Chapter 15: The Break Room

Eleven of the bank's thirty days were gone, and the replacement accountant had spent three of them telling me what Rory had tried to.

The line was two million two, the building was the only other security, and Clara's nineteen percent still had to sign.

I did not ask her to sign.

Amos had not cashed anything, and Rory came to the firm every morning and said nothing to me but good morning.

The note came to the firm in a plain envelope with no return address.

Tuesday, 6:40 a.m., it said. Staff break room, east corridor. She is off until Thursday. Come alone and don't bring a speech.

It was signed with a lopsided star.

I turned it over twice before I understood that it was not from Clara.

It was in the circulating nurse's hand, and she had borrowed the star because she knew I would not open the envelope otherwise.

I read the note as an invitation and not as a loophole.

Clara's second term was that I never ask for her at work.

I was not asking for her.

I went at twenty to seven in an old jacket, and I carried nothing.

The break room was a narrow room with a vending machine, a sink full of mugs and a long table scarred with cigarette burns from the decade before.

Three women in scrubs were waiting for me.

The circulating nurse sat at the head, a broad grey-haired woman with reading glasses on a cord.

The two young nurses from the supply cart sat on either side of her.

One of them was the girl who had put the folded paper in my hand.

She did not smile.

"Sit down, Mr. Garrison," the circulating nurse said.

I stayed standing.

"I'd rather say this on my feet, if it's all right."

"It's your knees."

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