What the hell. He’d started going into the office an hour early, so it wasn’t like he’d be late to work if he hung around the coffee stand a little longer. There’d be another bus along later. And two espressos might be exactly what he needed today to nail his monthly quota and secure his move to that corner office Drake Medford had promised him.

An image of Ed, the guy currently in that corner office, flashed through his mind. Ed had been around for years and no longer seemed to care about his monthly quota. If you worked for Drake Medford, that was a bad thing. Zach told himself not to think about where Ed would end up. That wasn’t his responsibility.

So he drank his second espresso, munched on a flaky pastelito and listened to Iris’s favorite Celia Cruz CD while some guys in dreadlocks went strolling by. At times like this he wondered what the folks back in Auburn, Illinois, would make of it all. No one in his family had expressed any desire to visit, so he’d had to make trips home in order to see them.

Because that only happened about once a year, he’d constructed his own little support group in Manhattan, and Iris was definitely included. He would hate to think she’d fallen on hard times. Maybe he could smoke out some information on her financial picture and see if he could guide her in some way.

He waited until she’d served a couple who looked like they might be honeymooners judging from the way they held hands and couldn’t stop gazing at each other. Their obvious affection sent a pang of regret running through him. Adrienne had never looked at him that way, which should have given him a clue.

When the coast was clear, he wandered closer to the coffee stand. “I hope your tax guy advised you to take a deduction for your CD player and the music you buy,” he said. “That’s an integral part of your business.”