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“Fiona 2022,” I repeat as we both take a drink.
“So, you’ve seen some shit working at the Plaza, huh?” she says.
I exhale hard. “Yes, I have.”
“You’ve worked there forever, right?” she asks. “Even longer than Graham?”
I nod. It’s no secret that the Botsford boys are put to work at the hotel from a young age. I somehow landed on the same path.
“I started as a dishwasher in the restaurant when I was fifteen and just worked my way up.”
“When did you decide you wanted to be the Liaison?”
I think back, my tongue loosening up. “One night, something happened to one of the servers in the restaurant. Not sure what, but the cook pulled me aside and told me to run an order out to a table. I remember he pointed his thick finger in my face and said that if I screwed it up, it’d cost me my job, which I thought was very strange considering the order was just a single slice of cheesecake.”
“Well, to be fair, our cheesecake is very good,” she jokes.
I chuckle. “You’re not wrong.”
“So, who was at the table?” she asks, curious.
“I walked out there with this plate of cheesecake and the entire time I wondered, why was this so important? I finally get there, and there were three men sitting at the table.” I count on my fingers. “The first was Kingston, the building manager at the time. The second, his dad, Beau Botsford.”
“The CEO at the time,” she says, impressed.
“And the third man… was Jackson Cobb.”
Paige squints. “Sounds... vaguely familiar.”
“Jackson Cobb was the Company Liaison,” I say. “As I approached the table, I remember hearing him talking about Seattle. New York. London. Tokyo. He’d been everywhere. He knew this company. He knew everything. And I knew, even back then, that I wanted to be that guy.” I tap the table between us. “I wanted a seat at that table.”
“And you got it.”
“Eventually,” I say. “Anyway, I delivered that very important cheesecake, bowed out, and left to go finish my very unimportant shift at the sinks.”
Paige gazes at me across the table. “So, how did that dishwashing kid grab Kingston’s attention?”
“Oh, that’s a much longer story.”
She nudges the pitcher. “Well, we’ve still got plenty of hooch,” she says. “And there’s still a few hours before my bedtime, so…”
I take a deep breath, feeling utterly defenseless against those shiny, blue-rimmed glasses. “All right,” I say, clearing my throat. “A little while after that fated dinner, I was at the hotel, deep in the archives of sub-level 2, with a stolen pillow from a housekeeping cart.”
Paige furrows her brow. “What were you doing there?”
“Sleeping.”
“Why were you sleeping in the archives?”
I pause, but my tongue still feels loose. “It was better than sleeping at home,” I answer. “Safer, I mean.”
She says nothing as she studies my face.
“My foster mother wasn’t exactly the milk and cookies type,” I explain.
“Foster mother?” she asks. “So, you’re an...”
“An orphan.” I nod. “Yeah.”
