I set the phone down on the desk and I think about that.
I run Todd through the Hampton's reservation system.
He's paid for two more nights.
He’s even had dinner orders charged to the room from last night and the night before that put him in the bar from seven to nine both nights.
I call a man I know in Marble Falls. We don't say much to each other.
I tell him a guest at the Hampton on Highway 281 is gonna have a plumbing issue in his room tonight.
The kind of plumbing issue that's gonna require him to be moved to a different floor and that's gonna run his shower cold for the duration of his stay.
The man on the other end says he'll see what he can do.
I tell him I appreciate it and hang up.
That's not vengeance.
Vengeance would be me driving to Marble Falls and dragging Todd Whitley into the parking lot by the back of his pressed jeans.
What I just did is inconvenient.
I made a man's vacation marginally worse. I made him spend tomorrow morning on the phone with a front desk clerk. I made his shower cold.
Small problems pile up faster than big ones in a man's head.
By the time Todd checks out of the Hampton, he's gonna be in a bad enough mood that going home to Garrison is gonna feel like a reward.
I run a second check on Hartley.
His phone is still pinging off a tower outside Llano.
Still local. Still close. Still quiet.
I make a note of it and close the right monitor and head into the kitchen.
I eat standing at the counter because I don't sit down when I eat alone.
It’s the last of the chicken salad Hadley sent over yesterday.
Two slices of bread that have been on the counter long enough to go a little stale. A glass of water.
I eat fast, the way a man eats when food is fuel and nothing else.
The whole time I'm eating I'm thinking about her kitchen.
About Nash on the bench beside me asking me if Diesel could really drive a tractor.
About Hadley laughing into her coffee while she watched the two of us work through a story about a dog ordering at a Whataburger drive-thru.
I have eaten about four thousand meals alone over the last decade.
Two meals at her table cracked something open I didn't know was sealed. Something about those two are pulling at my heartstrings.
I finish the chicken salad, rinse the plate, and dry it with the green dishtowel she left here once and forgot to take back.
That's mine to keep too.
