Chapter 6: Friday

I picked a pizza counter in Astoria with six stools and a flickering sign.

I texted him the address on Thursday at nine fifty-nine, one minute before my ten o'clock rule, and he wrote back: Understood.

He did not offer a car. He did not ask what I'd wear.

On Friday at seven, a man in a charcoal suit stood in the doorway.

The place smelled of garlic and burnt cheese, and he read the menu above the register.

The owner had known Maggie since high school.

She looked at the suit, then at me, and mouthed: Who is that?

"My ex-boss," I whispered.

"Does he know he's overdressed?"

"He knows everything. He just doesn't care."

Elliot ordered what I told him to order.

Two slices of the plain, one of the white, and a ginger ale.

He carried the paper plates to the window counter himself.

He sat on a stool that was too low for him, with his knees up near the edge.

"Is this your idea of a test?" he said.

"Yes."

"Am I passing?"

"You haven't fixed the stool yet."

He looked at the stool, then at me.

"I'm not going to fix the stool," he said. "I'm going to sit on it."

He took a bite of the plain slice.

I watched his face while he chewed.

In four years I had ordered him lunch two hundred times, and he had always eaten it at his desk, over his keyboard.

Now he took a second bite, and his eyes closed for half a second.

"This is very good," he said, with surprise.

"It's Scranton style. Maggie's friend's family came from there. So did I."

"I didn't know that."

"I know."

"What else don't I know?"

I laughed. It came out before I could stop it.

"Four years," I said. "You don't know anything. You didn't ask."

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