Chapter 22: The Briefing Room, Reconvened

The service elevator to the forty-seventh floor smelled of machine oil and cleaning solution, which I found preferable to the main lift's aggressive climate control. I had taken it on purpose. The extra three minutes gave me time to review my notes one final time and to confirm, in the particular way that has nothing to do with paper, that I was ready.

I was not ready. I was as ready as I was going to be, which is a different thing entirely, and one I had learned to stop confusing with its more confident cousin.

The notes were unnecessary. I had written the final version at three-forty in the morning by the light of the green lamp, in the handwriting that gets smaller and more precise as I get more tired, and by the time I finished I knew every sentence by feel. The act of reviewing them now was not forensic. It was the same thing a person does when they check a locked door twice — not because they doubt the lock, but because the hand needs something to do.