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THIRTY-ONE

Later there is a knock on her office door.

“Come in,” she calls out, looking up from her computer, surprised to see Jonathan’s face peer around the edge of the doorframe.

“Jonathan! Hi.” She stands up.

“Can I talk to you?” Jonathan asks, looking sheepish.

“Yes, come in.” Alex starts to move another chair closer to her desk, but Jonathan makes an uncomfortable face, glancing around the office and then averting his eyes.

“Would you mind somewhere else?” He gestures at the hallway.

“Of course.” Alex follows him all the way down the hall until they reach the door to the old stairwell.

“This okay? There’s no one ever back here.”

“Sure,” Alex says, swallowing her fear of the staircase and following Jonathan through the fire door. Once they are on the landing, he turns to her apologetically.

“I’m sorry. Her—your—office still makes me feel really strange. It seems too soon to be in there with someone else somehow. I know that isn’t nice for you to hear probably, but every time I set foot in there, I feel like I’m going to have a panic attack.” The admission doesn’t make her feel bad; she’s grateful to have Jonathan sharing anything with her.

“Were you and Francis close?” Alex asks. She hasn’t ever considered Jonathan’s relationship to Francis, but working at the front desk, he would have seen her every day. She wonders what he might be able to tell her about Francis’s last days.

“I loved her,” he says quickly. “There was a time when I felt like nobody but her understood me. She cared for me, too, but honestly, it was more me needing her than her needing me. I think I felt almost betrayed when she died.”

Alex reaches out and places a hand gently on his shoulder. He doesn’t flinch.

“It’s so hard to lose the people who care for us. Or to see them replaced?” she says meaningfully.

Jonathan gives her a crooked smile, knowing he’s being called out. He leans over and crosses his arms on the banister.

“You tried to make things hard for me,” Alex says, unsure she can trust him. “When I started here.”

“Just a little.” He scrunches up his nose. “She was my favorite person in the universe. And I didn’t like how Howard did it—so publicly. I didn’t think Francis would have liked that.”

Jonathan has been mean to her out of loyalty to Francis? Even if it made her life harder, Alex can kind of understand that. She allows herself to lean against the banister next to him. “I know. I was angry about the whole thing, too, honestly. I didn’t know her personally like you did, but it felt off to me. The entire reason I filled out the application was to see what kind of screening they were using to choose her replacement. Well, that and a bottle of wine,” she admits.

“You hate-applied.” He smirks.

“You know, I think I did.” Their laughter bounces through the stairwell.

“I’m glad you’re the one who got the job, Alex. I’m sorry for being a dick. She was like an aunt to me. It’s why I had a hard time accepting you.”

“I can imagine,” Alex says, self-doubt blooming in her chest. “Even I have had a hard time accepting me as her replacement.”

“You’re doing great,” Jonathan says. The unexpected kindness of him saying so makes her want to cry.

“I feel like a mess. Francis seemed so calm, so together. Whereas I’m a”—she gestures at herself helplessly—“a total disaster. Who am I to give advice?”

Jonathan shakes his head. “Oh, please. Whatever image you have in your head of Francis, please just erase it. She was so far from having it all together. She had a bad temper sometimes. She swore like a sailor. And she could be impossible.” He smiles at the memory. “Living some perfect life wouldn’t have made her good at her job though, Alex. Empathy. The ability to imagine yourself in anyone else’s life. That’s what you have in common. I didn’t want to admit it, but I could tell even before you turned in that first column that you were going to be good at this.”

Now Alex is tearing up. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Anyway, I owe you for earlier. In case you couldn’t tell, Regina absolutely hates me.”

“Yeah, what is up with her?” She wipes her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt.

He sighs and rests his head on his arms for a moment. “Well, there was this one time I really fucked up.”

“You!” Alex says in mock horror.

“Yeah.” He cringes, lowering his voice to a near whisper. “I know. This was bad though. It was last year, just before Francis… I was making a dinner reservation for him at one of his favorite places. It was at this old hotel bar he likes to go to that is still somehow impossible to get a table at, but I kept calling and pulling every string and I finally snagged a spot for two.”

He leans toward her. “Well, a couple of days prior Regina had come up to the office to meet him. She was super dressed up, so I thought they were going to one of their gala things. I said, as she was leaving, ‘Don’t worry, I booked your reservation for Wednesday night.’

“I knew as soon as she whipped around to look at me I had done something unspeakable. ‘ Excuse me?’ she said. I had this crazy bolt of recognition then. The reservation wasn’t for her.”

“What did you do?”

“I tried to backpedal, naturally. I felt so terrible. But she is too smart, I could see her putting things together. I think there was something that added up to her then, something about Howard.”

“That he was having an affair.”

“So, you’ve heard the rumors too?” Jonathan sighs. He puts his head in his hands for a few seconds, like he is hiding from the truth of it.

“Do you know who it was?” She is so close to the information she needs that she can almost taste it.

“No. The thing about Howard is he’s always very, very discreet,” Jonathan says. “I assumed he’d put an end to it. But then a few months later, he started looking really bad. He lost weight and his skin got that waxy look to it. The way it does now most of the time. You’ve seen it.”

“Like he’s drinking a lot?” Alex ventures meekly.

He nods, looking miserably down into the stairwell.

“But he didn’t stop wearing his wedding ring until recently. He had it on when he interviewed me a couple of weeks ago,” Alex says, confused.

“I know. I’m not sure what happened. They must have been trying to make it work and it all just fell apart. It can’t be easy to be married to Regina.”

“No,” Alex agrees. “Do you like working here, Jonathan?”

“I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that. Except my boyfriend, who is constantly trying to get me to quit.”

“He thinks it’s bad for you?”

“Look, this place is in transition. You have to understand I was devoted to this job before. I always thought it would be the place I stayed forever. Back before Francis died I was happy with that. But there has been a real shift. The vibe has changed. Everything is different now, or at least feels different. I loved her, truly. It was her who kept me from getting fired during the whole Regina debacle. So to answer your question, yes and no.”

“I wish I could have seen it then,” Alex says.

“You would have liked it, I think.” He looks down over the tops of his arms into the endless loop of the stairs. “So creepy back here, isn’t it?”

“The architect died, apparently,” Alex says, shuddering. A door opens and closes somewhere far below, echoing up through the opening.

“Oh God, how morbid. I never heard that.” He straightens up and brushes the dust off his pant legs. “Well, duty calls, I suppose.”

“No rest for the wicked,” Alex says.

“Yes, I’m sure Regina would agree.” He turns toward the door.

“Hey, Jonathan.” Alex begins to follow him. “Where did you say you made the reservation for Howard?”

“I don’t know why he always went to this place inside some old hotel.” He makes a face. “I think the bar is called the Bird or the Wren or something.”

“The Nest?” she asks, her heart pounding.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” he says as the door shuts behind him, echoing into the stairwell.

Before she follows him back into the hall, Alex pulls out her phone and texts Raymond.

Want to go out for a little fact-finding drink tonight?