Chapter 4: After Hours

By midnight on Thursday the war room had stopped smelling like coffee and started smelling like paper.

I was the last one left.

Eleven index cards lay across the table in a fan, and every one of them was wrong.

"It's the tent," I said to the empty room. "It's not the tent. It's the first night."

I had been circling it all day.

People did not return a tent because of the polyester.

They returned it because the first night had not felt like the photograph.

The knock on the glass was two soft taps.

Elliot stood in the doorway with a paper bag and a bottle of tonic water.

"It's after midnight," I said.

"I know when it is. I own the building's lease."

He set the bag in front of me.

A turkey sandwich, a pickle in a napkin, a pear.

"I'm not here about the work," he said. "I don't want to hear about the work. You said no favors."

"A sandwich is a favor."

"A sandwich is a sandwich. I'd have brought one for the designers if they hadn't gone home at six."

I looked at him.

He looked back, with the wry patience of a man who had decided how much of himself to spend tonight.

"Sit," I said. "If you're staying, you can hold the cards."

He sat, one chair away.

I told him about the first night.

I did not mean to.

It came out between bites, with my hands doing most of the talking.

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