It was heavier than I expected.

And I stood there in the dim empty restaurant, in the gray morning light coming through the front windows, holding a stranger’s leather binder that my manager was too rattled to explain, and I had the distinct and dizzying sense of standing on the edge of something I could not see the bottom of.

Later, when I understood everything, I would appreciate the strange justice in the fact that Julian was the one who had to hand me that binder.

The man who had, the night before, treated me as beneath his consideration, as a problem to be disposed of, was now standing pale and shaken in front of me, holding out a heavy leather folder full of things he did not understand, deferring to me, needing me to make sense of it.