“Send me a postcard,” I say. I grab a scrap of paper and write down my home address and phone number.
“Cool beans.” She takes it.
Finally, the car lurches to the next floor and the doors open. We get out into the cool air. It’s the fifth floor, and guys with toolboxes and phones are waiting. They apologize profusely. One hands us waters. Another does some work on the button panel.
We’re supposed to get into the other elevator to continue on to the sixth floor, but Stella informs them that she’s going to the lobby.
I hug her and wish her luck.
Talking to Stella was a perfect diversion, but ten minutes later I’m back to reality, getting out alone on the sixth floor with my bogus delivery. I head for the front desk, grateful that there’s no sign of Janice or Anya.
Like everything in this place, the front desk is sleek and polished and possibly made of black marble. The two men and one woman perched behind it are intent on their work.
“You got this,” I say to myself, pressing my bag to my belly. If Stella can drop everything and go to Estonia, I can pretend Malcolm Blackberg’s personal signature is required on a delivery.
My new plan is to tell him that he must watch the video as part of the delivery, that there’s something he must see in it. I’m hoping that gets him curious enough to keep him glued to the screen. Curiosity will keep people watching something for a pretty long time, or at least, that’s how it worked for me when we watched “Stranger Things.”
I smile at the man at the end, the only one of the three people who makes eye contact with me. His dark hair is cropped short against his boxy head, and he wears wire-rimmed glasses.
“Another?” he asks.
“Yup. Addressee only,” I say.
“Sure thing.” He holds his hand out for the electronic clipboard that I don’t have.
“Sorry,” I say. “Addressee only.” I show him the front of it. “Mr. Malcolm Blackberg.”
“We’re all authorized agents to receive for Mr. Blackberg.” He keeps his hand out for the clipboard.
“No, this is a delivery specifically for Mr. Blackberg. Only he can sign.”
“We always sign for Mr. Blackberg’s stuff,” he says. “There’s nothing we can’t sign for.”
I’d be impressed if my heart weren’t pounding like a jackhammer on a pogo stick. “Addressee only,” I say.
“Nobody delivers directly to Mr. Blackberg.”
Another receptionist comes up beside him. “We’re authorized agents. We can sign for his deliveries.”
“This one is special.” I set down my clipboard and Stella’s card and show them the front of the envelope. “It must go to Mr. Blackberg himself.”
The third receptionist comes over. “What’s going on?” She squints at the envelope. “This isn’t how we usually get private stuff. The private stuff comes by courier. I don’t understand.”
“This delivery requires Mr. Blackberg’s signature,” I say. “It’s very unusual, I know. It’s a video he must watch.”
“A video?” She frowns at me.
“My instructions are very specific,” I say.
The guy picks up Stella’s card. “Ohhhhh, I get it.” He shows the woman Stella’s card. “This is who it’s from. She was in the elevator that broke down.”
“Ah,” she says. “You’re late, Stella.”
“Your office called,” the first guy says. “Sorry about that.”
“I’m not Stella,” I say. “I’m the letter carrier. With a very important delivery.”
The other receptionist winks. “Right, you’re the letter carrier. With a special delivery. That happens to be a video.”
“Right,” I say, “but I’m not Stella.”
An older woman comes and takes Stella’s card. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”
The guy screws up his face and leans near to me, voice lowered conspiratorially. “Just no on the letter carrier shtick. Mr. Blackberg hates gimmicks. Hates.”
“I’m really just here to—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he says. “Your funeral.”
The woman is back. “He’s ready for you, Stella.”
“I’m not Stella…”
“We got it,” she says, annoyed.
The guy comes out from behind the desk and beckons me to follow him.
It’s here that I realize I should just shut up, being that nobody else has gotten anywhere near this far in the quest to see Mr. Blackberg.
Tabitha’s billionaire boyfriend, Rex, even tried to buy the building from him at one point, and Malcolm Blackberg seemed to take perverse glee in turning him down without so much as granting him a meeting. There’s some thinking that Blackberg even sped up the eviction timetable because of Rex’s offer. Tabitha feels sick about it, even though we all assure her that it’s not her fault.
I follow the man into a luxurious little room with a couch and a selection of snacks. I stop him before he knocks.
“Wait. Remind me…how long do you have budgeted for this meeting?”
“We slotted out the hour you requested, but he has an eleven hard stop that can’t be moved. I know you were stuck in the elevator—just add more time to the back of the schedule or whatever you do and we’ll approve it.” With that he knocks.
“Thank you,” I say, clutching the envelope with its rectangular bulge. It’s ten forty. I have exactly twenty minutes to make him watch the video. It’s twenty minutes more than I’d dared to hope for.
There’s a grunt from inside—I can’t tell what it means, but my guide seems to think it means come in because he proceeds to open the door to one of the most luxurious spaces I’ve even seen. Practically everything is black marble or steel.
The desk is a massive black marble slab atop a rough-hewn marble base that looks like it was forged by the axes of ogres.
There behind the desk sits Mr. Blackberg himself. He fixes me with a confused glower.
I’m a deer in headlights, gathering my wits.
“Stella from Bexley for your emotional intelligence training,” he says, quickly closing the door and leaving me alone with him.
“I-I’m here with a delivery for you,” I say, walking to his desk like a trembling virgin approaching a powerful god.
“You’re to be the new executive coach?” he clips out in his English accent. “You?” This as if it might be the most bizarre happenstance ever.
“Seems I am,” I say, taking a seat across from him.
“What was all that down in the lobby yesterday, then? Recon?” he asks.
He remembers me? One split second of interaction and he recognizes me, even when I wear the uniform? Nobody does that. “It’s not important,” I say.
“It’s important to me. And what the hell kind of methodology is this?” he asks. “A letter carrier? Good god, tell me it’s not to deliver a dose of reality or something.” His accent makes everything he says sound more angular, somehow.
I suck up my courage—I have less than twenty minutes to get him to understand how much we cherish our building. “My methodology will not be part of the program.”
I pull out the iPad, willing my fingers not to tremble. It’s his stare. He has the fiercest eyes I’ve ever seen. True dagger-staring eyes. Make that longsword, crossbow, and battering-ram-staring eyes.
I set up amid the onslaught of his gaze.
“An iPad? That’s your delivery?”
I punch in my code and Maisey’s face fills the screen, telling how she’s been in her apartment since 1972. She shows where she knits every evening. “This home is everything I have in the world,” she says.
Malcolm snorts. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“No.”
“What is it?”
“This is your training,” I say, trying to sound in control.
“Please,” he says, voice dripping with annoyance.
I stop the video, trying to remember the words that Stella used in the elevator. “This is your c
ourt-mandated session,” I say. “Court-ordered.”
“A video of some old lady? This is what I’m meant to watch? Hard pass.”
Can he refuse like that?
I’m supposed to be training him, but it feels like he’s the one in charge. The silence grows. A panicky feeling washes over my skin.
But then I remember this one time at the Bronx substation, when a police officer tried to bully me into handing over a postal customer’s mail. The postal customer was a suspect in something, but the mail is sacrosanct. I informed the police officer that he couldn’t take the mail without a warrant. The police officer kept hammering at me, giving reasons why I had to give it that minute.
I felt so scared and unsure, so I called my postal inspector and she told me it doesn’t matter what anybody says or demands. “Just repeat what you know over and over,” she’d said. “You don’t need more argument than a rule. A rule is the end of an argument.”
I jut out my chin and repeat Stella’s words best I can, “You were mandated by court of law to undergo a program designed by an accredited coach to improve your emotional intelligence. Th-this is that program.”
“I don’t think so,” he says.
“It’s court-mandated,” I say.
He just glowers.
I draw in a breath. “You were mandated to undergo a program to be designed by an accredited executive coach, were you not?”
His gaze burns at me. “And this is what you designed? What does whining about a building have to do with emotional intelligence?”
Repeat the rule, repeat the rule. “This is a program designed by an accredited executive coach,” I say.
“And will the film be featuring Corman at some point? Telling the tragic story of being fired by me?” he asks. “I’ll tell you right now—it was worth it. I’d do it again, lawsuit and all.”
I blink, unsure what he’s talking about, though I’m thinking Corman must have something to do with why Malcolm ended up with a court-ordered coach.
I’ve never met anybody like him. He’s a powerful, world-class beast of a man who belongs in a powerful world-class beast of a city like New York. A man who thinks Jada’s film is a joke. It’s not a joke, and Maisey is not “some old lady.”
Straighten up, make eye contact, speak from the belly, feel your voice resonate—that’s what my actress friend Mia always says when she tries to get me to be more assertive.
I straighten up. “You were mandated to undergo a program to be designed by an accredited executive coach.” I continue, feeling my voice resonate. “You are to watch it. Or...we’ll add more time to the back of the schedule, the back of the court-mandated hours.”
Oh my god. I sound demented. What am I even saying?
I hold my breath. No way will this work.
A muscle in his jaw fires. He gestures at the iPad. “Get on with it, then.”
Wait, what? It worked? I can’t believe it worked.
I start the iPad again. We have ten minutes left. Maisey tells about the time Jada cared for her when she got her broken hip. How the building is her only family. The movie cuts to Lizzie, telling how much she missed her family in Fargo. “All my friends in the world are here. This is my home,” Lizzie says.
I feel his eyes on me.
I straighten. Speaking from my belly best I can, I say, “You’re not watching.”
“Yes, I am.”
The video plays on. Jada really did a nice job on it—she’s an actress but she’s really interested in the filming side of things, too.
After a few more minutes, he says, “I have an eleven hard stop. Compelling as this all is.”
It’s ten fifty-two. Disheartened, I stop the video. “Those are people who live at 341 West Forty-fifth Street,” I say. “Are you familiar with it? It is a building that you’re about to tear down.”
His eyes narrow, as if in confusion, and then he smiles. His smile is huge and beautiful and it lights up his face and sets my heart pounding. His smile is the sun, blazing with light and warmth.
Am I actually getting through to him?
“That woman was Maisey Belleweather,” I continue. “She’s seventy-three, a retired Macy’s clerk. Without that community in that building, she’ll be alone in the world.”
“Very good, very good.”
What?
He stands and leans in toward me. I’m aware of him the way I was in the lobby—his size. His heat. He whispers, “I know what you’re doing, of course.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh come off it. This isn’t leadership sensitivity coaching or emotional intelligence training or whatever it’s supposed to be. They mean to torture me.”
I stare at him, stunned. “That’s what you think I’m doing?”
He looks back. “I’d fire my employment law firm for agreeing to this if I didn’t already do it.”
“It’s not torture,” I say. “It’s real.”
5
Malcolm
* * *
One of the most diabolical punishments devised by the monsters who ran Soviet-era prison camps was to force an inmate to toil away for days on end digging a massive hole. As soon as the unfortunate prisoner had completed a big, beautiful perfectly-shaped hole, they would force them to fill the hole back in with dirt.
It was an awful punishment because there’s nothing more repugnant to the human soul than wasted labor, squandered time. Time is one’s most precious resource.
It’s clearly this principle that Corman and his lawyers had in mind in devising this. No doubt they worked overtime creating a program that would be as maddeningly useless as possible. God, I can just picture them cackling over scotches.
Stella gives me a blank look and blathers on about 341 West 45th. Yes, I know the address; it’s going to be part of the Square West project.
“Is something funny?” she asks.
“Not in the least,” I say. I really do have to hand it to them—the video is nearly unbearable.
But they made one very large mistake: her.
My last coach was a humorless old buzzsaw, but Stella’s hot—especially if you removed the boxy and clearly fake letter carrier uniform, which I would very much enjoy doing.
And what was up with the outfit yesterday? Was that butterfly bow tie part of the show? Or is that what she really wears? Is she an entry-level coach of some sort? A hot rube who took a few seminars? I study her eyes as she goes on about the rooftop, something about flowers on the rooftop.
Her eyes are army green. Army green is technically a drab color, or at least it’s a drab color in fabric, but it’s startlingly beautiful in her eyes. Her butterscotch hair is clipped back on one side with a simple golden clip that allows it to cascade over her shoulders like a quiet waterfall. She really is pretty in an understated way.
Is that part of the torture?
She’s continuing to talk, but I can’t be bothered to listen, though I’m definitely playing the part of a listener.
She won’t stop talking about these people. Did she pre-watch all the videos and get whipped up into a lather? She seems almost passionate about these people’s plight, like some kind of Joan of Arc. A pure and incorruptible warrior. Being riled up really does lend her an extra spark of something…there’s this vibrancy about her.
Is it truly possible she has twenty-one hours of that footage? Twenty-one hours? People have been complaining about the Square West project. Is that where they got this footage? From the gang of people complaining? Corman wasn’t in my real estate group, but I suppose he could’ve heard about the complaints and stumbled upon the footage, and from there, devised this program.
My buzzer goes off. I grab my phone and shut off the alarm. “It’s eleven,” I say. “We need to wrap up for today, much as it pains me.”
“But what do you think?” she asks, eyes wide. “About sparing them. There are other ways to achieve your goal. Why not consider them?”
“Nope,” I say.
&
nbsp; “But…if you could achieve your goals while sparing this building…”
“If the rest of your ridiculous program is anything like this little intro, well, I just can’t imagine the fun. I really can’t.” I grab my briefcase. “Poor old Maude whining about her hip. I can’t wait for more of that. Solid gold stuff!”
She stiffens, annoyed. “Her name is Maisey,” she bites out.
So hot.
“Maisey, then, excuse me. Maisey. Poor Maisey with her hip. And her home going to be knocked down by Scrooge.”
Stella’s nostrils flare. She’s unbelievably delicious—she really is.
I almost wish I didn’t have to be across town in thirty. I’d like to stand here and upset her some more. Don’t send a boy to do a man’s job—isn’t that how the American saying goes? And you definitely don’t want to be sending a hot little country mouse like Stella.
“Scrooge wouldn’t have knocked it down,” she says.
“Coaching and a literary discussion. I can’t wait for more of your presentation, I really can’t— four weeks of whining Mary Ann, or at least, one can hope.”
I wait for her to take issue with the name again. But she just says, “Four weeks?”
“And then you’ll get to put Blackberg Inc. on your resume. Quite the feather.”
“Four weeks,” she says, as though she hasn’t comprehended that part of it.
I really should go, but I find that I don’t want to. Getting a rise out of this one is more enjoyment than I’ve had in a very long time. I narrow my eyes. “Unfortunately, I will be bulldozing poor old Maimie’s building at the end of it all.” I gaze into her eyes. I set my hand on my desk, wrist down, fingers up. Slowly I begin to push a few things across, mimicking a bulldozer. “Vrum-vrum-vrum,” I tease.
She gets the strangest look on her face right then—that little spark flaring into an angry flame.
My pulse races. I have the improbable urge to kiss her, to consume all of that soft-looking skin and affronted purity.
“And regarding these negotiation sessions this week?” I continue, “I don’t care what the settlement says or how tightly the board has my balls wound up, there’s no way I’m having you tagging along in that Halloween costume. That is not happening. Yes, you get to observe and critique my soft skills and pass along what I’m sure is very road-tested knowledge that you have for how to run a company, but I will not have you making Blackberg, Inc. into a sideshow. You’re supposed to blend in with the team during the sessions—zero disruptions—that is the agreement. So this postal bit? Right?” I point at her costume. “Not happening.”
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