Security(32)

“Who gave it to you?”

“An acquaintance.”

“Close acquaintance?”

“Sometimes.”

Close acquaintanceship apparently means knowing how many tastes Tessa’s chemicals can call to a tongue’s encyclopedic memory. Such as a busy afternoon arguing with the army of interior designers, arguing during ovulation—the flavor like oysters from a restaurant tucked in the back roads of the Amalfi Coast. Tessa might have heard the acquaintance’s vow to take her there someday, but she might not have. She might have been asleep or she might have been faking.

“Sometimes?” Brian says.

“Sure. Busy guy.”

“Busy with what?”

“Likes to stay busy. Former Navy SEAL, former Rhodes Scholar. Gets things done.”

On a night when a storm tears its fingernails down the sky, she might tear her fingernails up an acquaintance’s shoulders. Having bathed prior, Tessa finds her gustatory balance favors sweetness, the tang of excellent wine, a wine served with dessert, the type of dessert served on a tiny plate, one or two bites of it at most. There, on the plate, this is a pity; it’s an odd little nadir of despair, but Tessa is the taste writ endless, until she says, “For f*ck’s sake, give it a rest.”

“A SEAL and a scholar,” Brian says. “Rare combination.”

“Rare but real.” She bites a nail, catches herself, and stops. “He’s OCD as hell, though. Talks like a robot. Like a robot if Sartre got shit--faced and built one.”

Tessa took Intro to Philosophy in college. She got an A minus.

Brian’s grinning. “He work here?”

“I can’t answer that question without proof of your security clearance.”

Jules is diagramming Tessa’s chosen place setting so she and Justin can duplicate it exactly on 175 tables. Justin is getting started on the table nearest the one Jules is diagramming. His hands and elbows move with impatience, and he glances at Jules with his mouth in a stiff line: he thinks the diagramming is unnecessary, and he believes Jules is doing it to get out of a few minutes of manual labor, and he’s right. Delores has procured the window--washing equipment. The three of them will be occupied for the next several hours.

Brian’s laughing. The elevator’s arriving. The doors open, and he and Tessa board.

Brian says, “He’s one of the guards, isn’t he?”

Tessa presses the button for the first floor. “Security specialist,” she says, breaching protocol. “I’m sure you have a girl in every thunderdome.”

Brian slumps. Now they both sound done in. “That was Mitch, not me.”

“So you’re a virgin? Wow, Bri, congrats.”

“You can really channel your inner Lorraine when you want to, you know that?”

This wounds Tessa. She tries not to show it. But it shows: her composure is too firm.

“Sorry,” Brian grunts.

“Stop it,” Tessa says, the shake of her head and the veer of her body like an attack in a fine fencing match. “Did you come here to have this out?” Brian’s “No” gets lost under Tessa’s “Fine, let’s have it out. Let’s both say what the other one did wrong. I’d love that, personally, because I have no idea what I did wrong. You were my family. You were my best friend. You and Mitch, but you more than Mitch.” She jolts, then presses on with a grimace of pure horror. “Yeah, I said it. You more than Mitch. Mitch wanted to play, all the time, even when it was time to grow up. He wanted to play with his toys, and you went along with him, to take care of him, keep him safe. But he didn’t want to be safe. I did!” She stands as tall as she can. “You decided I was worth your time. When I was eight years old and a messed--up, mute nothing, you decided to bother with me. And ten years later, I asked you to do one thing. I asked you to put your damn toys away, because Mitch dying was the worst pain I thought I’d ever go through.” She draws away from Brian, like he’s cold. “Except then you told me you were going back on the road. And that I had to look out for myself. And then you did the stunt that killed him, and I was watching on cable at a party, and you landed it perfectly, and I went and got so drunk, I was throwing up for two days after.” She’s crying. Tessa’s actually crying. “And I kept waiting to hear from you, but I didn’t. I never did, not until today, and I don’t know what I did wrong, Brian, what did I do?”

Brian goes to hold her. Tessa shoves him. The fourteenth floor appears.

Henri removes his chicken cordon bleu from the oven and plates it. He streams the soup into a shallow bowl and adds green grape slices and almonds for garnish. He changes the oven’s setting to “Broil,” moves a rack to the top tier, and slides in a cookie sheet containing the halved peach with cherry coulis brimmed where the peach’s pit would be.

The Thinker, who microwaved a Smart Ones frozen dinner (Twombley’s, the beef stroganoff) and folded the mouth of his mask to slurp plastic forkfuls (he has been eating right behind me for the past four minutes) taps at his phone.

The Killer receives the Thinker’s message, jumps up, and minces excitedly out of Room 1409. He still closes the door with stealth. He unlocks the door to Room 1408. Brian and Tessa don’t see him. He’s around the corner from the passing elevator. They’re too intent on each other, anyway.