Q2. Months from now.
I look at Patricia. She’s holding a pen she isn’t using.
“The numbers are still strong,” I say. Not a plea. Just the fact. “Q4 was the best quarter on record. Memberships are up. The sponsor pull-down is real, but it’s recoverable inside this fiscal year.”
Linwood nods the way men nod when they’re not listening. “All considerations, the credit committee will review at the appropriate time, Victor. We aren’t denying. We’re deferring.”
We aren’t denying.
The folder I brought sits closed on the table. Linwood hasn’t asked to see it. Patricia is looking at the pen.
I count three more breaths. Decide what’s worth saying. Decide it isn’t anything.
“All right.”
I stand. They stand. Linwood hands me a card. Patricia walks me out. In the hallway by the elevators, she finally meets my eyes for half a second.
“Victor, I—” She stops herself. Starts again. “We’ll do what we can in Q2.”
Q2. There it is again. The other person in the room had said it; she’s saying it now. Whatever she’d been about to say first didn’t survive the corridor.
“Thank you, Patricia.”
The elevator opens. I get in alone.
Outside, the air has that early-evening edge to it that catches in the throat. Five-fifteen. I cross the lot to the Charger. Get in. Close the door. The folder is on the passenger seat where I left it.
I don’t open it.
I turn the key, and I drive.
Twenty minutes downtown.
The Southwest Financial building takes up half a block. Glass and steel and the kind of lobby that smells like nothing—like air conditioning and the faintest suggestion of money.
I walk in through the front. No briefcase, no appointment. Forty minutes of business day left.
The receptionist looks up from her monitor with the practiced smile she gives unannounced visitors. It dies a little when she sees me. She knows the face. Everyone with a phone does this week.
“I’m here to see Robert Hartwell.”
“Do you have an appointment, Mr. Kaine?”
“No.”
She hesitates, then picks up the phone. I watch her say my name. I watch her listen. I watch her color shift slightly.
“Mr. Hartwell will see you. Twentieth floor.”
The elevator is mirrored on three sides. I look like a man who hasn’t slept. I don’t fix anything.
Hartwell’s office sits at the end of a long-carpeted hallway. He’s standing when I come in, the way a man stands when he wants the moment to be his to control. Mid-fifties. Suit that costs more than a fighter’s monthly cut. Hair gone grey at the temples in the deliberate way of men who’ve decided to look distinguished rather than pretend otherwise.
“Victor.”
“Robert.”
I don’t shake his hand. I sit down in the chair across his desk without being asked. He sits a beat after.
