Page 12

“Nothing concrete,” Hakeem admitted. “Just a vibe.”

Layla stared at him for a second, then nodded with surprising seriousness, causing her thick black fringe to partially cover her eyes. “Okay.”

He blinked. “Okay?”

“I’m not saying ‘vibes’ are admissible in court. I’m saying I have read online about enough women ignoring their intuition and ending up buried under concrete. So maybe don’t dismiss your weird little animal instincts.”

“That is maybe the most loving thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“You’re welcome.”

A ticket was printed. Hakeem tore it off and read it.

Two House Reds. One Blackout. One fries, extra aioli.

“You should also know,” Layla added, “that you have the paranoia profile of a beautiful Victorian child.”

“Did half-Black, half-Mexican people exist in Victorian England? I don’t think we had been discovered yet.”

“I despise you and your historical accuracy. Also, I’m not sure, but I do apologize on behalf of my English ancestors, whatever the case may be.”

“Thank you, it’s truly the least you could do,” Hakeem said with affection and handed her the ticket.

“And,” she said, swiping it, “you work in a haunted appetizer dungeon. Your baseline is already off.”

That was, unfortunately, true.

Hakeem had spent so long loving the machinery of horror—its rhythm, its rules, the way fear could sharpen a room—that sometimes he forgot other people did not automatically clock which hallways were off, which shadows looked arranged, which jokes arrived with a hook in them. He always noticed. It was part of what made him good when they let him be on stage. He understood the way tension landed in a body and how a pause could change temperature.

It also meant he had a deeply unhelpful relationship to ordinary life.

Ordinary life rarely announced itself as such. It just gathered details until something in you decided they belonged together.

Across the room, Tabbi appeared out of a puff of badly timed fog like an exhausted apparition with a clipboard.

Tabitha was not old, but managing The Last Cue had given her an ageless quality, as if she had been forty-one for a thousand years. Tonight she wore black slacks, a fitted black button-down with the sleeves rolled to her elbows, and a headset she kept forgetting to mute before muttering violent things about “labor allocation.” Her winged eyeliner was sharp enough to count as a weapon. She had a crescent wrench hooked through one belt loop and three pens tucked into her collar. One of the host stand candles had gone out, and someone had gotten fake blood on the reservation tablet, and somehow none of this had stopped her from moving like a woman who understood that if she died, the building would continue operating out of spite.

She stopped at the service well, looked at Hakeem, and said, “The left side of your face is stronger.”

He blinked. “Hello to you, too.”

“Your left side is stronger,” she repeated. “In the cemetery bride sequence on Friday, you gave me a really gorgeous angle on the turn toward table four, then lost it when you crossed into the wider light. Don’t abandon your face when people are looking directly at you. That’s when it matters.”

Hakeem stared at her.

Layla didn’t even look up. “Good evening, Tabbi.”

“Hi, Layla. Tell Nadia if she monologues at table twelve again, I’m cutting her smoke break.”

“Already done.”

Tabbi nodded once like a general receiving battlefield updates, then looked back at Hakeem. “Also, your handwork was better.”

“My handwork.”

“When you picked up the champagne flute. Less broad. More intention.” She tapped her own wrist in demonstration. “You keep trying to sell distress with your shoulders. Stop. Put it in your fingers. The body betrays itself in smaller places.”

There were eleven drink tickets hanging. Somebody at the end of the bar was waving. A server needed two blood orange syrups restocked. And still, Tabbi stood there giving him performance notes with the calm assurance of a woman who had long ago decided reality would have to multitask around her.