Twenty minutes later Trevor emerged looking despondent, moving slowly toward the exit. Maybe she dumped him, Lars thought. Crazy bitch. He’s better off. Lars leaned against a four-foot ceramic pot holding bamboo shoots for an hour. Eventually, he moved to the bar on the other side of the lobby, taking the last remaining seat between a woman with dreadlocks wearing a cheap job-search pants suit, and a couple starting to get handsy. The guy looked vaguely familiar, but Lars had seen so many faces working bars over the years that he just figured he’d served him once. From his stool he could see the elevators.

“Double bourbon and a Bud back,” he told the bartender.

“Start a tab?”

“No,” he said. “I’ll probably be headed out soon. Just waiting on a text.”

The bartender brought the drinks and Lars gave him one of the hundred-dollar bills from Ridley’s envelope. One thousand dollars of what the slick attorney had called “good faith” money. He slammed the bourbon, and the beer didn’t last as long as he’d hoped, so he ordered another.

He was on his third when Claudia came out of the elevator and nearly ran across the lobby. He left his beer and the change and went after her, his heart racing. It was like chasing a bag of money: Do not let it out of your sight, he thought. He followed her into the swarm of voices and horns and lights on Fifty-Seventh. She crossed Eighth and turned south, walking fast, an enormous Louis Vuitton bag slung over her shoulder. That bag probably cost five thousand dollars. That bag could pay Jen the back child support he owed. He’d actually bought his ex the $300 starter model when they first hooked up. She liked it so much she started shoplifting bigger ones from Roosevelt Field mall.

“You created a monster!” she’d joked as she showed off her loot back at her mom’s house. She was always in a great mood after she got one and she always wanted to fuck.

They were both living with their parents when they hooked up. Both about to start at Stony Brook, planning to major in business. Her dad was an accountant and, according to Jen, squeezed her mom and her out of what they deserved when he left to make another family.

“Jeni inherited his head for numbers,” her mom, Karen, told him the first time they met. They were at a pizza parlor where sirens rang to announce a customer’s birthday. “And they’re both Leos. So you can see what I’m up against.”