12 Bliss Street by Martha Conway

amount now and the other half in a week, and Lou agreed. Then, as they waited to cross Beach Street, Nicola wrote down her landlord’s name and address and gave it to him.
    Lou looked at the paper. “Twelve Bliss Street,” he read. “Where’s that?”
    “I have no idea. Knowing Robert, it’s probably some seedy little alley near the highway.”
    The light changed and they stepped out into the street where a few tourists were parking their cars or reading posted menus. Nicola looked at her watch.
    “Why do you meet for breakfast if you can’t do business while you’re eating?” she asked Lou.
    “Actually,” he said, “I usually do do business while I’m eating. I just, I didn’t want to this time.”
    “Why not?”
    “Well,” Lou hesitated. “For one thing I wanted to see the wharf,” he said.
    She took a chance. “You were impressed when I guessed you were a restaurant critic,” she said.
    “Food critic,” he corrected.
    “A food critic. You were impressed. You wanted to see more of me.”
    Lou smiled an easy kind of grin. “Who wouldn’t,” he said.
    They walked by the restaurants, then turned down a smaller street with a line of motel signs: Wharf Motel, Piedmont Motel, Daily and Weekly Rates. As she passed one open doorway, a man standing in the vestibule wearing a silver bracelet reached out to close the door—Nicola’s attention was caught by the bracelet and she looked up in time to see the man’s face. It was Chorizo.
    “That’s strange,” she said.
    “What?” Lou asked.
    “The man in there—we eat lunch sometimes at the same time in a café near my office. He told me he lived in Noe Valley.”
    Lou stopped for a moment and looked back at the motel.
    “Golden Gate Rooms,” he said. “Maybe he works there.”
    “And eats lunch in West Portal? It’s way across town.”
    “Did he see you, too?”
    “I’m not sure,” Nicola said, looking at the closed door.

Nine
    Chorizo locked the motel door after he closed it, yawned, then set the Vacancy sign to NO . He was tired from last night—he didn’t get done until almost four in the morning, and he still had some, what should he call it, some tidying up to do.
    When he walked back to the small room he used as an office the accountant was still sitting in front of the computer, an accounting log on her lap and two more open on the desk. She played with a strand of her hair as she examined one of the books, turned a page, then positioned the book better under the desk lamp.
    The room was dark. Although there were two square windows looking out into the yard—a small patch of sandy dirt with a few abandoned paint buckets and irregular fencing—the room was always dark. It was also crowded. Junk mail and phone books and accounting records were stacked on every conceivable surface, and a large ancient copier took up one corner. A fat gray and black cat lay on top of the copier and a litter box was positioned on the floor beside it. The room smelled of paper and pine-scented kitty litter. Chorizo picked up a small manicure case that was on his desk, the desk with the phone, and looked at the tiny steel instruments inside.
    “Is your brother coming?” he asked.
    “He said he would.”
    He moved a log book and sat down on the only other chair in the office. Then he selected an emery board and began filing his thumbnail carefully, leveling the nail in one direction. The woman’s fingernails were terrible, bitten and split. She chewed on her thumbnail as she sat there.
    “You’re very restless,” Chorizo said.
    “I’ve been here all night,” she reminded him.
    “You have until Friday,” Chorizo said. “I’m sure you can make everything clean and pretty by then.”
    “They should have audited you years ago.”
    She was young and pretty and wore small oval eyeglasses and had long dark hair and dark eyes. As she studied the book on her lap she crossed one leg over the other, then began jiggling her foot.
    “Restlessness is a