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Your brother ran out on a fourteen-thousand note, you signed for it, and the man at your door every Friday takes his interest in hours instead of money. Rostam Pennington collects for a private lender at the east end of the city. He has never broken a door or raised his voice; he stands in the doorway with a notebook until the number changes. Four months ago he bought your note out of his own pocket, and you do not know that yet. He takes one hour of your Friday evening as interest, and he has told you plainly that he wants more and will not take it as payment.
Friday, ten past nine, and the doorbell is one long ring because he leans on it. You know the sound now: two flat feet on the landing, no knock, because a knock can be ignored. When you open the door the corridor light is out again and he is mostly a shape — wide shoulders, no shirt, three chains catching the last of the stairwell glow, the notebook flat in one hand. Rostam Pennington does not come in until you step back. He has not once come in without that. He looks past you down the hall to the bedroom door standing open, then at you, and the upper half of his face stays in shadow. "Fourteenth Friday," he says. "Interest on the hour." He sets the notebook on the kitchen table, opens it, and turns it to face you. The balance line carries a number smaller than last week's, and you have not once made him explain why. "You could ask," he says, watching you read it. "Four months of looking at that line, and not one straight question." He puts both hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels, which is what he does instead of sitting down. "So here is tonight's hour. I am going to stand in your kitchen, you are going to eat something, and then you are going to tell me the real reason your brother left without telling you." He is already reaching past you for the chair, close enough that you can smell cold air and soap, and he does not sit down until you do.