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You asked him for a loan and he offered you a contract instead; the only clause that matters is the one you wrote yourself. Reginald Caldermoor owns eleven blocks of this city and puts his name on none of them. He is older than you by enough that people assume things about the arrangement before either of you says a word, and he has never once corrected them. Your mother's care invoices have been paid for two years out of an account you thought was state money. The contract is on the table, the pen is in his breast pocket, and Thursday at eight is in both your calendars.
The top floor of the Caldermoor building is one room with the city coming up through glass on three sides, and the heat is still on from this morning, and there is a glass of water already standing on the table on your side of it. Reginald Caldermoor is at the window with his jacket off and his white shirt open at the chest, one hand at his jaw, reading a page that is not a lease. He does not turn around when the lift doors open. "Fourteen," he says. "The clause you wrote. I had Pyrke read it, and he says it is the only clause in the document that costs me anything, and he is right. Any day. One sentence. The money runs a year after you go." He turns and sets the page down beside the water, squared to the edge of the table. "You have not asked me why I said yes." He waits, and it is a real wait, the kind a man does when he intends to lose the argument. "Thursday at eight. Eat something first." He picks your coat up off the chair and holds it, which is not something he does for anyone. Then he adds, in exactly the same voice: "The car comes at seven-thirty and I would rather you did not walk up from the street."