Emilio took the cart out on five. He stood with the elevator door held open until the kitchen man had got the back wheel over the gap, then looked at Cal.
“The water's in 604.”
Cal nodded. Gideon pressed his own hand against the close-door button before Emilio had finished stepping away.
On six, the passenger corridor opened on one side of a small vestibule and the service passage on the other. Gideon started toward his own room. Cal stepped in front of him and showed him the key card.
“Here.”
“I know where he put me.”
“604. Not yours.”
Gideon stared at him, then turned without another word. Cal opened the door.
The hospitality suite had been used by too many people for too many small jobs. Gift cases stood beneath a console. Someone's spare shoes sat beside the bedroom door. Flowers not needed downstairs filled a bucket near the little dining table. Emilio had put cold water in the sitting room with glasses and a folded cloth beneath it.
Gideon went straight to the sofa. He put his phone down beside him and touched his mouth again. The bleeding had slowed. Cal brought him a glass of water, which he took without looking up.
“I'll get some ice,” Cal said.
“There's a bucket.”
It was in the bathroom. Cal could see it through the partly open bedroom door. He went in, found ice in a little cooler beneath it and wrapped a handful in a clean cloth. The bed was still made. A garment bag lay across a chair, empty.
Gideon took the ice and held it against his lip. His shoulders lowered. In the elevator he'd looked like a man looking for somewhere to put his anger. On the sofa he looked tired and hurt.
Cal could have apologized. He put his bag on the side table instead.
“He'll come up.”
“She should come.”
“I can't make her.”
Gideon closed his eyes, then opened them. “No. You can't.”
Cal checked the phone. Twenty-three thirty-eight. He had been gone longer than he wanted. He could go down, tell Adrian where the man was and go back to filming the people who'd still be here at one. It would be possible to pretend the worst part of the evening had already happened.
He looked at the sofa, the front door reflected faintly in the dark window, the open doorway beyond Gideon's shoulder.
Adrian would come in and sit. There would be a conversation about what each man wanted. Cal had shown Gideon a picture and lost control of the next question. He didn't have to do that again.
He opened the bag wider.
The main camera had been off since the dance. It felt cool in his hand. He changed the battery for a charged one and the cards for a fresh pair, putting the used cards into their little plastic case. He turned the monitor out and set the camera low in the open bag. The side folded away from the lens without covering it. From here he had the sofa, the room entrance and the bedroom doorway. Not everything, but enough of a room in which men might think they were unobserved.
He could hear Gideon drinking. He kept his hands steady until the lens was clear of the loose strap.
When he started recording, his phone showed 23:40.
“What are you doing?” Gideon asked.
“Putting the kit down. I'll have somebody get it.”
“You aren't staying?”
Cal stood. For a second it sounded like a request. Gideon had stopped holding the ice to his mouth. The skin beneath it was pale and wet.
“I'm working.”
Gideon looked at him until Cal felt the plain absurdity of the words. Then he picked up his phone, and the moment was gone.
“Send her up,” he said.
Cal left him sitting there alive, glass between his knees, the wet cloth on the arm of the sofa. In the vestibule he took the phone out again. Two minutes had passed. He wrote to Juno: Bag in 604. Can you collect when you get a minute? A's in it.
He added that the key was with him, then deleted that because she had the ordinary event key packet downstairs. He sent the message and took the passenger elevator down, leaving the service passage behind him.
Juno met him near the ballroom doors.
“You're all right?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She looked at the mark on his wrist, where Gideon had hit it with the phone.
“I need your camera,” he said. “Mine's in the bag.”
She took B off her shoulder and handed it to him. The strap was damp. He checked the card time, then lifted it toward the room. C was still running in its fixed place, holding the wide view as a waiter crossed the dance floor with a pile of folded napkins.
“I'll go in a minute,” Juno said. “I'm getting something first.”
She went toward the work table. Cal stayed by the door, filming the bandleader close his book. He looked for Adrian but couldn't see him. Lena stood near the far windows with Pam. Neither was speaking.
He moved into the room and filmed a couple sitting with their shoes off, the man rubbing one foot through his sock. There was no interview to ask for, no promise to extract. They let him watch until the woman noticed and drew her bare foot under the chair. He lowered the camera.
Rafi found him beside the wide camera.
“What happened to Gideon?”
“Adrian's speaking to him.”
“He all right?”
“He's upstairs.”
Rafi looked at the door. He seemed about to go after him, then someone called his name from the floor. He lifted both hands in apology and went to join the last few dancers.
Cal checked the phone. No message from Juno yet. He had a small nervous wish to go upstairs and listen at the door. The camera would listen. That was why he'd put it there. He turned B back toward the room.
Adrian came in a little after midnight.
He had buttoned his cuff badly, one button through the wrong hole so the cloth twisted over the old watch. He stood at the door and looked around as if the room had changed while he'd been gone. It had. Tables had been cleared, jackets gone, a broad strip of carpet showing where the extra chairs had stood.
Cal went to him.
“All right?”
Adrian touched the front of his shirt. He seemed to notice the cuff and began trying to undo it with one hand.
Cal put B down against his chest. “Do you want me to—”
“No.”
He stopped, closed his eyes for a second and opened them again.
“Sorry. No. I've got it.”
He hadn't got it. Cal caught the loose edge while Adrian pulled the button free. Between them they put the cuff right, a little physical problem that yielded to patient fingers.
Adrian looked at the camera. “Are you finished?”
“Almost.”
“Sit down a minute.”
They sat at the edge of an abandoned table. Two small cakes stood on a plate between them, one untouched, one split open. Adrian took the untouched one and tried to get it out of its paper case. The edge came away in tiny strips.
“You eat these things?” he asked.
“When they're included.”
Adrian almost smiled. He put the cake back on the plate.
“She liked the film you showed last night.”
“There'll be more.”
“I know.”
He looked toward Lena. She was alone by the windows now, phone held in both hands. He did not call her. He remained sitting beside Cal.
Cal had wanted the man to ask him to stay when he wasn't holding a camera. Here it was, at a table covered with crumbs, and he couldn't think of anything to say.
His phone lit at 00:08.
Got the bag. You left A running.
He turned the screen down before Adrian could see it.
“Juno,” he said. “Collecting the kit.”
Adrian nodded. He reached for the little cake again, then left it.
After a while Lena came over. She stood behind his chair and put a hand on his shoulder. Adrian covered it with his own, too quickly, as though he was afraid she might take it away. Cal picked up B and got out of the chair.
He left them together without filming it.
At the work table A stood beside Juno's card reader. The open bag was on the floor. She was copying the source to the silver drive, then to the black one. His used cards lay in their little case beside the wallet. She had stopped the camera when she picked it up. Its monitor was dark now.
“You had it looking at the sofa,” she said.
Cal waited.
She was watching the transfer, not a playback. “Was that on purpose?”
“I wanted the conversation.”
“You could have told me.”
He looked toward the couple at the far end of the room. “I've got it now.”
“You've got whatever it recorded. I haven't looked.”
The silver drive finished. She checked it and began the second copy. Cal touched the top of the camera, then took his hand away.
“Don't clear those cards.”
She didn't answer. She never cleared the used cards during an event.
“Juno.”
“I heard you.”
She opened a drawer in her little tool bag and took out a piece of tape. She wrote the card pair's label, put it on the case and moved it into the wallet. His whole secret came down to her ordinary handwriting beside all the other work.
He put B on the table. “I'm doing one last pass of the room.”
“Are you using that?”
“No. Just looking.”
She pulled the camera closer to herself and checked its remaining media. He watched her hands until he realized he was waiting for her to ask again about payment or credit. She didn't ask. She took the little laptop out of her bag, put it beside the drives and went back to what she was doing.
Cal found a bottle of cold water, drank half and carried the rest through the ballroom. A waiter was taking the last candles off the tables. At the garden doors the planner had taken her shoes off and was holding them by the heels. She nodded when she saw him, too tired to ask for anything.
He went outside without a camera. From the terrace he could see the moored yacht, its dark windows catching the hotel's light, the empty gangway waiting for morning. He stood there until the water bottle warmed in his hand.