Page 38 of The Drifter

"All right."

"Not the bottom of King. The bottom's for tourists. The good leather's up past Calhoun. There's a man up there who'll actually look at your foot before he sells you anything, which nobody does anymore." I heard myself and couldn’t stop. "And you don't want a shop that stocks a bunch of brands. You want the one that stocks two and is snotty about it. And you don't buy the first thing you like, because the first thing you like is the thing at eye level, and the thing at eye level is the thing they need to move."

I stopped.

Clint was looking at me.

"That's a lot of information," he said.

"I'm a concierge."

"You're on your day off."

"It doesn't come off."

He nodded slowly, like I'd told him something true. I suppose I had.

"Well," he said. "I'd better write some of that down."

"You don't have a phone."

"I've got a phone." He looked pained. "Tommy left it on the dresser. It's still got the plastic on it."

"So, you don't have a phone."

"I don’t have a phone," he agreed, "in any way that matters."

And I stood in my lobby, with my hair down, on my free day, and heard the words come out of my own mouth before any part of me signed off on them.

"I'll go with you."

The whole room stopped.

Otis's eyebrows went up so far they left his forehead. Missy, at the desk, developed a sudden and profound interest in the printer. An elevator dinged somewhere behind me and I didn’t turn around, because I couldn’t turn around, because I was standing in the middle of the floor of the building that raised me with my heart going like a rabbit.

Clint didn't move.

"You'll go with me," he said.

"You need a guide." I was already building it. That's what I do. I put the walls up. I make the thing stand. "That's a concierge service. It's a standard concierge service, and it's a comped suite, so it's already covered."

"You're off."

"Yes."

"So, it's not a concierge service."

"No," I said. "It isn't."

The truth of that lay down on the marble between us.

He looked at me a long moment. Not up and down. Not the once-over I’ve been given by every kind of man there is, in that lobby, at that counter, while I was printing their receipts.

He looked at my face.

"Why?” he asked. Not sharp. Not a challenge. Just the question.

And there was no lie in me that would fit through it.