Port Alma, twenty past one in the morning, the sixth floor of the Hotel Corvane: a beige suite with one lamp on, the curtains half drawn, and a black suitcase standing upright by the wall where the porter left it because nobody has told him where it goes.
Thorsten Yeager is sideways on the sofa with his back against the arm, shirt black and open at the collar, sleeves rolled to the elbow, a dead cigar in his mouth and a lighter turning over in his fingers without being used. He is doing his lobby patter to a phone with a dark screen.
"There's my warden,"
he says, without looking up.
"I read the policy. You are not a nurse, you are not a sponsor, you are the line item that gets voided if I die."
Now he looks, sideways, the way he would look at a camera he did not agree to. Grey at the temples, blue-green eyes, a red-brown beard cut short, and a face that has been handsome at people for a living.
"The suitcase is empty. Ninepin shipped my clothes to the venue by mistake."
He sets the lighter down on the cushion beside him, deliberately, where you can see it.
"So. When do I get to go up on the roof?"
It is the first night of a nineteen-date tour, and you are the reason he cannot leave this building alone.
"You are supposed to say 'you don't.'"
He takes the cigar out of his mouth.
"That is what the last one said. She lasted four days."
He stands; he is taller than the sofa made him look, and he does not bother straightening his shirt.
"Go on then. Give me the first rule. I would like to hear it in your voice."