The Lady Upstairs’ Staffing Agency was located in the center of Little Busan Plaza, on the second floor, above Fish Heaven Aquarium Repair and Seven Galbi BBQ, and between a nail salon that never did any business—I had my own theories about that—and a payday loan shop that had long since been closed.

You could say we brought style to the place.

Seven Galbi was the main attraction, and their delicious specialty beef kept me shampooing my hair every day, trying to get the smell out. It was not the aphrodisiac you might have supposed. On weekends and at night, the restaurant was so crowded that we had to give the valet our keys. But during the day, I could’ve parked my car across three spaces and there still would’ve been room to spare. That day, there were only two other cars parked in the lot, a gray Mercedes and an oxidizing Honda that had once been beige.

It was a habit from another lifetime, one I couldn’t seem to shake, the need to be at the office by 8 a.m. Even when I knew Lou and Jackal wouldn’t be in for hours still. Even when I was so hungover I couldn’t remember my zip code. But that morning, having the threat of the Lady hanging over my head added an extra incentive. I needed all the time I could get to figure out Ellen’s next rendezvous.

I could feel Jackal and last night between my legs with each stair up to our office—the pleasant soreness of the well fucked, a little throbbing ache that lives in you like a secret—taking the steps two at a time to feel it deeper. It gave me something to focus on while I gnawed on the soft guts of a croissant, my pantyhose already sweat-chafing my thighs from the single flight of stairs.

Even this early in the morning, the smell of browning meat wafted up with me. I suppressed a gag. The sun bounced off the aluminum roof and cast dusty rays into my hangover, subtle as a spotlight, and I kept my head ducked like I was trying to crawl up the stairs incognito.

I’d almost bumped into her before I looked up.

She could’ve been twenty-five or forty, depending on which part of her you were looking at, with the calves of a go-go dancer and the carefully moisturized lipstick lines of a well-tended woman battling the inevitable with grace. She wore a silk blouse the color of a ripe melon, and the inch of dark roots under her bottle job seemed exactly right—the obvious artifice making it clear how good she looked. Large smoky sunglasses shaded her eyes, and she had one hand on our door. I couldn’t tell if she was coming or going.