Return Billionaire to Sender

by Annika Martin

  It’s sleeting out, fitting weather for our sad project. I’ve taken the day off—I won’t have too many more days with these women.

  I wince as Vicky shoves the metal thing behind one of them, grunting, trying to pry it free.

  Ancient plaster cracks.

  The pink tile pops off the wall and lands on the floor, and Vicky lands on her ass right next to it. Smuckers barks wildly.

  “Are you sure we can’t help you?” Lizzie asks. “We could all get crowbars!”

  “I’d be happy to do it,” Antonio says. “I could do it with one hand.”

  “No, I don’t want these tiles getting cracked. I got this.” She holds the tile up like a trophy. It’s small—maybe a foot by a foot. “Francine, tile number one.”

  Vicky has an ambitious plan to turn the tiles into serving trays for each of us so that we have a beautiful piece of the building to keep with us always. We each got to choose two tiles—there are Post-it notes with our names all over the walls.

  Two marble tiles will form the base of each tray, with silver metal edging all around. The trays could be used probably for a lot of things, but considering this group, they’ll be cheese-serving trays.

  Francine goes over and grabs it and holds it to her chest. “Pink tile, you have seen a lot of me coming and going around here. Some of it quite triumphant, coming in after yet another amazing freaking dance rehearsal, though there have definitely been times of me stumbling in at three in the morning with a questionable bag of food or possibly an even more questionable dude. But most of all you’ve seen me coming in and out of here with my absolute best friends in the world, and the absolute best neighbors any girl could ever have.”

  “Francine, god!” Mia says, holding a prosecco bottle by the neck. “Motherfucker! I don’t know if I can handle any more of these tearful goodbye things. I’m gonna cry for the next five hours!” She splashes some more of the bright, bubbly liquid into her cup.

  “That’s more than enough day drinking for you!” Jada grabs the bottle from Mia and pours the rest of it into her own cup. “Also, I need more. I have a bad feeling that this is going to be an extremely tearful goodbye thing.” She narrows her eyes at Vicky.

  “What?” Vicky protests. “So you can make a tearful goodbye movie, and I can’t do a tearful goodbye cheese tray project?” She starts crowbarring yet another tile off the wall. “Screw that.”

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t make tearful goodbye cheese trays,” Jada says. “Your tearful goodbye cheese trays are going to be amazing. It’s just that they’re tearful.”

  Maisey writes Francine’s name on the underside of the tile. She hands it to Lizzy, who puts it in a cardboard box.

  It’s afternoon, but the sky is dark as midnight. Horns bellow from the street. Sleet ticks at the door.

  Vicky is still going at the second Francine tile—it’s a really pretty one where the lines in the marble look like a vajayjay.

  “You girls are free to make all of the tearful goodbye things you please,” John says in his rumbly voice. “I think it’s very important to commemorate…” He waves a hand around in the air, indicating the building, indicating more than words can say, and then he looks over at Maisey, and my heart lurches.

  John chose two of the most worn tiles next to the elevator frame. I think he likes the story they tell, the way they show that humans lived in this place together. Waited for elevators together. Now they’ll be cheese trays.

  Vicky’s artisan friend, Latrisha, who once created an elaborate throne for Smuckers-–long story—designed the serving trays. They’re going to be so cool, but it would be way cooler if the tiles were staying put on the wall and we were staying put in our homes.

  Eventually, all of our tiles are in boxes. The wall looks like a sad checkerboard. I go over to Vicky. “Do you really think you can make all of our cheese platters sometime this decade?”

  “Maybe?” Vicky says dolefully.

  “No more crying,” Jada says from where she’s lying on the floor, crying.

  I sit on the floor next to Francine, whose black ballerina bun is halfway down. I look around at my friends, this family that we’ve created. “What have I done?” I ask.

  “No more of that,” she says.

  “We could have kept our homes, but I chose him,” I say. “And he won’t even see it.”

  “Well…”

  “Don’t say it,” I say, meaning her messed up love saying.

  “I wasn’t gonna,” she says. And then, “If you could do it all over again, would you still come clean with him?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “He deserved to know. Kicking us out like this, it’s not who he is deep down. He’s a good person with a beautiful heart.”

  “Oh, come on, just say it, Noelle.” She turns to me. “You loved him a little bit.”

  I stare down at my hands, pink polish starting to chip. “No,” I say. “I loved him a lot. I loved that man a whole freaking lot.”

  Francine sighs and lays her head on my shoulder. “And now it’s too late.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “If only he could see the truth of it all.” Then, “Wait, what?” I sit up, dislodging Francine’s head.

  “Hey,” she says.

  “Screw that,” I say.

  “What?” she says.

  I stand. Everybody’s looking at me now. “I have to go,” I say. “I have a message to deliver. A truth bomb. To Malcolm Blackberg.”

  “But the weather. It’s sleeting, out there,” Jada says.

  “Severe storm warning,” John says.

  “You’ll never get an Uber in this mess,” Francine says.

  “People!” I put up my hands. “Think who you’re talking to.” I run up and grab my raincoat and the rain visor I sometimes use on my route. I head down and make Francine give me her bike keys.

  I ride, flying past snarled traffic, sleet and rain pelting my cheeks. I know the exact route to take. This is my town.

  I get there in no time and lock up.

  Blackberg, Inc.’s fortress isn’t so daunting this time around. I push in the doors, head around the black marble boulder, and march right up to the executive elevator. A pair of people regard me with suspicion. Maybe it’s because I’m sopping wet. I don’t care.

  “You need a lanyard for this elevator,” the man says.

  “Like this,” the woman says, showing me her own lanyard. But they’ve already used theirs to call the elevator, so I don’t really need one.

  “I’m going up there without one,” I inform them both.

  The man looks over at the security guard, who seems distracted. He could alert him, but he doesn’t. He’s responding to the conviction in my voice, I think.

  When the elevator door opens, I stroll right in, like I own the place. I stab the button for the sixth floor. “Floor?” I ask them.

  “Fifth,” the man says, all scowly.

  “Same,” the woman says, joining him.

  I hit five. The elevator begins to move. We ride in awkward silence.

  “You need a lanyard,” the guy says.

  I ignore him.

  Lawrence is at the front desk when I get off. He straightens when he sees me, looking pleasantly surprised. “Elle,” he says. “Umm… Hi!” It’s pretty obvious that he knows my secret—I wasn’t a real coach. “Didn’t think I’d see you here.”

  “I know, right?” I say. “Is he back there?”

  “Well, yeah...” Lawrence says.

  And suddenly Janice is there. Janice from the second floor. “You’re not going back there,” she says.

  “I am,” I say. “I have to.” I head around, marching right back there.

  She follows behind. “This is trespassing.”

  I burst through one door, and then another. She’s telling me to stop. Which I do when I get to his closed door. I knock. “Malcolm,” I call out.

  She has her phone out. “I’m calling security.”

  There’s this silence where I think he might i
gnore me. I imagine security throwing me out into the driving rain before I can get to him.

  But then the door is open and he’s standing there, hair unruly, gaze intense.

  “I alerted security,” Janice says.

  “Un-alert them,” Malcolm says. “It’s okay, I’ve got this.” He waves me in, and I enter the cool, gray world of his office.

  I hear the door shut behind me.

  I turn, and there he is, leaning back against the doors.

  It feels so good to see him—just good, deep down in my heart, though keeping my distance from him is painful. I hate that I can’t go to him, hate that I can’t press a hand to his cheek, press my lips to his.

  “I know you’re probably still angry,” I say. “I know what I did was wrong. I was so stupid, Malcolm. I know I should have told you when things changed between us. But I want you to understand a few things, right here and now—”

  “Like what? That you’d always dreamed of a place like that building?” he says.

  “Well, yeah—”

  “And you were home free?” he says, closing the distance between us. “And you could have taken those contracts and signed them? And it all would have been yours, but you gave that up?”

  “Umm…” I say, pulse racing.

  “Were you going to tell me that you gave up what you most wanted in order to try and make things right with me? Because that’s what I’ve been sitting here realizing.”

  “Malcolm—”

  My heart pounds as he reaches up and brushes a bit of still-damp hair back behind my ear. “It took a few days of calming down for me to see what was in front of my face. More than a few days, actually. The eviction is rescinded as of today—I need you to know. Not only that, but I sent a courier over—I doubt they’ve gotten there yet. Traffic out there is snarled. Nobody’s getting anywhere.”

  “A courier?”

  “There were papers involved—signed papers. Hold on—I have copies.”

  “Signed papers?” I breathe.

  He grabs a sheaf of papers from his desk and presses them into my hands.

  “What is this?”

  “You know what.”

  The condo documents. “Why?” I ask.

  “This is what I want for you. No strings attached,” he adds. “This is legal as soon as it gets signed. My signature is already on the set that I sent over. Legal. Un-take-backable.”

  36

  Malcolm

  * * *

  Her eyes look as big as saucers. She says, “I don’t know what to say.”

  “No words needed. Just signatures.”

  She studies my eyes. There’s a new confidence in her—a sense of strength that I can’t quite put my finger on. “You sent a set of these papers over with a courier?”

  “I know you came over to tell me something, but hear me out,” I say. “I reacted like a madman. I’m sorry.”

  “You were hurt,” she says. “I lied. You trusted me and I broke that trust in the worst way. I pride myself on honesty—”

  “Well, I didn’t listen when you tried to apologize. I didn’t let you explain.”

  “Well, I pretended I was your coach,” she says.

  “Well, I threw you all out on the street—”

  “Well, I—”

  I go to her, press a finger to her lips. “You think you can one-up me on throwing you out on the street?” I ask.

  She grabs my wrist, pulls my hand away. “Well, I fell in love with you,” she says.

  “What?”

  “It’s what I came over to tell you if you’d let me get a word in edgewise,” she says.

  My pulse rages in my ears. “That you love me?”

  “Yes,” she says defiantly, keeping hold of my wrist.

  “Say it again.”

  “I love you,” she repeats.

  I swallow back the dryness in my mouth. I never imagined anybody saying that to me—not ever. I never imagined myself wanting to say it to anybody. Those three words belong to other people—not me. Not ever me. But I take her hands, gaze into her eyes. “I love you, too,” I say.

  “You do?”

  “I do. I love you. I know—stunning, huh? I’m the guy who stalks around alone, hating everybody. But you make me want to be part of the world of people doing all the stupid stuff together, like skating at Rockefeller Center and having jokey theme songs and choosing favorite animals. I know that probably doesn’t seem very huge to you, but I never wanted that before. I can’t promise my favorite animal would be a hedgehog, of course.”

  “Oh my god, Malcolm,” she says, blinking away the tears.

  “No, listen, here’s the thing—I can’t promise that I’ll stop being a villain altogether, but I’ll always be your villain. What do you think?”

  “I’d be honored…for you to be my villain.”

  “I don’t know what to say now,” I confess. “I’m not used to this much sweetness. It might be too much sweetness right now.”

  “Poor baby,” she whispers, beaming at me.

  “Maybe this is a good time to let you know that I punched AJ this week. Several times.”

  “Wait, what?” Her lips part in shock. “You punched AJ?”

  “It felt good.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “I followed the money and I tracked him down. He tried to tell me that the gift card scam was your idea, but I could see clear as day how it worked.”

  “You punched him.”

  I lean in. “Nobody steals my girl’s lunch money.”

  Noelle squeezes my hands, and it’s everything. “I can’t believe you punched him,” she says.

  “Not that I plan to make a habit of punching people—”

  She puts on her witchy face, and it does something to my body—to my whole freaking soul. She says, “Empathy skills definitely not in evidence.” Then she leans in to kiss me. I haul her body to mine and kiss her for everything I’m worth.

  I can feel her smile through the kiss. A million different plans for us spin through my mind. The way we can spend this night. The way we can spend the weekend. Things we can do. “Let’s get out of here,” I rumble.

  “Wait, what about my peeps? We have to tell them before they tear apart any more stuff.”

  “What do you mean, tear apart?” I ask.

  “Do you have your car? Is it near?”

  I pull out my phone and text my driver. Five minutes later we’re in the back seat of my car. Rain pelts the roof and creates rivulets in the windows, lit bright with the kaleidoscopic colors of Fifth Avenue.

  “So, holiday celebrations and theme songs are stupid?”

  I pull her into my lap and kiss her. And we’re stuck in traffic talking about everything.

  I tell her what happened with my dad. I update her on Germantown. She catches me up on her life back at work and a strange project that involves tiles and cheese trays. She fills me in on gossip about the building, including Maisey and John. People in the building have been playing cupid—a bit too much, according to her. “But they have time now,” she says.

  Eventually we’re there. The lobby looks like somebody took a sledgehammer to it. People are gathered around some sort of desk, some sitting on boxes. From the looks on everyone’s faces, they’d like to take a sledgehammer to me.

  Clearly the courier isn’t there yet.

  “You guys! I want you to meet Malcolm,” Noelle says. “And before you say anything, there’s no more eviction. In fact…” She waves the papers. “We’re going condo!”

  Her friends gather all around us. People are wary, but if there’s one thing I know how to handle, it’s wary people. I walk them through the papers.

  “Whoa!” Mia says. “This is amazing.”

  Kelsey is the first to grab and inspect the documents. I know all of their names at this point, except for the drunken woman with short blonde hair, who I suspect was the cameraperson.

  Maisey comes up to properly introduce herself. “We sincerely app
reciate this.”

  “I’m sorry for what I put you all through,” I say.

  “We’ll be fine,” she says.

  “How do we know you won’t change your mind again?” John rumbles, coming up next to Maisey. In person, he’s everything that I thought he would be.

  “Once you sign it, it’s binding—a binding contract. I can’t change my mind again. And I’ve already signed it, so the ball’s in your court.”

  Francine, the dancer, reads over somebody’s shoulders. “These are generous terms,” she says. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll need to have a lawyer look at it,” Antonio says.

  “I’d suggest it,” I say. All they have to do is stay there and pay their rent a few months more, and they own it. But they have options to get out of it, too. It is very generous.

  Somebody shoves a plastic cup of champagne into my hand. A little dog in a bow tie comes up and barks at me, and everybody seems eager for me to pet him, so I do.

  Francine comes up to me. “Thank you, Malcolm,” she says. “Welcome.” She sticks out her hand and we shake.

  “To what?” I ask.

  Her eyes just sparkle.

  Noelle clutches my other arm. “All the stupid stuff.”

  That night, Noelle and I go out to a three-course dinner at one of my favorite spots near the park.

  We have plenty of bruschetta. We talk about our time in San Francisco. It’s pretty hilarious, what she did, and now that we’re no longer at odds, we rehash every little session. I tell her exactly how crazy I thought her program was. She tells me how close she always felt to being busted. I tease her about the secret of the dryer lint bandit. Eventually I put her out of her misery and reveal that it’s whoever lives in apartment 512.

  “Jada?” she says. “Jada’s the one who made the film. She lives in 512.”

  “That makes perfect sense.” I explain that the footage seemed to be edited to show the door to apartment 512 right after the dryer-lint bandit was mentioned.

  “Oh my god, you’re right! It’s Jada!” She’s on her phone, texting Francine, probably.

  We spend the next few weeks doing what we want. It feels like making up for lost time. One of my first acts as Noelle’s boyfriend is to buy her some actual butterfly ties, not the clip-on kind, either, and implore her to wear one of them on one of our dates.