Chapter 23: Above the Larkin Room

On Sunday afternoon, the manager of the Larkin Room knocked on the booth door with a coffee in each hand.

"I owe you an apology," she told Ben. "And a job."

He stood in the doorway with his hair standing up and said nothing.

"There's also a room." She nodded at the ceiling. "The old caretaker's place above the hall."

"It has a bed and a kettle and a window that doesn't close. It's yours, rent free until June."

"Why?" Ben asked.

"Because I fired the only person in the building who knew how to run the board, in front of two hundred people."

She pressed a coffee into his hand.

"And because my phone has not stopped ringing since last night."

She left before he could answer.

By evening, the letter on Preston's page had been deleted. Nobody saw who did it.

By nine, the page itself had gone private.

I carried the green jacket up the narrow stairs behind the hall, and Ben carried a box of cables.

We stopped on the top step and looked at the room.

It was small and slanted and smelled of old wood.

There was a bed under the window, a kettle on a hot plate, and a shelf of unlabeled tapes.

Rain had started again, ticking at the glass.

"It's not much," Ben said.

"It has a door."

He laughed.

I hung the jacket on the chair and looked at the right sleeve.

He had sewn the seam shut that afternoon with the same black thread.

The stitches were small and even.

There was a needle still stuck through the cuff.

"I said I'd pay," Ben said behind me.

I turned.

He was standing by the shelf with a battered gray notebook in both hands.

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