You've Been Replaced, First Love novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Title Passes on Payment

Ellory scrapes the gold name off his window at Friday lunch in front of the diners, and the cabinetmaker who held the ladder offers her a locked door.

At twelve-fifteen on Friday I stood on the sidewalk outside The Annora Room with a razor scraper in my back pocket and page two of my contract in my hand.

The restaurant was holding a friends-and-press lunch the day before it opened.

Through my own gold lettering I could see forty people at white tablecloths, eating.

The critic from the Sentinel was at the window table.

I knew her because I had lettered her paper's holiday sign eight years ago, when I was an apprentice.

Maddox came around the corner with a stepladder over one shoulder.

He set it up under the glass without a word.

"You don't have to be here," I said.

"I'm not here," he said. "I'm just a man with a ladder on a public sidewalk."

"He owes you eleven thousand dollars."

"Eleven two." He steadied the legs with his boot. "I like to be precise when I'm being cheated."

I climbed up.

Up close the A looked even better than I'd remembered, soft at the edges where the gold met the glass.

I had put my whole heart into that letter, thinking it was mine.

I laid the blade flat against the first stroke and pushed.

A thin gold curl peeled away and drifted down onto the sidewalk.

Inside, a woman in pearls stopped with her fork halfway up.

By the third letter the whole window table was watching.

By the fifth, a man across the street had his phone out.

The door of the restaurant banged, and Kendrick came out into the cold in his shirtsleeves, with his napkin still in his hand.

"Ellory."

"Hi."

"What are you doing?"

"Collecting my property." I held up the contract without looking down. "Page two. 'Title to the artwork passes on payment in full.' I've been paid two thousand of eight thousand four hundred."

"You can't take down a sign in front of my customers."

"It's not your sign yet."

He lowered his voice, and his face changed from host to something thinner.

"I'll have a man here in an hour to re-letter it."

"Then do that."

"I'll call the police."

"Please do." I scraped a long clean stroke through the first N. "Tell them a gilder is removing her own gold from a window she hasn't been paid for. I'll bring the contract."

He looked up and down the street.

A couple outside the coffee shop had stopped to film.

Kendrick has one rule he has never broken in five years, and I knew it better than I knew my own phone number.

He doesn't make a scene where people can see.

"Just get down," he whispered. "We'll talk about this inside."

"We talked inside Thursday."

The door opened again, and Annora walked out.

Her hair was loose and she wore a white wrap dress, and she carried a glass of white wine like it was part of her hand.

"Ellory, sweetheart." Her voice was syrup poured over a razor. "It's such a sad thing to do to a woman's engagement."

"It's a boring thing to do to a contract."

A little ripple of laughter came from the line of diners at the glass.

Annora's smile held, but her eyes slid over to Kendrick.

"Darling, fix this."

"I'm trying to."

"Try harder."

It was a small voice, and she gave it to him.

I noticed it, and I put it away for later.

The second N came off.

The O.

Then the R, with the hook I'd pulled in a single stroke.

I took my time over that one.

Behind me, I heard the critic say very clearly, to nobody, "Well, that's lunch."

The final A went.

The glass stood empty again from THE to ROOM, with a bare gap between them, scraped clean and shining.

I climbed down and folded my blade into its wrapper.

Kendrick stood with his arms at his sides.

He had never once looked at me the way he looked at me then, which is to say he had never once looked at me as someone he could lose something to.

"You think this changes anything," he said. "We open tomorrow, and a bare window is a story, not a problem. People will come to see the empty glass."

"Then you're welcome," I said.

"You'll be back by Sunday. You always finish things."

"I did finish." I picked up the gold curls from the pavement with two fingers and put them in my pocket. "The invoice says so."

I turned to go.

My knees had begun to shake, and I wanted to be around the corner before they did it in public.

Maddox folded the stepladder with one hand and fell into step beside me.

We walked half a block in silence.

"That was the best thing I've seen in this city in a year," he said.

"I need to sit down."

"There's a bench on the corner."

"I need to sit down somewhere I can fall apart in private."

"Well, I can help with that," he said. "I have a loft over my shop with a door that locks from the inside."

I stopped walking.

"It has a bed and a kettle, and the heat works. I'm not saying it for anything."

"Anything what?"

"Anything at all," Maddox said. "No strings. It's a door."

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