Chapter 4: Corbin's

I paid the rehab center myself, over the phone, with my own card.

The quarter came to sixty-four hundred dollars.

The woman on the line took the number slowly and said, "Thank you, Ms. Cheston. We'll note it as received."

I hung up and looked at what was left in my account.

It was a little over two thousand.

By the end of the next quarter I would need sixty-four hundred more.

I did the only thing I knew how to do, which was to call a man who owed me a favor.

Jace Corbin owned a wine bar in Fishtown called Corbin's.

For two years I had sold him cases of Loire reds through the hotel group.

He had never once paid late.

He picked up on the second ring.

"Nina Cheston. You're calling me on a Tuesday. Somebody died."

"I need a job."

"You have a job. You have a husband with a house the size of a hospital."

"I left him last night."

The line went quiet, and then I heard a door shut on his end.

"Come in at four," Jace said. "Bring your hands."

Corbin's was a narrow brick room with a long zinc bar.

When I came in at four he was on a ladder, rehanging a row of glasses.

He was taller than I remembered.

He wore a gray work shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows.

Both forearms were covered in black-and-gray ink, vines and hands and a clock without numbers.

More of it climbed out of his collar and over one shoulder.

He looked at me from the ladder.

"Is that a hiring face?" he said. "Because I can't pay you what you're worth."

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