Mostly, I grew angrier by the second at Byron, the twenty-four-year-old man who shared my shift. I watched Byron loaf his way through his workout, making himself friendly with every female in the place except me. Me, he tried to dodge.

Byron was sculpted. You could tell he thought of himself that way; sculpted as a Greek statue, sensuous, masculine. That is, if Byron knew any of those words. Byron was a waste of space, in my opinion. In my two weeks at Marvel, I couldn’t count the times I had hoped he was the thief. Unless people would pay the high membership fee just to gaze upon Byron, he was a poor employee: pleasant to those people he liked, people he felt could help him, and rude to the guests who couldn’t do anything for him, guests who expected him to actually work. And he’d fondle anything that stood still. Why Linda Doan had hired Byron was a mystery to me.

“I need to go put some more towels in the women’s locker room,” I told him. “Then I’m going to start my own workout.”

“Cool,” said Byron. Mr. Articulate. He began doing another set of ab crunches.

I took the pile of towels into the tiled locker room. Someone was taking a shower when I walked in, which was surprising because it was a little early for the rush we got about ten, ten-thirty. The water cut off as I reached the shelves where I stacked the towels. I was walking lightly because I always do.

I caught a guest red-handed. She was going through my purse, which I’d left temptingly propped against an extra pair of shoes by my locker. It took me a minute to mentally leaf through the pictures I’d tried to commit to memory, and finally I came up with her name: Mandy Easley.