The Gold Digger's Ledger novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Last Shift

Thursday at the Marlowe began the way it always did, with limes.

I cut forty of them before six and lined up the little silver spoons.

I had slept two hours in my own apartment, in my own narrow bed, with the book under the pillow.

I kept reaching for a phone that had nothing on it.

Tristan had not called.

He had said he wouldn't stand in the door.

He was a man who kept to the letter of what he said.

By nine, the bar was full of people who had never read a ledger in their lives.

I loved every one of them.

The other bartender slid down the rail to me.

"You're back," she said. "Somebody said you were marrying money."

"Somebody was early."

"Is it true you wrote down what a guy paid for a coat?"

"It's true. Do you need a coat?"

She laughed and went back to her tickets.

At ten, the Thursday man walked in, in his grey suit, and sat on his stool.

I made the Negroni and set it in front of him.

He drank half of it before he spoke.

"I had dinner with your friend," he said.

"I heard. How was the steak?"

"Excellent." He turned the glass. "She cried at the appetizer. She said she'd loved me the whole time and she'd been a coward."

"And at the main course?"

"At the main course she took an envelope out of her bag."

He reached inside his jacket, left-handed, and laid a slip of paper on the bar.

It was a check for fifty thousand dollars, written on a personal account, signed in a looping hand I knew from a gilt name card.

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