Page 5 of Puck Me Like You Own Me

I put my keys on the counter.

2

The elevator in this building takes fifty-one seconds from the lobby.

I fill a glass at the tap, then set it on the left side of the empty chair, where a right-handed man will reach without thinking. I open the folder to the photograph of his brother’s hand. It stays face-up at my elbow, angled so I’m not showing it to him but not hiding it, either.

The deadbolt turns at 1:24. At 1:25, he’s standing in his own doorway with his keys in his fist. He doesn’t move for the better part of a minute. I let him have it. Men who go still are working. A man working will sit down eventually.

He sits down at 1:31.

He puts the keys on the counter first. Then he takes off his jacket, hanging it on the hook. There’s a discipline in that. I file that without examining it.

He doesn’t touch the water.

He doesn’t look at the photograph. I’ve put a ruined hand eight inches from a man’s elbow perhaps forty times in twenty years. No one has ever refused to look. His eyes go to it, register it, come off it, and stay off. The transaction costs him about a third of a second.

“What’s the number?” he says.

Not who are you. Not I’m calling the police. Not that’s my brother’s hand.

“One million four hundred thousand and change,” I say. “The change is nine thousand two hundred and forty. I’d like to get rid of the change tonight, if you’ll let me, because carrying it makes the arithmetic ugly for both of us.”

“Get rid of it.”

“One point four, then.”

“He told me one point four in the truck two hours ago.”

“He was being honest with you. He was probably surprised to find he could be.” I turn the top sheet of the second row around so it faces him. “This is you, not him. Four years. I’ve read all of it. You gross more than most men in this city will see in a lifetime. You have two hundred and sixty thousand liquid. The reason for that is on the page in front of you, in transfers, every month, going back further than the paper does.”

He looks at the page, and his face gives me nothing. I’ve been told my own face gives nothing, and I’ve made a living out of it. I’ll say this for him: he’s better at it than I am, even though he’s eleven years younger than me.

“So you know I can’t pay it,” he says.

“You can’t pay it in cash. That’s correct. But the debt is no longer collectible in cash. Nobody is going to come to you with a number and a deadline. That’s finished. What’s happening instead is that I’m being installed.”

“Installed.”

“As your private financial manager. That’s a real designation. I hold a real license. My registration will survive anyone who cares to look at it. As of tomorrow, I have signing visibility on every account you hold. I see the alerts before you do. I see your calendar, your travel, your medicals, everything a representative is entitled to see. When your agent asks who I am, I’m the man you hired in November because you were embarrassed about the state of your books. That story will hold because it’s very nearly true.”

The refrigerator cycles on behind him. Eight floors down, a truck takes the corner too fast. The sound climbs the side of the building.

He turns the page with one finger, reads three lines, and stops at the transfers to a contracting business that’s been failing for at least two years.

“You’ve had these since when?”

“Nine days.”

“They’re printed.”

“They’re printed because I read better on paper. I wanted you to see the volume of it in one look instead of scrolling.” I let that sit. “You can burn them when I go. It won’t change anything. That’s the second point: nothing in this room is leverage. Everything in this room is already true.”

“For how long,” he says.

“Until the balance is closed.”

“And what does that cost?”