidered in the same small green, at the chest — and her hair is up in a loose twist I have, in fact, never seen on her head, and her face, when I see it through the glass of the door, is in profile, listening, with the small full attention she has, in three years, given to two thousand guests in a different lobby, to an old man in a robe who is, currently, telling her, with both hands, about a back.
He is talking. She is nodding. She is, while he is talking, doing two other things at once — typing on the keyboard at her hip with her left hand, and writing, with her right, on the small handwritten note card she does, in fact, give every guest, a name and a time.
The name is Roger. The time is 4 p.m. tomorrow.
She caps the pen. She slides the card across the lacquer.
The man, Roger, takes the card. The man, Roger, says, "You are a lifesaver.
" The man, Roger, walks back into the wing toward whatever robed life he is, currently, getting back to.
She does not, in any of this, look at the door.
She does not, in any of this, register that I am, currently, watching her through the glass with my hand on the brass pull of the door.
She is currently, working.
I will note that there is, in fact, no version of the woman I had, in two weeks, fallen in love with in my own house that prepared me for the version of her behind this desk.
The version behind this desk is calmer. The version behind this desk does not, in fact, have any of the small tells of a person who is performing.
There is no edge in her shoulders. There is no edge in her wrists.
Her hand on the desk is loose. She picks up the small ceramic dish at her elbow and tips it toward herself and takes — I see her take — a single mint, which she pops in her mouth, and the mouth I have, in two weeks, traced with my thumb does the small ridiculous mint-shape it does, and her tongue, briefly, presses the mint against the inside of her cheek, and she closes the dish.
I open the door. My hand does it before the rest of me catches up, acting on something I haven’t fully admitted. The small wind chime above the frame gives its soft green note as the door swings wide.
She looks up, and her face, for the half-second between the sound of the chime and the moment she registers who is standing on the other side of it, is the open, professional face of a woman ready for the next guest, the face she will, over the next twenty years, give to forty thousand more guests, and it is—I will admit it to myself, privately—a face I have not, until this minute, seen once in the last two weeks.
Then her face — the half-second is up — closes.
She does not, in fact, stand up.
She looks at me. She holds my eyes for, I will say, a count.
Then she turns. She turns in her chair. She picks up, from the small shelf behind the desk, the binder of the day's intake forms. She rises out of her chair with the binder, and she walks — calmly, without hurry, in the small sensible black flats I have not, in two weeks, seen on her feet — out of the lobby through the small staff door behind the desk, and she closes the door behind her.
The lobby, in front of me, is empty.
The wind chime, above my head, is — eventually — still.
I stand at the door, for the moment it takes to understand that my fiancée, who is not my fiancée, has just walked out of a room I came three hundred and forty miles to find her in, and that she did it without looking at me, and that she will not be coming back for the rest of her shift, and that I cannot, in this lobby, follow her.
There is nowhere, in this building, that I have, in nine years, not been able to follow.
There is, currently, one.
I take my hand off the brass.
I close the door, gently, the way Sebastian closes doors.
I walk back up the lower service road without letting myself glance at the door.
The urge is there—sharp, familiar—but I keep my eyes forward and follow the curve of the path to the upper lobby.
Jace nods as I pass; I nod back. Davies is in his office with the lights off, watching me through the glass like a man on a porch studying a storm from a sensible distance. I keep walking.
I get into the car.
I drive the long way around the property. I drive it not to think about what I have just done, but to think about what I am, currently, going to do.
Here’s what I’ll do instead. I’ll drive to a small inn on the coast road, two miles north of the property.
I’ll take a room—just a room, not a suite—and I’ll take it under my own name, not Sebastian’s.
I’ll put her old cotton T-shirt with the faded pocket in the dresser drawer.
Then I’ll call Sebastian and tell him where I am, and ask him to let Davies know that I’m not, at this moment, the principal in the building.
I’m just a man at a small inn two miles north.
In the morning, I’ll walk to her. No badge. No authority. No expectations.
I am, in fact, going to knock on a door.
I have not, in nine years, done it.
I am, currently, going to learn.