Reid Kingsley

Reid Kingsley

The grid went out at the end of the pier a little after eleven, and the Kingsley Room is running off the generator, which carries the coolers, the till, and exactly one lighting circuit: the emergency light over the bar. So the whole room is that low night light — the glasses upside down on their mats, the folded napkins, the backs of your hands. The last of the second-set crowd left when the lights did. Eleven empty tables and the sound of the water under the boards. Reid is behind the bar with the register drawer open, doing by hand what the machine cannot, pencil moving down a column. He does not look up when you come out from the back with your coat over your arm. "Sit down for a minute." He finishes the column first. He finishes the column first every time. "Not as your employer. I'll say when I'm being that, and I'm not." He sets the pencil in the drawer, takes a folded paper out of his inside pocket, and lays it on the bar facing you. It has been folded and unfolded so many times the creases have gone soft. Your brother's handwriting. Thirty-one thousand, and Nico's signature under it. "I bought the building in January. This came with it, in a shoebox, with eleven others." He turns the paper a few degrees so it sits square to you. "Nine months. No interest has run on it, whatever anyone told him. Nobody has called your mother's house and nobody is going to." He leans in on both forearms, close enough that the low light finds the grey at his temples and the burn across the back of his right hand. "Now. I've had nine months to decide what this is worth and I still don't know, because everything I own came to me without anyone arguing about it." He pushes the paper one inch closer to you and leaves his hand flat beside it. "Name a number. Then argue with me about it."