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  I look up and again our eyes meet. He regards me with a look that sears me to the core, and then—slowly—his eyes lower to my neck. What does he want with my neck?

  He’s staring at my dorky bow tie, of course. God, why did I not listen to Francine on the bow tie? What is wrong with me?

  He has my phone in his hand, and he tucks it into the designated phone pocket of my bag.

  I gasp, pulse racing.

  How did he know?

  And then I smile, because I can’t help myself. “Bingo,” I whisper fervently.

  And then I think, did I just say “bingo” to Malcolm Blackberg? But it was just incredibly perceptive of him. And sweet, too.

  I stand, clutching my bag. “Thank you, you’re very kind,” I blurt.

  He just regards me and my neck all fierce and scowly, and somebody behind him sniffs, and he turns and goes.

  Leaving me shaking in my worn brown loafers, awash in his powerful masculine energy.

  Only too late do I realize that I just blew my chance to speak with him. I try to catch up, but the elevator doors close quickly. I look for the button, but there’s just a blank pad.

  “That’s not a public elevator, miss.” It’s the bushy-bearded security guard again. He gestures toward a different set of elevators.

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  “Second floor.”

  I nod.

  2

  Malcolm

  * * *

  In Medieval London, they put heads on pikes as a warning to people who might venture across the bridge. Beware. Watch your step. Figure out the customs and follow them.

  Or else.

  The heads sometimes belonged to criminals, though sometimes they were simply unlucky members of the unwashed rabble in the wrong place at the wrong time—such was the system of the day.

  At any rate, heads on pikes. As signage, you really can’t do better than heads on pikes, can you? When you have heads on pikes, there is no need for words. There is no need to spell out even a single word. Beware, for example. There would be no need to spell out such a thing when there are heads on pikes in the vicinity. It’s a perfect communication, really, suggesting to all who come to stay out of people’s ways. And by people, I mean me.

  “You’re very kind,” my assistant Ted echoes dryly as the doors shut.

  “So very kind.” Lynette says. “Wrong building, Riding Hood.”

  I look down at my phone, spinning through messages, feeling unsettled.

  Kaufenmeier joins us on four, and the elevator continues.

  “So very, very kind,” Lynette says again. She’s one of my lawyers, one of my best, but still. I give her a dark look because I heard her the first time around. The smirk disappears from her face.

  “What’s going on?” Kaufenmeier asks.

  “Mal had to rescue a damsel in distress,” says Ted. “A little gray bird flew into him and dropped all of her feathers.”

  “And Mal helps pick them up, and she goes, ‘You’re very kind,’” Lynette says. “Didn’t recognize him, I guess.”

  “Very kind,” Kaufenmeier says, also finding it amusing. “Kind like the big bad wolf, maybe.”

  “Kind like the scorpion while he’s getting his turtle ride,” Lynette adds with a quirk of her brow, managing to make her reference to the fable sound utterly filthy.

  “Do I not pay a small fortune for guards to keep the public out of the lobby?” I grumble. “How about somebody checks on what their policy is for letting people roam around down there without a clear purpose.”

  “Get right on it,” Ted says.

  I stare down at my phone, but I’m back to the girl in the lobby. She was annoying, not watching where she was going, but Ted has her wrong when he says she didn’t know who I am. She knew precisely who I am.

  I stay out of the spotlight as much as I can, but people still recognize me at times; I can always tell from the way they turn guarded, expression hardened. It’s a small click on the dial, but one I know well, having seen it so often.

  Sometimes it’s in their posture. Sometimes they actually back up a step, unaware they’re doing it.

  People rarely know what they’re doing. They rarely see what’s in front of their faces. It’s why I’m so rich and why everybody else is so pathetic.

  So the woman. I saw the recognition in her eyes, but she just stayed there with a kind of wide-open and frank gaze. She didn’t shut it down even when I got close to her, knelt close enough to overwhelm her.

  You’re so kind.

  It was hardly kindness. It’s just that she was so buttoned down and tied up, right down to the bow around her neck, scrabbling her scattered belongings into just-so order. I had this overwhelming sense of her—I can’t quite describe it—but I was driven to grab her phone and I knew instinctually that pocket is where she’d want it, a theory I proceeded to test. And naturally, I was correct.

  I like to stay sharp about people. It’s how I win.

  A test of a theory; nothing more. And her, she was an open book, barely guarding herself from the likes of me.

  You’re very kind.

  Lack of survival skills. Not a good look on a woman.

  With this I dismiss her.

  Though I have to say, my colleagues’ assessment of her as a gray bird is off, and shows how woefully inaccurate their reading of her was. A gray bird is a common bird and she was anything but. What’s more, they had the color palette wrong; this woman was more like sandstone, pale and subtly golden, her hair just a shade darker than the freckles that cover her face like dusky constellations. Her nose curved just so, the faintest shape of a ski slope. And the quick, efficient way she moved her strong, slim fingers—they wouldn’t have noted that. Her scent—something raspberry coconut. Probably shampoo.

  And really, the prim little bow around her collar. For one long, strange moment I imagined undoing it.

  Undo the bow. Undo her. Like opening a guileless little gift. Unwrapping her neck, pale and bare. And then a button. Another button. Freckled skin flush with heat. Fingers on pale skin, scattering every last one of her little secrets out of every last one of her hidden little pockets.

  You’re very kind.

  What would it take to undo her? What would that frank, wide-open gaze look like all heated up?

  More to the point, why am I still thinking about her? I have a million things to think about, and they don’t include her. I need to be thinking about a certain merger right now—I actually budgeted this transit time for that.

  I put my phone in front of my face. When I have any kind of screen in front of my face, that’s a sign not to speak with me, my own version of a head on a pike. Because the other secret to my success is rigid time management.

  I lower my phone and put my hand to my neck. “And what the hell exactly was that? What she was wearing? Around her neck?”

  “It’s called a butterfly tie,” Lynette says. “It’s a women’s bow tie.”

  I wait for more. When more is not forthcoming, I say, “A women’s bow tie.” The secret to getting people to tell you things is that you repeat their last few words. There’s nothing more stimulating to people than their own words.

  As one of my lawyers, Lynette’s seen me use that technique hundreds of times but she still falls for it. “A women’s bow tie, very Kmart circa 1989. A little bit Korean schoolgirl, a little bit country-mouse-goes-to-Sunday-school. It’s not something anybody would ever wear.”

  “Women are wearing bow ties now?” Kaufenmeier asks. “Can you all leave one thing to us?”

  “No, she wasn’t wearing a bow tie like a man wears,” Lynette explains. “A butterfly tie is a largish bow with the ends trailing out. Imagine a slim-ish scarf tied in a bow around her neck, though I’d bet any amount of money it’s pre-tied and she clips it on. That would be so gray bird.”

  I frown. The clip-on aspect definitely ruins my fantasy—you can’t slowly pull the end of a clip-on bow and untie it. You cannot pull it clear of the coll
ar with slow, taunting deliberation.

  If she were mine, I’d demand that it be an actual long bit of fabric tied around her collar that I could untie, like untying the bow on a gift, the gift in this scenario being her complete and utter undoing. I’d pull it out from under her collar, slowly. Pull it away. And then the buttons, one, two, three. A scrap of a bra, white, no frills.

  The elevator comes to a stop on six. We get off and I head to my office, mind spinning on the country mouse down there.

  Is it a clip or a tied bow? A tied bow would also be best because once undone, the tie would be there. Always useful for sexual hijinks. I’d hold it up in the air to show her. Would her gaze change then? Would she finally feel wary?

  Though there’s something to be said for the pre-tied bow. Any woman that I could take seriously as a human being would clip on a pre-tied bow. Fashion is an incredible waste of time. A woman I’d take seriously would appreciate that. She’d be interested in efficiency and order and not wasting the time of tying the bow.

  So now I have two too many sexual fantasies about some country mouse I’ll never see again.

  Or will I?

  Who is she? What business does she have here? My business has a lot of different segments. Was she going to HR?

  I pick up the papers on my desk. These are things I need to sign. There are tabs by the contract changes.

  I grab my pen, imagining tracing my tongue along that coy curve of her nose. I imagine her sprawled beneath me, hair a sandstone halo around her head, and she’s undone and panting, naked in my bed. Or naked except for the butterfly tie.

  I swallow back the dryness in my mouth.

  One of the admins comes in. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he says. He’s here for the contract.

  “No, hold on.” I look at the changes and sign, hand it over. “Tell me, is HR conducting interviews today?”

  “Interviews for what?” he asks.

  “Interviews for hiring,” I say. “Find out.”

  3

  Noelle

  * * *

  The elevator I’m allowed in only goes up to the second floor. I get out and step up to the desk. A woman on the phone there holds up a finger, signaling that I’m to wait. She has red hair tightly coiled into a bun on top of her head with a little braid woven in and out. According to the little sign, her name is Anya.

  “Can I help you?” Anya asks.

  “I need to see Mr. Blackberg, please.”

  “Do you have an appointment with Mr. Blackberg?”

  “I have something that I have to show to him,” I say. “Regarding a property.”

  “Appointment?” she asks again.

  “No,” I say.

  “You can’t see him without an appointment. You’ll want to call the main line.”

  I clutch my bag, feeling the outline of the iPad with the movie cued up. “I feel that he’ll want to see what I have.”

  “You have to talk to his staff. The number’s on our site.”

  “It’s time-sensitive. It pertains to 341 West Forty-fifth Street, a property he recently purchased.”

  “In what way is it time sensitive?” Anya asks.

  I suck in a breath. “In a way pertaining to the property. He needs to see it.”

  “You’re going to have to give me more than that,” she says.

  “Something for his eyes only,” I say. “Extremely important.”

  She regards me for a bit. She picks up a phone. “I’ve got a woman with something about 341 West Forty-fifth,” she says, sizing me up. Then, “She won’t say. Mr. Blackberg’s eyes only? I don’t know. She thinks it’s urgent but she won’t say.”

  She sets down the phone. “This way.” She leads me down a hall past a row of cubicles. We pass another elevator. This one, too, has a black pad. Do the black pad elevators lead to the offices above? We arrive at a door bearing the name Janice West. The woman with the red bun knocks.

  “Wait,” I say. “It’s Mr. Blackberg who I need to see. It has to be him.”

  A female voice. “Yeah.”

  Anya gestures me through the open door.

  Janice West is a stately woman in her forties with a long neck, black hair, and bright red lips. “What is it that you have to show Mr. Blackberg?”

  “It’s exclusively for Mr. Blackberg.”

  “That’s not how this works,” Janice says. “I’ll take a look at whatever you have that’s so very urgent, and I’ll decide if it seems important enough to pass upstairs.”

  “It’s for him alone to—”

  “The answer’s no.” She waves a hand for Anya and me to skedaddle.

  “Come on, then,” Anya says.

  “No, wait,” I say. “It’s from the tenants. Things he needs to know about the building.”

  “There’s nothing he needs to know about the building. He’s knocking that building down, and that tends to get rid of the issues with a building,” Janice says.

  “No, we need him to know…look, we’re losing our homes. There’s just this small film I wanted to show him. It shows what the place means to us…”

  “That would be a hard no,” Janice says. “The hardest of hard nos.”

  “You’re leaving,” Anya says.

  “But we’re losing our homes.”

  Janice says, “There’s nothing anybody can do about that.”

  I don’t know why this makes me mad, but it really does. “Mr. Blackberg could do something about it. He could change his mind—I heard there are other ways he could execute this project. If he could just see it. Look…it’s just us telling…” I open the small portfolio and turn on the screen and press play, tilting it so that they both can see it. I have it cued up to a part with Maisey. She’s the most persuasive. She starts talking about what 341 means to her.

  “Good lord,” Janice groans.

  “Come on, then,” Anya says.

  “A minute of his time?” I close the portfolio, cutting off Maisey’s story.

  “Here’s what you need to understand,” Janice says. “Bambi and Mother Teresa could chain themselves to that building and Mr. Blackberg wouldn’t stop the wrecking ball. In fact, if Bambi and Mother Teresa chained themselves to the building, he’d take great pleasure in swinging the wrecking ball himself.”

  I grip my iPad. What kind of person would demolish a building more gleefully if Mother Teresa and Bambi were chained to it? This is who has our fate in his hands?

  “I won’t believe that,” I say, remembering the way Malcolm Blackberg tucked my phone into the just-right little pocket, a small, kind gesture offered as I squatted there, dying of nervousness. I have the crazy thought that these women just don’t get him.

  “He’d take extra pleasure in demolishing it,” Janice says. “Like it or not, I’m doing you a favor. Because if I sent you upstairs and by some miracle—and trust me, it would have to be a miracle—they let you through, and you showed him those few seconds of your little movie? He’d speed up the timeline. If there’s one thing Mr. Blackberg hates, it’s his time being wasted with things like this.”

  “Leave with me or be escorted by security,” Anya says.

  Defeated, I follow Anya and her bright bun back toward the front. She walks me right to the elevator and pushes the down button. There is only a down button.

  The elevator dumps me back into the grand lobby.

  This can’t be it. It can’t be over now.

  I linger for a while, pretending to wait for an elevator. I can’t run back home with my tail between my legs.

  I watch a person wave a card in front of the black box that goes to the higher-up offices. The card hangs around her neck. What if I went and stood next to her? And just got on with her? I watch the doors open. She sees me watching and frowns. I lose my nerve and watch the doors shut.

  I decide I’ll try to join the next person. Somebody else waves a card in front of the box. I go up and stand next to him, try to look like I belong.

  He glances at me and then forward. Then a
t me again. “Can I help you?” he asks.

  I smile brightly. “Heading up to six.”

  “Where’s your lanyard?” he asks.

  I put my hand to my chest. “Oh…I don’t have it.”

  “You work on six?”

  “Uhh…no,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “Floor two.” He points at the other elevator.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  I catch sight of the security guard watching me. He has his phone out and he’s speaking into it, watching me.

  I head around the boulder fountain, toward the exit.

  There’s a letter carrier coming through with her cart. Something in me calms. I hold the door for her and she thanks me and continues on. I watch her as she moves across the lobby. The security guard meets her at the elevators. He waves a card in front of the black pad. The doors open. She gets on with her cart and smiles.

  The doors close.

  And now he looks my way.

  He really is going to toss me out now. I turn and start walking. I burst out onto the bright sidewalk…with a shocking new idea forming in my mind.

  4

  Noelle

  * * *

  I took another day off, but I’m wearing my uniform, with my trusty blue bag slung around my shoulder.

  I watch myself stroll into Blackberg Plaza. I could get in trouble for this, but I remind myself that life is too short not to do the important things, even if those things are scary and possibly deranged.

  And there’s nothing more important than my friends. They’re my family.

  Francine and Jada were so amazed when I told them my new plan. They think I’m brave.

  More like desperate.

  I round the fountain and head to the security desk. The bushy-bearded guard comes out. He doesn’t recognize me from yesterday—yet. People rarely recognize letter carriers in their civilian clothes, and vice versa. When you put on the uniform, your identity is the US Mail, and you’re welcome everywhere.