Never Showed

Chapter 6

"Say that again," I said, and my hand was already reaching for my coat.

"Your date never showed up," the woman said. "Daniel? Daniel Vance? Six-two, dark hair, navy suit, red pocket square — he was booked for eight o'clock at the Brennan, and at eight-forty he called in sick, and by then, ma'am, we'd already been trying your phone for twenty minutes and it was dead."

My phone had been at four percent in a hotel lobby.

"Refund's processed," she went on. "Two thousand two hundred, back on the card in three to five business days. We're real sorry. We've never had a no-show, we're going to have a conversation with Daniel about—"

"Stop."

"Ma'am?"

"Stop saying his name."

I was in the hallway by then. Coat half on. Keys in my hand. The elevator took eleven floors and I stood in it staring at the mirror and my own face looked like it belonged to somebody else.

The lobby was bright and loud on a Sunday. Two women coming back from a run. An old man with a paper. Luis behind the desk with his cap on straight and a cup of something steaming.

"Miss Brennan," he said. "You look like you seen a ghost."

"Luis." I put both hands on the counter. "The man who left this morning. Tall. Black coat. You said he gave you a hundred dollars."

"I said he gave me a hundred dollars and said sorry for the hour."

"Did he tell you his name?"

Luis took his cap off. He looked at the cap. He put it back on.

"No, ma'am."

"Did anybody call him anything? The driver? Anybody?"

"The driver didn't get out." Luis frowned. "But the doorman from the night shift, he said the gentleman asked him a question when he came in. About eight o'clock."

"What question?"

Luis picked up his phone and did something with his thumb and then turned it around so I could see the screen. A text from a guy named Marcus. Tall dude in the black coat, asked me if 11 was still the fourth floor. Told him yeah. Tipped me forty for a question. Never seen that before.

Eleven. The fourth floor.

My floor.

"Luis," I said, and my voice came out very quiet, "he came in at eight o'clock."

"Seems so."

"Dinner was at eight."

Luis looked at me with the particular kindness of a man who has seen everything and says nothing.

Somebody laughed behind me. I turned around, and there was a man in the doorway, and he was not tall, and he was not in a black coat, and he was wearing a navy suit with a red pocket square, and he had a paper coffee cup in one hand and a duffel bag in the other, and he looked like he'd slept in the duffel bag.

"Ms. Brennan?" he said.

I didn't say anything.

"Daniel Vance." He came toward me, and he had that walk people have when they're used to apologizing. "From the agency. Look, before you say anything — I know. I know. I got a stomach thing, it hit me at six, I was on the bathroom floor till ten, and my phone was—"

"You called at eight-forty."

"I couldn't call at eight-forty," he said. "I was throwing up."

The two women coming back from their run had stopped by the mailboxes. The old man with the paper had lowered it. Luis was watching all of us with his hands flat on the counter like a man trying to keep a table from tipping.

"Then who called the agency," I said.

"Huh?"

"Somebody called the agency at eight-forty and said Daniel was sick. If you were on the bathroom floor, who called?"

Daniel Vance stared at me.

"My roommate," he said. "I texted him. He called. He's a—" He stopped. He shifted the duffel. "He's a good guy."

"You were in a hotel lobby at eight o'clock," I said. "In a navy suit with a red pocket square, and there's a photographer—"

"There's a what?"

"—and I grabbed his sleeve and I called him Daniel and he looked at me and he said — he said —" I stopped, because I could hear it, the whole thing, all of it, the way he hadn't been surprised. "He said am I."

"Ms. Brennan, I don't know what—"

"The email," I said, and my hands were shaking, and I got my phone out and opened it up in front of everybody. "The confirmation. I never read it. I never read it. It's got a name on it—"

I scrolled. The email was short. Your event date has been confirmed. Your date: Daniel Vance. Seven forty-five, lobby, Brennan Hotel. Dark suit, no red accessories.

No red accessories.

And underneath, in a footer in eight-point gray, Please keep this confirmation for your records.

"Daniel Vance," I said, out loud, to a lobby with four people in it and a doorman and two women with their gym bags.

"That's me," Daniel Vance said.

"You're not him," I said.

"Ma'am, I'm — I don't know what to tell you. I'm not him. I don't know who him is. I'm just the guy who didn't show up." He set the coffee down on the counter. "Look, do you want me to go, or—"

"Go," I said.

"Because I can stay, I can do the whole thing, I can—"

"Go."

Daniel Vance went.

The revolving door took him around and spat him out on the sidewalk and the glass came around and shut with a sound like a slap. The two women by the mailboxes went back to their mail. The old man lifted his paper.

And there was one second — one — where I stood in the middle of my own lobby and everything in the world went quiet and rearranged itself.

The man in my bed had come to my building at eight o'clock and asked a doorman if eleven was still the fourth floor.

He was in the lobby before I got to the lobby.

He turned around before I touched his sleeve.

He knew I'd had three drinks. He knew what I paid. He knew my dress was the wrong dress. He let me call him a name that wasn't his for four hours and he never once corrected me, and at four in the morning he made my bed and left two words on a piece of paper and walked out past a doorman he'd already told sorry for the hour.

"Miss Brennan," Luis said.

I looked at him. I had the note in my coat pocket. I had his shirt on the back of a chair eleven floors up.

"You okay?"

"No," I said.

"Do you want to sit down?"

"No."

"Do you want me to call somebody?"

"No." I went to the door. I don't know why. I had nowhere to be and no phone credit and no name. "Luis, if he comes back—"

"Miss Brennan."

"—if he ever comes back, you call me. You call me before you call anybody else."

"Miss Brennan." Luis's voice changed. "Look out the door."

I turned around.

Out on the sidewalk, past the bad awning, past the man with the paper and the woman untying her shoes — the street was Sunday-empty except for one car.

Black. Long. Parked across from my building with the engine on and the wipers going against nothing, because it was not raining and had not rained all morning, and the driver's side was where the guy got out to open the back door and stand at attention like a man who'd been paid to wait.

The back window came down.

I stood in the doorway with my hand on the glass and my keys cutting into my palm and I could not see one single thing inside that car. Not a face. Not a coat. Just dark, and a shape in it, and a hand resting on the door frame — a hand with a watch I had seen at four in the morning when it was the only thing in my apartment that caught any light.

"Miss Brennan," Luis said, behind me, softly. "You want me to lock the door?"

The window went up.

The car pulled away from the curb without hurrying, the way certain people leave a room.

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Chapter 6 Ends