But I knew one thing.
Vanessa had made a mistake.
She assumed I had nothing.
The East Side Motel did not serve breakfast. There was a vending machine by the ice dispenser on the first floor. Stale Pop-Tarts for two dollars and fifty cents. Burnt coffee for a dollar seventy-five.
I bought both at six-thirty in the morning because I had been awake since four, listening to trucks rumble past on Route 119. I had not slept in a bed that narrow since nursing school in 1975.
At eight-forty-five, I took the bus into Manhattan.
Sixty-three minutes. Standing room only. I was squeezed between a teenager with headphones and a man who smelled like wet wool. The girl kept glancing at me like I was taking up her space. I wanted to tell her I had worked twelve-hour shifts on my feet for thirty years. Standing on a bus was nothing.
I did not say anything.
Mr. Brennan’s office was on Forty-Seventh Street, on the fourth floor of a brick building wedged between a jewelry shop and a deli.
No elevator.
I climbed the stairs slowly, my knees aching. The carpet in the hallway was burgundy and worn thin in the middle. The door had frosted glass with gold lettering.
