Chapter 2
Evan POV
The 7 bus runs late on Thursdays.
I've been standing at the stop for eleven minutes — I know because I've checked my phone twice, not out of impatience but out of habit, the same way I track the time between Lily's medication doses and the hours left on a parking meter I can't afford to let expire.
The wind off the street carries fast food grease and bus exhaust, and the sky above the intersection is the particular gray of a Lockwood afternoon that can't commit to rain.
My phone has the address pulled up: 1140 Meridian Avenue, Suite 3B. The listing Richard sent me was sparse — a single paragraph, a building name, a contact. "Blue Tears. Seeking waitstaff for evening and late-night shifts. Inquire with Dom, front management."
I know what Blue Tears is. I did the research the same night Richard's message came through, sitting on the edge of my bed with Lily's latest hospital invoice open in another tab.
The club caters to a clientele that doesn't discuss how they spend their evenings, and offers two categories of employment: the ones who pour drinks and carry trays, and the ones who provide something the menu doesn't list. Richard knows which side of it I'm on. He knows because I told him, plainly, the first time he floated something like this: I need money, not a career change.
The bus comes. I get on.
I find a seat near the middle and set my bag on my knees. The invoice is still inside it. Three thousand eight hundred and forty-seven dollars — the current outstanding balance on Lily's inpatient cardiac care at St. Maria, not counting the specialist consultations billed separately, or the medication adjustments from last week that haven't been processed yet.
I know the number by heart the way you know the weight of something you carry everywhere. Our mother's savings account, left behind like an apology when I was fifteen and Lily was twelve, had already been drained by February. I've been filling the gap since with restaurant shifts and freelance bookkeeping gigs and the specific kind of creative accounting that a business management degree teaches you to do with very small sums of money. The patchwork has started coming apart.
Lily called me yesterday morning, before her physical therapy. She sounded good — or she worked to sound good, which is the same thing with her. "Don't push yourself too hard, Evan. I'm fine. You go do what you need to do."
She's been self-studying for her business degree from a hospital bed, textbooks stacked on her bedside table next to the heart monitor. She's been saying some version of that sentence since she was twelve and Dad's debts started arriving in the mail.
I get off two stops early and walk the last four blocks. The address resolves into a converted mid-century building with a renovated facade, understated in the way that money is understated when it has stopped announcing itself.
No sign on the exterior. A number above the door in brushed steel, and an intercom panel with a single button. I press it, state my name, say Richard sent me. The lock disengages with a soft click.
Dom's office is at the end of a third-floor corridor. The door is open when I arrive, and he's already watching me cross the threshold — a man in his late forties, broad-shouldered, in a well-cut charcoal suit. His expression is neutral in the specific way a good poker player's face is neutral: not blank, just withheld.
"Evan Dalton," I say, and extend my hand. "Richard mentioned you were looking for waitstaff."
He shakes it with a firm, brief grip and gestures to the chair across from his desk. "He mentioned you were looking for work." He studies me for a moment — the professional appraisal of someone deciding how much something is worth. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-three."
"Work history?"
"Restaurants, mostly. Four years of front-of-house, two of which were management-adjacent. I was running floor shifts at Carver's on Delaney by the time I was twenty-one." I pause. "I also have a business degree, which is probably overkill for waitstaff, but it means I'm organized and I don't lose things."
Something in his expression shifts, faintly, in the direction of approval. He laces his fingers together on the desk.
"We have two positions available," he says, and his tone is even, the way a doctor's is when presenting options that require a decision. "Standard service staff — floor, bar support, event setup. Hourly plus tips, and the tips here are significant." He pauses.
"The second position is companion work. Private, client-selected, fully consensual. That side of the business pays two to three thousand per engagement, sometimes more. You're the type our higher-end clientele tends to request. I think you'd do well at it, if you were open to the consideration."
I keep my face quiet. I'd known this was coming — I'd mapped it out on the bus, the way this conversation would go, how the numbers would sound when said aloud. Two to three thousand dollars.
"I'm interested in the service position," I say. My voice comes out level, which I'm glad about.
Dom nods, unhurried. "I want to be clear that the companion role is legitimate work. The people who do it are professionals, and they're compensated accordingly. It's not a judgment I'm making about you or anyone else."
"I know," I say. "I don't have any judgment about it either. It's just not the position I'm here for."
He accepts this without further argument. There's something in the way he conducts this conversation — the absence of pressure, the complete neutrality — that I hadn't expected, and I find myself recalibrating slightly, the defensiveness I'd walked in with losing a little of its edge.
We spend the next twenty minutes going through the actual details: shift structure, dress code, the protocol for handling high-profile guests. I ask about payment processing, how tips are tracked, whether there are deductions for uniform. He answers each question with the same calm precision.
By the time he slides the confidentiality agreement across the desk, I've already understood what I'm agreeing to. I read the full document. Dom waits without impatience. I sign it.
"First shift is tonight," he says. "Eight o'clock. Come through the service entrance on the east side of the building."
"I'll be there," I say.
The street outside is the same street I walked in from. I stand on the sidewalk for a moment and let the city noise settle around me.
Two to three thousand dollars per engagement.
The number surfaces again before I can stop it, and for a moment I let it sit there, next to the invoice figure, next to the image of Lily's textbooks stacked beside the heart monitor. Then I put it back down. I've made my calculation, I've made it clearly, and I don't need to revisit it on the sidewalk.
Tonight I'm going to carry trays and pour drinks and do my job well. That's what I came here for. The rest of it has nothing to do with me.
I check the time. Four hours before my shift. Enough to go home, change, eat something, and get back on the bus.
I start walking.
