Chapter 6: The Phone Call

There was a specific thing Elijah did with his face that had taken him years to develop and which he employed now, stepping back into the bar from the alley: a kind of smooth-over, a neutral reset, the same face he used when a table was being unreasonable or a manager was in a bad mood or the kitchen had sent out the wrong order and he needed to be the one to fix it without anyone seeing the machinery.

It was useful. It had a limited shelf life.

He picked up a bread basket and went back to the floor because that was the thing about service—the floor didn't pause for you, it kept moving, and the only option was to catch up or fall behind, and falling behind wasn't something he was willing to do in front of people he worked with.

The call lasted four minutes and thirty seconds. He knew because he'd checked his phone before putting it back in his pocket, the way you checked a wound—not because you could do anything about it, but because you needed to know the extent.

There will not be a third extension.

He had known. He had known for two weeks, possibly longer, in the way that he had been running the numbers every morning and coming up with the same answer. Knowing and being told were not the same. Being told had a certain quality to it, a certain solidity to it that wasn't present in the knowing. He had stood in the alleyway for a moment with his back against the brick and breathed through it like water, go with it, don't thrash, and it had worked, mostly.

He was fine. He was completely fine.

"Table nine wants —" Priya began.

"Bread was too warm," he said.

She looked at him. "How did you know?"

"I'll handle it."

He went to table nine. He put on his smile, his real smile, his genuine smile, because people can tell when you're putting on a show, and he attended to the man in the golf shirt for four minutes, and everything worked out as everything usually worked out when you actually listened to people, and he returned to the service station and got the three water glasses and delivered them without spilling a single drop and was completely fine.

His tip jar was full.

His bank account was a joke.

Thirty-six hours, roughly.

He was calculating his life on napkins for the hundredth time. The number you had to make. The number you actually had. The difference between those two numbers. Not a difference. That's just a polite way of saying you were dead. He was calculating his life on napkins for the hundredth time when he became aware of the man in the corner booth.

He'd seen him before. You always noticed people in corner booths. They were either there for business or for solitude, and you had to be able to read either situation correctly. This one was alone. Laptop open. Whisky half-empty. Suit that didn't belong in a mid-tier Brooklyn bistro. But wearing it as if he'd forgotten he was wearing it. Not as if he were trying to make a point or fit in or impress anyone. Just as if he were wearing clothes.

He'd looked away and kept moving because that was the job.

And now, as he placed the check at table twelve, he looked again, and saw that the man was not looking at his laptop screen. The screen was dark. The man was writing something on a cocktail napkin with his pen. Not a ballpoint pen. A fountain pen. Which was either affectation or habit. And the way the man sat up in his seat was the kind of confident assurance that suggested the latter. And he was not looking up. Not looking up was one thing. The way he was sitting was different from the way he'd been sitting before.

Before, he'd been closed off. Now he was calculating.

Elijah looked away.

He finished the dessert orders. He cashed out the birthday party at table ten. He delivered the last round of drinks to the party of four. Goodnight. Goodnight indeed. And he was restacking the linen at the two-top that had just cleared out when he felt the weight of someone looking at him with purpose.

He looked up.

The man in the corner booth had his pen laid down across his notepad and his hands folded together on the table in front of him. And he was looking at Elijah with grey eyes that were the exact color of the sky when it was still undecided about rain.

He met the gaze. The man did not look away. And he did not either. Because he was not very good at that. Looking away. Dani had told him it was his deadliest trait.

But his phone was buzzing.

He pulled it out. Unknown number. A text: The alley call. About forty-six hours now, by my count. I may have a solution. Come back to your section when you're done with the dessert order.

He looked at his phone. He looked at the corner booth. The man was looking at his own phone now, not Elijah, with the complete composure of someone who had made their move and was willing to wait for the board to respond.

Elijah's heart was doing something inconvenient. He noted it, set it aside, and went to deliver the dessert.

He came back to the booth. He stood at the edge of the table with his hands in his apron pockets and looked at the man who had apparently been three tables away while the worst four minutes and thirty seconds of Elijah's recent life had played out in a brick alley, and said, "Can I help you with something?"

The man looked up. "Sit down, Mr. Collins."

"I'm working."

"You're in the wind-down. The kitchen closes in twenty minutes." A pause. "Please."

Elijah sat down. The please had done it — not because it was warm, but because it clearly cost something. Elijah had spent three years reading tables, and he knew what a word cost when a person wasn't used to saying it.

The envelope sat between them. He didn't touch it.

"You were in the alley," Elijah said.

"At the table by the back window," the man said. "The alley's acoustics are not as private as you might hope." A pause. "My name is Alexander Reed. I have a proposal that will be of significant benefit to you, if you can set aside the instinct to be insulted by it long enough to hear it."

Elijah looked at the envelope.

He thought about the alley, and the man on the phone, and the cliff where the gap should have been.

"I'm listening," he said.