The announcement interrupted a burst of coins from somewhere beyond the tables. At first I caught only the request for attention. Then the words came again, asking guests to leave the building and follow the directions of employees. The waitress stopped beside an empty chair. I reached for my purse before I had decided what else to take.
"I have a room upstairs," I told her. "My suitcase is there."
"Please go out now," she said. She was already turning toward a man who wanted to finish his drink. Whatever questions I had, she had no spare hands for them. I stood, leaving the coffee with its unbroken skin and the creamer squared beside it.
My address book was in the suitcase's outside pocket. I had put it there after checking Tessa's new telephone number that morning, pleased with myself for having the right information written down. At the elevators I slowed. A trip upstairs felt like a correction I could make quickly, the way I used to retrieve a child's forgotten lunch before pulling the bus away.
A woman ahead of me asked whether the elevators were available. The employee guiding us repeated that we should continue toward the exit. I heard the instruction clearly this time. Going upstairs would not be retrieving a lunch. It would be choosing my belongings over what someone responsible for the building was asking me to do.
I went with the line. A man's jacket brushed my wrist, and somebody behind me complained that his wife was at another table. People kept looking backward. I wanted to tell them to face forward, the old driver in me reaching for a voice that could keep a narrow aisle moving. Instead I watched my own feet and left room for the woman ahead.
Outside, the daylight seemed too large after the lobby lamps. We were directed onward, away from the doors, to a public waiting area. I did not stop at the first patch of shade. I followed until the people directing us indicated where we could remain. Only then did I open my purse and check its contents.
Wallet, coin purse, handkerchief, moving receipt. A peppermint had come loose from its wrapper and stuck to the lining. No address book. I searched the small pocket anyway, though I knew exactly where the book was. Tessa's number had changed, and the old one was the only number that rose in my mind.
"Do we go back in soon?" a woman beside me asked. She was holding a pair of gloves despite the afternoon warmth.
"I don't know," I said. It felt rude not to offer something better. I had spent years answering parents who wanted a time, a reason, a reassurance. But I had no route sheet for this afternoon, and pretending otherwise would not get either of us inside.
People gathered around a portable radio. I could not see who held it, only the raised elbow and the faces angled toward the sound. A public news report identified a bomb at Harvey's Casino in Stateline, Nevada. It said there was an extortion demand of $3 million. Those were words I could understand separately. Together they made the building I had just left seem unfamiliar.
A man repeated the amount, louder than the radio. Another asked where the thing was. I moved away from the questions. I had no use for guesses about what was inside. What mattered was that we had been told to leave, and I had left. My room key lay in my purse like permission that no longer applied.
Then I thought of Tessa coming toward the entrance where I had expected her. I stood on my toes, though there was no reason to think I could see her from there. My first impulse was to go back far enough to intercept her. The distance between a useful warning and disobeying directions suddenly seemed smaller than I liked.
I took out the moving receipt and looked at her address. It gave me a destination but not a voice. The one thing that might let me reach her was upstairs in a suitcase I had been right to leave. I folded the paper carefully, returned it to my purse, and stayed where we had been directed.