I say none of that. I just say, “We’re partners, right? We need to know each other.”
She is looking at me, confused, no doubt recalling the Laszlo of an hour and a half ago, in the car on the way to the scene of death, abruptly shutting down her earnest efforts to spill her whole history. She’s trying to make sense of me, and I should tell her she’s not the first person, and it’s not worth it.
“Alison,” she says softly, with the happy wisp of a smile. “I do have a sweetheart. Her name is Alison.”
“Oh.”
“So—should we head back to the office?”
The moment is already passing—it has passed—and I let it go.
Arlo gave me to Charlie for a shadow, and he was none too excited about it.
“Are you fucking kidding me, old man?” is what Charlie said, as a matter of Record—Charlie outraged and incredulous, never mind that I was standing right there. “I’m a solo operator. Lone wolf. You know that.”
“I think for a brief period you might open your heart to show what you know to Mr. Ratesic the younger.”
Me standing there in gray, hands stuffed in my pockets, examining the floor. Charlie wasn’t worried about hurting my feelings; of all the half-hidden facts he could discern without trying, one was surely that I would worship him under any circumstance.
And I did worship him. By the end of that first day’s training I worshipped him more than I ever had before, although my worship was tinged with the dawning realization that though I had followed him into Service, I would never in a million years live up to his reputation or abilities.
It was a slow day, my first day of speculation. Watching Charlie, standing back while he reconciled petty anomalies, testified in the Small Infelicities, helped a pair of impossibly dense regular policemen make sense of a bicycle theft.
But then, we’re on the way home, we’re turning right onto Westwood Boulevard, and he jumps the car up onto the curb, slams into park, and yells, “Come on! Come on!”
I run behind him into this little gas station convenience store, and the shopkeeper and the customer spin around at the sight of us: two big men in black and gray, tromping in together, me thinking with a burst of wild pride, We’re here! The Service has arrived!
Not that I knew what the fuck we were doing there. But Charlie does—Charlie has a hunch and Charlie is right. Charlie is always right.
“Hands up, friends,” he says, speaking to the room, smiling and moving slowly across the crowded aisles, grabbing a bag of chips for later. He puts out his hand for the customer’s wallet, and the guy tries to make a break for it, and Charlie snags him quick, slams him down, yanks it from his pocket, and riffles the cash till he finds it.
“Well, what do you know?” he says, still straddling the dude, winking at me. Charlie in his black leather jacket and high black boots.
It was a counterfeit bill. One fake, in a wallet in a man’s back pocket, us driving past on Westwood Boulevard.
That was Charlie, floating above us mere mortals, the jacket and the boots and the big stand-back grin, throwing out his hands wide so the world could witness his miracles. He offered to pay for the chips but the shopkeeper wouldn’t hear of it.
We park on the Plaza and walk together through the glass lobby of the Service, and I’m just getting used to how it feels, to not be walking alone.
But then Paige presses nine in the elevator, and I say, “What are you doing?”
“What do you mean, what am I doing?”
“Why are you pressing the button for the ninth floor?”
“Isn’t that where the Liaison is?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So don’t we need to talk to him?”
“Nope.”
I cross my arms and she crosses hers too. I stare at her and she stares back at me. The elevator door opens on nine and I wait like that, daring her to get off. It slides back closed and we resume our ascent.
“Mr. Ratesic.”
“What?”
“What ‘What?’? Look. We’ve obviously got something going on here, right?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘obviously.’ I’m not a fan of the word ‘obviously,’ just in general.”
“But you don’t think it’s time to at least requisition the stretch?”
“No. I don’t think.”
“Okay, okay.”
I’m guessing the soft edge has come out of my voice again. I’m trying to be neutral, just a nice, calm, skeptical expression, but Paige is looking at me like I’m about to take a bite out of her neck.
“And what stretch of reality is it you think we need to see?”
“Just—the roof.”
“What roof?”
I’m playing devil’s advocate. I’m being an asshole. I’m somewhere in the charming middle ground between those two. This kid, she wants to jump in, both feet, jump in and grab on to something. But if she can’t make a case, build an argument, I don’t care how sensitive she is. I don’t care if she’s a thousand Charlies.
“On Vermont Avenue. The roof at the moment Crane falls. I think we can both agree, at this point, that there is something anomalous about it.”
“Oh? I recall you agreeing with me that there was nothing anomalous about the death. Should we requisition that stretch? Of us having that conversation?”
“No.” She flushes. “I just mean—the whole incident.”
“There’s no incident.”
“Well, there’s something.”
“Yeah, but is there?”
The elevator stops and settles and the door sweeps open.
“Holy cow,” says Paige, in a different voice, and I sigh, smile very slightly.
“I know.”
It’s the view. She must not have noticed it when Arlo brought her in this morning, or maybe she’s just seeing it again as if for the first time, just like I do every time, even though I’ve been coming off that elevator into this room—just one big room, totally wrapped in glass—for much of my life. We linger at the glass, held by the majesty of the sprawling city:
