Chapter 13: What He Heard

"Say it plainly," I told him. "Start from the dinner."

Ansel didn't sit down, so neither did I.

"You were between the yacht heir and me," he said. "He was explaining his boat."

"His boat had a name."

"It had a name and a helipad. You stopped listening at the helipad."

I took the oven timer off its hook and turned it to twenty.

"You get twenty minutes," I said. "Then I decide."

"That's generous."

"It's the number you like."

He looked at the timer, and it began to tick.

"You looked at the hotel heir, then the yacht heir, then me," Ansel said. "You thought: him."

"I don't remember thinking that."

"You thought: him, because he'll always leave the room first, so I'll never have to compete for him."

The kitchen was very quiet, apart from the timer.

I had thought it exactly that way, in exactly those words, and I had never said it to anyone.

"The lemon tart," I said.

"You thought: lemon tart, and then, don't ask, they'll say it's off the menu."

"I thought you read my face."

"I read your head. Your face did nothing. It was the most closed face I've ever seen."

I put both hands flat on the counter.

"The terrace," I said. "The French. The thing I thought backward."

"Your French is worse than your thinking."

"The shower."

"Yes."

"The elevator with the doorman."

"Both times," Ansel said.

"There was a second time?"

"There was a second time, and the doorman had a moustache."

I put my forehead on the counter and left it there.

When I looked up, he hadn't moved.

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