Through the long glass window I watched as the mechanic tinkered under the hood of my car. I’d been lucky, he’d said. The damage was mostly superficial a couple flat tires, a broken window, and some bullet holes in the paint, no biggie! It was the bullet hole in the alternatorthat called for the mechanic—and the tow truck.

            What’s funny is that the police had used that same line. You got lucky, the police man had said. My precious yellow car had taken most of the damage. If it hadn’t of been parked there…

            But my mind rejected such thoughts. Instead I could only watch the mechanic, his head hidden somewhere under the hood, try to put one part of my life back in order. It was calming to watch something so wonderfully mundane.

            “Evie, are you okay?” Harley was sitting next to me in the hard plastic chairs sipping on a cup of awful smelling coffee that Ben’s Auto Shop had left cooling on a concession counter. “You’ve been pretty quiet.”

            “Just thinking,” I said with an air of affected carelessness. “How are you doing?”

            “Fine, thanks to you.” He leaned his head back against the wall.

            And if I’d only been fast enough to reach Sarah…

            She wasn’t even hurt that bad, but somehow, I still felt bad. I mean, it was my fault she got shoot, right? Let’s be real here, Sarah wouldn’t have gotten hurt if I hadn’t been taking my nosy ass around asking questions.

            “Evie, it’s okay.”

            “What?”

            “It’s not your fault. You didn’t pull the trigger.” He reached over and put his hand on top of mine. “And if it means anything, you saved me.”

            “Thanks.” I sighed. “…How’d you know what I was thinking?”

            “You have an easily read face. You always have.”

            “I forget sometimes that we grew up together.”

            “It’s easy to forget. You…look so different than how you did as a child.” There was an air of longing in his voice that I willfully ignored. “You remember that first summer I came home after I moved to New York?”

            How could I forget my first timid steps into womanhood?...Okay, timid is a falsehood. I was being fast as hell. “Vaguely.”

            “You remember when we had plans to have dinner that night…just the two of us?”

            It was the first time he’d ever mentioned that summer in ten years. It had always been some unspoken rule between us. That summer never happened. He never kissed me on the porch of my mother’s house. There was never any attraction. Whatever lies utilized to overlook things we—no, he didn’t want to talk about. And I’d respected that, but now…

             “Boy, what is taking so long on that car?”

            He ignored my diversions much the way the other members of his family were prone to doing. “I always wanted to apologize for that. I’d had a fight with my parents…just walked out. I’d meant to say goodbye to you, to Han and Henry, to everyone but I was such self-centered kid, you know?”

            Harley apologizing? It’s not that he wouldn’t do it, just that, it wouldn’t occur to him under normal circumstances. “Well, thanks for saying sorry about that. It wasn’t a big deal though.”

            He knew I was lying but didn’t mention it. “So who did you end up, uh, having dinner with?”
            “Rusty Valentine.”

            “I remember that kid! The little chubby one with the sweaty hands that followed you around?”
            “Yeah…yeah. That was it.” Fucking Rusty Valentine and his sweaty palms and the back seat of his mom’s station wagon…with the seatbelt buckle poking me in the ass the whole time.

            “He was such a dork, man. It was real sweet how into you he was, though. I’ll never forget that look on his face that day we all went to the beach and you wore that bikini. All us guys thought he was gonna have another asthma attack!”

            “Yes. That is a thing that happened. Reminiscing is super fun but back to the matter at hand.”

            “You don’t need to be embarrassed. He was just a kid, probably nervous to be around such a beautiful girl.”

            “I wouldn’t say embarrassed, just—you know.” Wait a minute. Did he just call me beautiful?  “Anyway, I almost forgot to ask you. I was talking to police the other day and—“

            “You know a cop? Who?”

            “…No one you’d know. I was talking to this friend and he mentioned that in the room on the dresser, they found eight hundred and fifty dollars worth of cash and a dozen roses.”

            His brow furrowed. “Evie, you know I don’t like to carry cash on me like that. I’m always worried I’ll lose it.”

            I thought so. “What about Abbey?”

            “I’d been paying her way that whole week. If she did have money on her, she waited until I left the room to take it out ‘cause I never saw it.”

            “The flowers?”

            He shook his head. “There weren’t any flowers in that room when I left.”

            A part of me had been hoping it was just his own forgetfulness that made him not mention the flowers or money, but by some inkling I knew. Someone else gave her those flowers. Probably right before they killed her.

            I couldn’t imagine what the money was about but if anyone was going to bring her flowers it would probably be her stalker…

            Mid-thought Ben the mechanic walked in the room, “Alright Evie, we got a damage report and it’s a doozy.”

            Oh joy. Harley and I followed him up to the cash register.

            “We replaced the tires and the windows but left the paint alone like you asked. That alternator’s gonna take a couple days to get over here so it’ll probably be all fixed by Wednesday.”

            “How much?”

            He smiled. “About nine-fifty.”

            I chuckled. “I’m sorry I think my brain malfunctioned. Did you say nine hundred and fifty dollars?”

            “Plus tax…Evie are you okay?”

            I held my hand over my heart. “I’m sorry I just saw my life flash before my eyes. This is like a homicide by overcharging.”

            He laughed. “Sorry nothing I can do about that. I won’t ask you to pay until you pick it up of course.”

            “Right.”

            “I’ve got the number for the nearest car rental place all ready to go.”

            “That’s so helpful of you,” I said through gritted teeth. “Thank you.”

            “No. Thank you.”

            After hitching a ride to the car rental place, and picking up a sparkly new rental car to use for the next couple of days, Harley and I drove over to the Hampton Inn. I figured the police would have the room barred by now but I still wanted to see if I could get anything out of the night clerk who had been on duty that night.

            “Is that the guy?” I asked Harley as we walked through the glass doors.

            He looked through the glass and glanced over at the man sitting behind the check-in desk.

            “Yeah. Same guy as last week.”

            The doors slid open silently when we walked through. The concierge put away the phone he had been playing with and smiled. “Hello. Welcome to the Hampton Inn. We have rooms starting at forty-nine ninety-nine a night.”

            “Actually we’re not here for a room,” I said. “You were working here last Monday, right?”

            “Yes…” He looked around, unsure.

            “We were just wondering if you remember anyone checking in early Tuesday morning around two.”

            “That’s confidential.”

            “I’m sure it is. I’m not asking for room numbers and credit card info,” I said with my best silver tongue. “I just wonder about the description of anyone who might have come in around that time.”

            “Yeah, still confidential.  Can’t technically tell you anything about other customers.”

            Little bitch is playing hardball. So not in the mood after the day I’ve had. “Fine,” I said with way more attitude than I meant. “Do you remember this guy?” I pointed at Harley.

            “Well, yeah. You’re pretty hard to forget. You were with the blonde, right?”

            “Yes. You remember her? Do you remember when I stepped out?”

            “Well…yeah.” He looked ready to balk.

            “Hey, man. You said you weren’t allowed to share info about other customers. But if I’m asking about me, then it’s okay.”

            “I guess.”

            “Do you remember what time he left,” I said.

            “Sometime early in the morning—like two or something.”

            That checks out. “Anyone check in while he was gone?”

            “I—uh, can’t say.”

            It was an odd face he made that in turn made me raise an eyebrow. I understood job security and protocol, and I was no stranger to dealing with customers who asked the damnedest questions, but at no time did I ever make a face like that. He looked frightened.

            “How about this. How many people checked in while Harley was gone?”

            “…Two. A couple.”

            “And how many people just walked in…”

            “Three.” The non-specific questions seemed to relax him.

            “And were any of these people tall…intimidating.”

            “One of the men.”

            So, discounting the couple, out of three people one of them was a man. But because he made the distinction at all I can assume that at least one woman came in as well. So two men and one woman.

            I focused on the men. “What did he look like?”

            “I don’t feel comfortable with that.”

            I pulled out my phone and strolled through the pictures. “Is this him?” I held up the picture I’d snapped of Larry’s poster.

            The guy’s poker face was terrible because without even saying so his face gave away the association. Assuming they don’t know each other personally, it seems that night clerk was familiar with stalker Larry. That’s really all I needed.

            “What did the other guy look like?”

            “He—just like an ordinary guy.” He shrugged for effect.

            I wouldn’t be able to confirm that Delgatto had stopped by that night, at least not without a picture. But I decided to keep it in the back of my mind that the possibility was there.

            After that brief encounter I’d had enough with this lousy day so I drove Harley back to the Cho’s house.

            “You have an interesting hobby,” Harley said from the passenger seat of the rental.

            “Hobbies are usually more fun.”

            “I guess your right about that.” As his hand reached out for the handle, he stalled. “Evie, thanks for doing this. I didn’t realize how…eventful this sort of thing could be. You’re a good friend.”

            “Thanks, so are you.”

            He chortled at that. “You don’t have to lie to me. I know I wasn’t always so kind. I didn’t consider others, I just…I was confused for a long time.”

            “Confused about what?” That perplexed me. As long as I’d know him he’d always seemed to have it together.

            “I just—it’s hard to explain.”

            “Well, just try.”

            “Growing up, the other two had their roles you know? There was this understanding of who they were and what they were about. I mean, Han was born in Korea you know? Spent the first four years of his life there.  When we’d go home, both sides of the family would gush over him, ‘oh how cute he’s gotten’, ‘he used to have such fat cheeks’, stuff like that…they barely even knew me.”

            He looked sad for a moment. “There’s a reason he speaks Korean so much better than me and Henry. Technically it’s his first language. I use to try to be like him, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t who I was. And Henry. He’s the one with the American name, you know? The one born and conceived here. The one of us who belonged here the most. I can’t tell you how many times kids would make fun of my name as a kid.”

            “That’s why you started calling yourself Harley?”

            He nodded. “It’s not that I don’t like my real name, it’s just that I always wanted to find that place where I absolutely fit in like the other two.”

            I didn’t understand where all this talk was coming from until I realized it was his way of explaining why he left all those years ago. “That’s why you moved to New York.”

            He sighed. “I didn’t leave because of something you or my family did. I left because…I needed to figure out who Harley was—or Ha Le, whoever. You know what I mean.”

            “A little, but not completely,” I was an only child after all. “But for the record, there was never any confusion about who you were to me. You’re Harley Cho, you’re forgetful but sweet, a little self-centered but well meaning. You were the boy I had a huge crush on—“

            “I knew it.” He smiled over at me in the partial dark.

            “Of course you did. Everyone did. The point is you don’t have to worry about being anyone other than who you are.”

            For some reason he gave me his saddest look yet. “I don’t want to go to prison, but I don’t want to see you get hurt either. You’re my friend but sometimes I make everything about me when it’s not. I’ll get a lawyer, don’t do this. This is really bad.”

            “But we’re getting so close now. I know it.”

            “I’ll never forgive myself if you get hurt. Just stop with the investigation. I’ll pay for the damages to your car—“

            “No.”

            “Evie, now’s not the time to be stubborn.”

            Especially about paying for my car, but shit, I was on a roll. “Giving up isn’t who I am.”

            “Then just be careful. Okay?”

            I nodded as he made to get out of the car. “Harley.”

            “Hmm?”

            Looking in his eyes I asked the question that had been on my lips for the last ten years. “Why did you stand me up? Please, I have to know.”

            I thought maybe his next remark would be an inquiry about what I was talking about—a reminder for a man so forgetful. To my surprise he looked at me with knowing eyes. Time stood still as I waited for him to finally answer a decade long mystery.

            “Ask Henry.”