Rule One Said I Was the Only Person Awake After Midnight, but My Mother Never Sleeps novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: Ask Me Something
"Come to the desk," I said. "Slowly."
He crossed the lobby rug.
"Give me your hands."
He laid them on the desk, palms up.
They were huge and warm, chapped across the knuckles, with a white scar on the right thumb.
"What do you do?"
"Lineman. Power company. Thirteen years up poles." He nodded at his thumb. "That was a squirrel."
"Why are you awake?"
"I don't sleep in this place. I lock my door and sit up by the window." He looked at the card under the glass. "I wanted to see if you'd still be here at one."
I let go of his hands.
"Rule one says you're not a person."
"It says that about your mother too."
"It's wrong about her."
"Then it's wrong about one thing," he said.
"Two," I said. "It's wrong about two."
He smiled for the first time, and it changed his whole face.
Then he looked at the back of my left hand, where the old burn scar was shiny under the desk lamp.
"What happened there?"
"Pea soup. I was twelve. I reached across the stove for the crackers."
"That's the stupidest scar I've ever heard of."
"Thank you."
He sat down on the bench in front of the desk, the one for guests waiting on taxis.
"My sister had your job last winter," he said.
"Erin."
"Erin. She wanted the money for dental hygiene school." He turned his hat around in his hands. "She called me every Sunday. She read me that card over the phone. She said things knocked. She cried, and Erin doesn't cry."
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