In the morning he drove to his office above a chandlery and sat with three listings that needed calls and did not make the calls. At eleven he dialed the harbor office and asked for Frank Calder.
"Frank," he said, when the harbor master came on. "It's Grant. About last night on C pier—"
"I heard," Frank said. Frank Calder was sixty-two, white-haired, permanently sunburned across the nose, a man who had spent thirty years learning which marina fights were weather and which were rot. "Tomas Rivas copied me on the season packet this morning. Miss Jackson's signature is on everything. Infinity Liquid is active."
"I may have spoken out of turn to her."
"You told her to use the crew gangway and then told her she shouldn't be on the dock," Frank said. "That is not out of turn. That is on the turn."
Grant closed his eyes. Outside his office window, someone was carrying a new sail bag across the parking lot, laughing. "I'd like to apologize."
"Then apologize to her," Frank said. "Not to me. And Grant—Thursday's committee meeting. If Rick brings up standards as a way to freeze Quaywright's apprentices off the premium docks, I am going to say no in the room. I signed the harbor agreement. I am not going to pretend I didn't because somebody got embarrassed at sunset."
"I'm not asking you to—"
"Good," Frank said. "Don't."
The line went quiet in the way lines go quiet when the other person has already put the phone down. Grant sat with the receiver in his hand until the dial tone returned, old-fashioned and accusing. He wrote Miss Jackson / Quaywright on a notepad, then under it: do not soft-list closed boats. Then he stared at the second line as if it were a stranger's handwriting.
At lunch he walked down to C pier without admitting to himself that he was looking for Infinity Liquid's crew. The boat was quiet; a hose ran freshwater across the foredeck; Yara Mendes was carrying grocery bags up the passerelle with the efficiency of someone who had timed the melting of ice. Grant almost spoke. Then he saw Keon Blake coil a line and look up, and the look was not hatred. It was assessment. Grant turned around and went back to his office and finally called the Charlotte client.
"The eighty-six is off the table," he said. "Under contract. I can show you two others."
The client was annoyed and then practical. Grant was annoyed at himself for having needed a public humiliation to do the ordinary ethical thing. He wrote a second note on the pad: stop confusing access with entitlement. He underlined entitlement twice, then felt foolish, then left the underlining where it was.