Maintenance

Quinn Reyes woke up on Friday with one eye open and the terrible knowledge that dinner had not died in the night. This was rude of dinner. She lay still in bed, phone balanced on her sternum, while the ceiling fan made a clicking sound that her landlord had once described as "within range." The room was gray with early light. A library book lay facedown on the floor, overdue enough to feel personal. On the chair by the window, her black blazer hung over a red garment bag she had not touched in three years. She did not look at the garment bag. The garment bag had never done anything but contain evidence. Her phone lit. Mira: good morning to women who need witness protection Quinn closed her eye. Mira: and to their hot acquiring parties Quinn typed with her thumb. Quinn: I am blocking you. Mira: to WHO. Calvin? Quinn considered this. Calvin did own a label maker and had once talked a copier out of a paper jam using only eye contact. There were worse emergency contacts. Mira: did he recognize you Quinn stared at the words. The question had been sitting in her chest since Hayes Caldwell left the conference room. It had put on shoes. It had taken up space. It had asked for coffee. Nothing visible had crossed his face. But he had said, For whom? He had gone still at no brunch. He had looked at her phone like the crack in the corner was part of a language he already knew. Quinn typed: Quinn: I don't know. Mira responded instantly. Mira: that's bad. Quinn: Thank you. Mira: if he didn't recognize you, normal. Mira: if he did recognize you and pretended not to, hot but bad. Mira: if he sort of recognized you, WORST. then you have to act normal while his subconscious does police work. Quinn put the phone facedown on her comforter. The phone hummed again. She picked it up because she had no boundaries and because Mira knew that. Mira: dinner tonight? Quinn: It is a business meeting. Mira: in a steakhouse Quinn: He did not say steakhouse. Mira: men like that are born in steakhouses. one day a waiter lifts a silver dome and there they are. Quinn: I hate when you're vivid. Mira: wear beige. Quinn: Why? Mira: Nobody remembers beige. Quinn looked at the garment bag. Red could be remembered across years. Apparently. She threw the comforter off and went to make coffee strong enough to revoke a small license. At 8:13, she emailed Han-byul. Dear Ms. Park, Something unavoidable has come up this evening. I apologize for the short notice. Would Mr. Caldwell be available next week instead? Best, Quinn She stared at it. The email was a lie, but it wore a cardigan. She sent it. At 8:17, Han-byul replied. Ms. Reyes, Of course. Monday at 7 PM is available. Best, Han-byul Park Quinn sat at her kitchen counter and felt victory enter her body like warm bread. Then the second email arrived. Ms. Reyes, Mr. Caldwell asked me to add that Monday works if the unavoidable thing remains unavoidable. Best, Han-byul Park Quinn read it three times. There were only eleven words doing damage, but they had brought tools. At the office, nobody mentioned Friday because Quinn had made a face at 9:04 that established a litigation environment. They had work anyway. The Bellwether scope had to go out. Rina had to salvage an author bio. Sam had to explain why commenting "mother" on every BookTok video was not a platform strategy. Priya had to call Northstar, which was now Caldwell, and every spreadsheet had become threatening. Quinn buried herself in the day. It almost worked. At 11:32, a calendar invitation appeared. Caldwell / Reyes Dinner Monday, 7:00 PM Location: Lark & Ash Quinn opened a browser tab. Lark & Ash had no prices on its menu and used the word "fire-kissed" irresponsibly. She clicked decline. Reason: Client conflict. She did not have a client conflict. She had a cardiovascular conflict. At 11:35, Han-byul emailed. Ms. Reyes, No problem. Wednesday at 7 PM is now on hold. Best, Han-byul Park At 11:36, another line appeared. Mr. Caldwell asked me to add that he admires your commitment to client service. Quinn pushed her chair back. The wheels caught on the rug. She almost tipped over. Rina looked up from her desk. "Do we hate someone?" she asked. "Hypothetically," Quinn said, "if a person reschedules a business dinner twice, and the other person remains polite, what does that mean?" "That the other person is Canadian or dangerous." "Noted." Calvin appeared by the printer with a warm page in one hand. "Is this about the acquired man?" "No one is calling him that." "I am workshopping." "Stop." "The hostile takehottie?" Priya dropped her pen. "Calvin." "Withdrawn." Quinn pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes until tiny sparks appeared. "I am going to dinner," she said. Sam spun around in his chair. "With him?" "With the new CEO of our parent company." "That sounds like with him." "It is a stakeholder alignment conversation." "At Lark & Ash?" Quinn lowered her hands. Sam held up both palms. "I know restaurants." "Apparently everyone knows restaurants except me." "Their bread has a cult following." "Bread should not have followers." "That bread does." Quinn stood. "I am getting air." "It's raining," Rina said. "Then I am getting weather." Outside, the sidewalk shone black beneath a thin May rain. Quinn stood under the awning with no umbrella. Her phone was dark in her hand, the cracked corner making a small white line through nothing. She opened her email. Ms. Park, Wednesday is fine. Best, Quinn She sent it before her body could object. Wednesday was not fine. Wednesday arrived anyway. Quinn wore beige. Not beige, exactly. Stone. She had learned this distinction from a client whose memoir had involved both divorce and linen. She wore a stone blazer, black trousers, her unnecessary glasses, and earrings small enough to have alibis. At 6:52, she stood outside Lark & Ash and looked through the window. The restaurant glowed like money had learned candlelight. Dark wood. White plates. Servers moving with the haunted calm of people who knew the soup cost thirty dollars. Hayes Caldwell sat at a table near the back, reading. Not his phone. Not a menu. Printed pages. Quinn hated him. She had built an entire professional identity on being the only person in a room still willing to print things. Now he was sitting there with paper like a challenge. Her phone lit. Mira: beige? Quinn: Stone. Mira: i'm proud of you and disappointed by you Quinn put the phone in her bag. When she reached the table, Hayes stood. "Ms. Reyes." "Mr. Caldwell." "Hayes is still fine." "Mr. Caldwell continues to have structural advantages." The waiter appeared with water. Quinn sat before Hayes could pull out her chair, because she could not survive that and maintain a tax ID number. Hayes noticed. Of course he did. His hand paused on the back of the chair, then retreated. "Thank you for making time," he said. "You were persistent." "You were busy." "Both things can be true." "Often are." The waiter asked if they wanted drinks. "Sparkling water," Quinn said. "Black coffee," Hayes said. The waiter blinked once. "With dinner?" "Yes." Quinn looked at Hayes. "That's upsetting." "The coffee?" "The confidence." He looked almost amused. "Do you want one?" "Absolutely not. I respect sleep as a concept." "As a concept." "Not in practice." The printed pages beside his plate were the Bellwether deck. "You printed my deck," she said. "I read better on paper." This was intolerable. "Most people pretend to read decks," Quinn said. "Most decks reward that." "Mine?" "Punishes it." She took a sip of water so her mouth could do something besides smile. The first twenty minutes were, against Quinn's will, useful. Hayes asked about Vine + Verse's client concentration, margins, staffing pressure, and how much of their success relied on Quinn personally catching every falling knife. He did not ask the kind of questions men asked after skimming a memo in a car. He asked the kind that made Priya's spreadsheet rise in Quinn's mind and start pointing to cells. That should have helped. It did not. Because he also listened. He listened like he had nowhere else to be. Like her answer was not a bridge to his next sentence. Like the difference between author marketing and publisher marketing mattered. The food arrived. Quinn had ordered salmon because it was the least emotionally suggestive entree. Hayes had ordered steak because Mira was, irritatingly, a prophet. Halfway through dinner, Hayes set his fork down. "Can I ask you something unrelated to integration?" No, Quinn thought. "Of course," she said. "I'm trying to find someone I met three years ago." The restaurant sound dropped out. Not entirely. It narrowed. Forks. Glass. Rain against the window. Quinn reached for her water. "At the Halcyon Gala," he said. Her fingers closed around the glass. Condensation slid under her thumb. "I don't know if you were there," he said. "Northstar had people in the room. Vine + Verse might have been represented." "We were very small three years ago." "Smaller than now?" "Most things were smaller three years ago. Except my student loans." He accepted that with a small nod. "She said her name was Mira." Quinn swallowed water and immediately regretted doing it with a throat. Hayes watched the glass return to the table. "Mira," Quinn said. "Yes." "Common name." "Is it?" "Common enough." "I don't suppose Vine + Verse has a Mira on staff." "No." One syllable. Heroic. Perfect. She deserved a plaque. Hayes's fingers rested beside his coffee cup. No ring. No fidgeting. One expensive watch, face turned toward the inside of his wrist. "Freelancer?" he asked. "We use many freelancers." "Named Mira?" "I would have to check our records." "Please don't." Quinn looked at him. He smiled at his coffee, not at her. "That sounded like an audit. I apologize." "Do you always ask subsidiaries to locate women from galas?" "Only at dinner." "Efficient." "Embarrassing." The word sat between them, plain and uncorporate. Quinn's hand moved toward her bag before she stopped it. Inside, folded into the back pocket of her wallet, was the hotel stationery she had written on at 2:14 in the morning three years ago. She knew the first line without looking. Hayes, Except she had not known he was Hayes then. She had written Dear you, which was the sort of thing a person wrote when sleep-deprived and wearing borrowed satin. "Did she owe you money?" Quinn asked. Hayes looked up. "No." "Did she steal something?" "No." "Then why find her?" His thumb touched the handle of the coffee cup. Once. "She made me laugh," he said. This was not fair. There should have been a regulation. Quinn looked down at her salmon. It had become hostile. "At a gala," she said. "Low bar." "Not for me." The honest thing slipped out so quietly that the waiter walked past it without noticing. Quinn did. Hayes seemed to realize it at the same time. His shoulders changed by half an inch. She set her fork down. "I'm sorry," she said. "For what?" Everything. "That your search has been inefficient." His mouth moved. Not quite a smile. "I have survived worse operational failures." "That sounds like a line from your annual report." "It was not." She laughed. It was a mistake. Not because laughing was bad. Laughing was ordinary. People laughed at dinner. People laughed near candlelight and coffee cups and men they had once danced with under false pretenses. The problem was that Hayes heard it. His face changed. A muscle moved near his mouth and he caught it before it became anything. Quinn looked away first. After dinner, he insisted on driving her home because it was raining hard enough to make the streetlights look underwater. Quinn considered refusing, then imagined Priya learning she had died of independence beside a valet stand. The car was black and quiet and smelled faintly like leather and cedar. No driver. Hayes drove himself, which felt illegal in a man with a building named after his family. They did not talk for five blocks. Quinn watched the city move in fractured pieces across the window. "You dislike steakhouse lighting," Hayes said. "I dislike being perceived under steakhouse lighting." "Different." "Very." At a red light, he glanced at her. "Have I met you before, Reyes?" Her heart did something stupid and athletic. The rain ticked against the roof. His hands rested at ten and two, which was unfairly responsible. Quinn looked straight ahead. "I would remember," she said. The light changed. Hayes drove. At her building, he pulled to the curb and left the engine running. She unbuckled too quickly. The seatbelt snapped back with a small, accusatory click. "Thank you for dinner," she said. "Thank you for rescheduling it three times." "Twice." "Three, if you count emotionally." She opened the door. "Good night, Mr. Caldwell." "Good night, Ms. Reyes." She stepped onto the sidewalk. Before she could close the door, he leaned slightly across the passenger seat. "For what it's worth," he said, "stone was a good choice." Quinn froze. Hayes looked at her through the rain-dark car. His expression was mild. Unreadable. Horrible. She shut the door. The car pulled away. Mira was sitting on Quinn's apartment floor when Quinn got upstairs, eating cereal out of a mug. Quinn stopped in the doorway. "Why are you here?" "Emergency." "Whose?" "Yours." "Did I give you a key?" "You gave me emotional access in 2009 and never revoked it." "That is not a key." Mira pointed the spoon at her. "Did he know?" Quinn took off one shoe. Then the other. She lined them beside the door because if her life had to be chaos, her shoes did not. "He asked about you." Mira's face lit up. "Me?" "Do not enjoy this." "I'm not enjoying it. I'm absorbing impact." "With cereal." "Carbs are structural." Quinn walked into the kitchen, opened the junk drawer, and stared at its contents without knowing why. Rubber bands. Batteries. Kitchen scissors with orange handles. "He thinks your name is Mira," Quinn said. "Technically, that is my name." "He thinks my name was Mira." "Also technically my fault." "Mira." "I said technically." Quinn turned around. Mira had the mug in both hands now. Her expression had softened, which was worse than smug. Smug Quinn could fight. "You could tell him," Mira said. Quinn laughed once. "Absolutely not." "Why?" "Because he is my boss." "Parent-company CEO." "That is worse. That is boss in a helicopter." "Okay." "Because I lied." "You panicked." "For three years?" "You have stamina." Quinn picked up the scissors. Mira's eyes dropped to them. "What are we doing?" "Maintenance." "On what, your bangs?" "My entire head." Mira stood so fast cereal sloshed onto her hand. "No." "Stay Quinn Reyes at work," Quinn said. "Never wear red. Wear the terrible glasses. Cut my hair. He will not connect them." "I said maybe trim." "You said cut your hair." "I was being colorful." "You are always being colorful. That is why I wore red to a gala and committed identity fraud." "Social identity fraud." "Stop adding adjectives to crimes." In the bathroom, the mirror light hummed. Quinn twisted her hair over one shoulder. It was longer than she meant to keep it, dark and heavy and currently behaving like a witness. Mira stood behind her in the doorway, cereal mug abandoned on the sink. "Quinn." "It grows." "So do consequences." Quinn looked at herself. Stone blazer. Terrible glasses. Mouth too red from biting the inside of it during dinner. On the sink, her wallet lay open. The folded square of Halcyon Hotel stationery had slipped halfway out, soft at the corners from years of being carried and not sent. Dear you, The kitchen scissors were wrong for it. She didn't care.