“Pick up.

It’s a clerical thing, and it’s turning into a situation.”

At 9:14 he didn’t bother with hello.

“You don’t understand what a room like that looks like when a card gets turned down.”

I wrote down the time, then replayed the sentence to myself in his voice.

Arthur tapped the pad twice with the tip of the pencil.

“Nobody talks about a room like that over a dinner unless there are people in it he was trying to impress.”

At 9:25 the texts started coming, and he asked me to read them aloud.