Amara's day

Amara accepts the $1,800 Tribeca anchor booking at 7:14am and rides the A/C downtown with the rack across her lap. The lobby doorman nods her through. Inside the apartment — cold-cream walls, wool rug, a linen shirt unbuttoned one button too many on a client in his mid-fifties — she hangs the first look while one of the two-man security detail wheels a brushed-aluminum case down the second hallway. She does not turn around until the lobby, where the bearded security man grips her shoulder and steers her past the convex mirror in a motion that costs her half a step. She walks to the A train with $1,800 cleared and the mirror behind her.