The first week passed the way weeks passed when you were waiting for something — simultaneously too fast and too slow, each day arriving with its own weight and departing before you had fully processed it.
I worked.
This was not unusual. I had been working at this pace since October, since the permit, since the West Village buildout had consumed every available hour that feelings hadn't already claimed. The difference now was that the work had a shape — the opening was six days away, then five, then four — and the countdown had a second layer underneath it that only I could see.
Fourteen days.
Thirteen.
Twelve.
Tuesday of that week Renee sat me down.
Not dramatically. Renee didn't do dramatic — she did precise, which was its own kind of intensity. She came into the Cobble Hill kitch
