“I agree, but why?” a voice asked.

Zack whipped around so fast his neck cracked. Alexa was standing by his desk.

“No reason,” he bleated. “I’m just thinking out loud. It’s been a rough week.”

“I noticed,” Alexa said. “Or rather, Colette noticed. She told me earlier you had a decent call last week, but now you can’t keep them on the line to pay your rent. Literally.” Alexa took a seat on the edge of his desk.

Zack scowled. “I love it when Colette takes it upon herself to inform everyone of my progress.”

Alexa fiddled with a cigarette tucked behind her ear. “I’m pretty sure she only told me. Maybe she thinks I can motivate you.” She was wearing a blue hoodie and a bright-pink tutu. She’d swept her hair up into a cute topknot. Zack thought she looked like cotton candy in human form.

“I don’t need motivation. I’m just having an off week.”

Alexa gave him an appraising look. “You say that, and yet at the beginning of the week you showed up early for work. You’ve never done that before. Plus, every time your phone rang, you got this goofy, hopeful look on your face.”

“Your point?”

She shrugged. “I dunno, I thought maybe you were waiting for that client to call back.”

“Absolutely not,” Zack said in a flat tone. “Stop analyzing me. It’s annoying.”

“Right, and that wasn’t defensive at all.”

Zack pretended not to notice the knowing look she gave him. He absorbed himself in the task of viciously stabbing an eraser on his desk with a bent paper clip.

“All right,” Alexa said after a moment. “I was hoping you were ready to dish, but I can wait.” She rose to her feet and slid her hands into her pockets. “Let me know if you want to grab a drink later. You seem like you could use it.”

Zack felt a twinge of remorse and forced himself to smile. “Okay, I will. Now get back to work, you slacker.”

Alexa sauntered off in the direction of her desk, and Zack scrubbed a hand over his eyes. He needed to make some less perceptive friends. Or put up a curtain to block Alexa’s view of his cubicle.

Over the course of the next hour, Zack took one more client, who did absolutely nothing to improve Zack’s mood. He sounded like air being let out of a balloon and insisted on calling him “Daddy’s Little Slut.” Zack decided that was the Very Last Straw Ever and asked to go home early. Colette mercifully agreed.

The trip from Murmur Inc. in Pasadena to his apartment in Koreatown was one Zack could make in his sleep, he’d done it so many times. He hopped on the Gold Line from Del Mar to Union Station, changed over to the Purple, and then took that all the way to the Wilshire/Vermont stop. From there, he walked the last twenty minutes to his building on Eighth Street.

It was a hot day, but there was a decent breeze that carried the scent of spices from the many restaurants dotting the streets. It smelled like curry and too many bodies twenty-four hours a day. In the winter, cinnamon and an odd aroma like rusted metal made every breath burn his nostrils. Zack couldn’t say why, but he loved it. There was something so alive about it. Even if he didn’t set foot there for twenty years, he would know the area the second he smelled it, like a sensory fingerprint on his brain.