. . . you’re crazy. This isn’t the time. Besides, they’ve got it sealed up tight.”
She rolls her eyes like I’m being a spoilsport. “Come on! Just the lobby. I’ve heard it’s unbelievable, all the Egyptian stuff.”
I wonder if somebody slipped a drug into her glass. “The lobby’s seven floors down,” I remind her. “Even if we were crazy enough to go, it would take way too long.”
“The Nefertiti Lounge, then. It’s right in there. Just a few yards away.”
“It’s blocked off, Jet. Everybody wants to see the reno—” Another roar of applause drowns my voice, then rises into the night sky.
“I’d say the headliner just hit the stage,” she says with a smile. “Come on!”
“What happened to playing it cool tonight?”
“Screw that.” She grabs my hand and pulls me toward the door. As we go through, I hear a drawl that sounds like Blake Donnelly’s over the PA.
“Sixty years after he last played this rooftop, here’s Jerry Lee Lewis, the Killer, from FERRIDAY, LOUISIANA!”
Another roar goes up, but the door shuts behind us before I hear even one piano chord. A middle-aged black man holding a case of champagne looks up in surprise.
“Can I help you folks?”
“No, thank you,” Jet replies. “We just need to check something for Beau Holland.”
And with that we’re past him, moving through a penthouse smelling of wet paint. Jet leads me through another door, outside of which is a small service elevator. As soon as we’re shut into the small cubicle, she takes my face in her hands and rises for another kiss.
“What the hell’s going on?” I ask, holding her away from me as the elevator descends. You’re acting like this is high school, I want to add, but I don’t. Jet never acted like this in high school.
“Sally was right,” she says irritably. “You and Nadine look much too much like a couple for my taste.”
I start to laugh, but there’s genuine jealousy in her eyes. I didn’t realize Jet had been standing close enough to hear Sally’s remark.
“Are you getting a taste for younger women?” she asks.
“Are you serious? Nadine’s only eight years younger than we are.”
Jet’s eyebrows arch. “I’d give a lot to be thirty-eight again.”
“Really? I wouldn’t.”
As the lights on the brass panel above us tick off the floors, I hit M to stop us on the mezzanine. The lobby should be visible from there, and we’re less likely to be seen by anyone who might have sneaked into the lobby from the first-floor entrance. Jet starts to complain, then nods approval as the car grinds to a stop.
Before the door opens, she steals her kiss, a quick, urgent probing of the tongue that makes clear she wants more. This new incarnation of my lover has thrown me, and I feel a strong impulse to go straight back to the roof before we get into real trouble. But Jet is already dragging me from the elevator.
“Look!” she cries, pointing down a narrow corridor toward a polished brass balcony rail. “I’ll bet that’s it.”
Even before we reach the rail, I see the points of the great marble obelisks that bookend the lobby entrance. Jet gasps when she reaches the rail, then pulls me to her side. Even in the half-light of security lamps, the lobby is something to behold. Scaffolding and drop cloths cover several areas, but the Egyptian art and hieroglyphics have obviously been restored, and a massive Sphinx gazes silently over the room, sitting atop a fountain that at this moment is completely dry.
“That fountain was inspired by one in Paris,” Jet says. “This is going to be so great for the city. That EB-5 scam would have been a disaster.”
“Jet, seriously, why are we down here?” I take her by the shoulder and turn her so that she must look into my eyes. “You don’t care about this kind of crap.”
“Sure, I do. I just don’t usually have time to focus on it.”
“But tonight you do? Of all nights? I thought you wanted to talk about Paul. Or Buck. I’ve been thinking we should file a legal challenge to temporarily halt construction at the mill site.”
“You need bones to do that. Not pottery.”
“But with the coroner’s statement—”
“Byron Ellis isn’t a pathologist. He’s not even an M.D. Can we please just drop all that for tonight? Let’s finish what we started this afternoon.”
She reaches between us and gives my penis a hard squeeze. I’m not shocked by her directness, but by her ignoring a subject that on any