The Amber Hour sat in the center of the high-end district where everything looked expensive, gold-rimmed menus and air that felt filtered and costly, and Wes and Reggie were still in their work suits so they blended right in, looking like a pair of young executives closing a deal.
The host bowed slightly as they walked in.
“The usual table, sir?” said the host.
“Yeah, bring us something special and a good bottle,” said Reggie.
Wes watched Reggie move through the room because it was a world he had only ever seen through the glass windows of the 7-Eleven while walking to his shift.
Men with watches worth more than cars gliding between tables, women with jeweled throats laughing at jokes that weren’t funny, and every single one of them pretending not to notice the other tables.
“Do you come here often, you like this?” said Wes.
“Once you taste the premium world the clearance racks stop making sense, you’ll see,” said Reggie.
The waiter poured two glasses of dark wine and Wes took a sip, the flavor heavy and bitter on his tongue.
“I always wondered where you got the cash,” said Wes.
“I know, but I’m under contract, because if I’d told you the truth before, they might have cut my throat,” said Reggie as he leaned in with his face gone flat.
“Listen Wes, no loose tongues and never talk about this, because I’ve seen things.”
“Seen things like what?” said Wes.
Reggie stared into his glass for a long moment, and when he spoke his voice had dropped to almost nothing.
“A couple of my superiors taught me the ropes when I started. They were nice guys, they looked out for me, they taught me how to read a client, how to leave a room without leaving a mess behind, how to spot a man with a camera.”
” And then one day, their heads showed up in a cardboard box on my doorstep.”
Wes’s glass stopped halfway to his mouth.
“What?”
“Heads. Plural,” said Reggie.
“And a few minutes later I got a text from a number I never saved. One word. I still have it, never deleted it, never will.”
He set his phone on the table between them and turned the screen around, and there it was, a message from an unsaved number, one single word.
Silence!!!.
The luxury of the room went sharp and dangerous all around them, the candlelight suddenly feeling like something that could actually burn you, and Wes set his glass down slow because his hand didn’t trust itself.
“Shit,” said Wes.
“I’m glad you didn’t tell me.”
“Honestly man, I thought you were just being a prick. A whole year of dodging me, the vague answers, the fancy apartment, the new car, and every time I asked what you actually did for a living you’d smile like an idiot and change the subject. I resented the hell out of you. I thought you got rich and got too good for the neighborhood.”
Reggie gave a dry laugh with no humor anywhere in it.
“You think I wanted that? Every time you asked about my job I had to look my best friend in the eye and lie to him, and every day I didn’t tell you was another day the company might decide I talked too much. I wasn’t too good for you, Wes, I was trying to keep you out of this.” He tipped his glass at him.
“And now you’re in it anyway, because I’m the one who called you, so here’s the new rule between us. Everything said at this table stays at this table, because this table is the only place on earth where either of us gets to be honest. Deal?”
Wes looked at him, his best friend, the guy he’d hated quietly for a year, sitting across from him with two dead men’s lessons in his mouth and a cardboard box on his doorstep he’d never once mentioned.
“Deal,” said Wes.
They clinked glasses, CLINK, and the steaks arrived a minute later, thick slabs on white plates, and Reggie cut into a piece of meat that cost more than Wes’s phone like it was nothing.
“So how’s school,” said Reggie with his mouth half full.
“You still doing those plays?”
Wes sighed and pushed food around his plate.
“There’s no money and the school doesn’t care because we’re amateurs. I tried to put together a show last semester but the costumes came out of a charity bin I literally begged for.”
“Well now you can fund it yourself, so work a bit more and build your own theater, because there is no more begging,” said Reggie.
Wes looked around at the gold rims and the jeweled throats and felt the money sitting in his pocket like a weapon.
“I never thought acting would lead to this.”
“Life is a joke, so just keep the mask on tight,” said Reggie.
A shadow fell over the table.
A woman in her fifties with a heavy pearl necklace stood smiling next to a younger woman in a tight red dress that fit like it had been sewn on her.
“Reggie, is that you dear?” said the older woman.
Reggie didn’t flinch, just wiped his mouth and stood up with a practiced smile that appeared on his face like it had been hanging on a hook.
“Mrs. Fenwick, you look stunning tonight.” He turned to Wes.
“Wes, this is Mrs. Fenwick and her friend Camille, old family friends.”
Wes stood up while Camille looked at him the way a customer looks at the price tag on a suit, slow, head to toe, and back up again.
“Mind if we join you, the place is crowded,” said Mrs.
“Please sit, we were just celebrating since my friend just finished a long shift, so excuse him if he looks drained,” said Reggie.
They sat and the air felt thin, because Wes knew exactly what family friends meant now, and the waiter was already bringing two more glasses.
Camille crossed her legs under the table and the red dress rode up her thigh a few inches and stayed there like it lived there.
“A long shift, what line of work are you in, Wes?” said Camille while she leaned forward with her eyes locked on his like she was reading a label.
“Consulting, high pressure,” said Wes.
“He’s being modest, he’s the best new talent we have,” said Reggie while giving Wes a sharp look under his smile, “but even he needs to blow off some steam after a job like today’s.”
Mrs.
Fenwick laughed with a cold sharp sound.
“I bet those jobs are exhausting, but the rewards are worth it, aren’t they?”
Wes drank his wine and realized Mrs.
Fenwick wasn’t just a friend, because she looked at Reggie with the same hunger Colleen had shown in room 714, which made this whole thing an inspection.
“So, Wes,” said Camille while her voice dropped to a whisper that still carried across the table, “does your firm handle private clients, or do you work in teams?”
“I’m still learning,” said Wes.
“Maybe I could teach you a few things, I have a soft spot for consultants,” said Camille, and under the table her heel brushed against his shin, once, deliberate, then came back.
Wes looked at Reggie, but Reggie was busy charming the mother, laughing at something that wasn’t funny, playing the perfect family friend, so there was nobody to look at except the heel climbing his calf.
He did the math on the conversation without wanting to.
How old, checked.
Solo or teams, checked.
Trainable, which meant bendable, which meant somebody was measuring how far he could be pushed before he cracked, and while she asked her soft little questions her eyes never stopped moving, down to his hands, his watch, his collar, ticking things off a list.
These weren’t questions, they were spec sheet items, and he was the item, and his skin crawled at how obvious it was once he saw it.
He looked past Camille’s shoulder at the rest of the Amber Hour, really looked this time, at the tables spaced out like displays, at three other young men in expensive suits sitting with older women under lighting angled exactly onto all of them, at the hostess steering a fresh couple toward a table right in the middle of the room like a clerk setting out new stock.
Nobody here was eating.
The plates came out untouched, the wine moved slow, and every conversation in the building bent toward whichever man looked newest.
This isn’t a restaurant, Wes thought.
It’s a showroom.
Under the table the heel found his shin again, higher this time, and pressed.