The first drink went down way too easily as he too went over the events of that night in his mind. He’d been twenty minutes late, and in that twenty minutes she’d been dragged into an alley, beaten and raped by two different men, one after the other. He slammed the rest of his drink and ordered another, the guilt overwhelming his ability to make sense of the last year and a half.
“Rough night, sir?” The young bartender slid the glass toward him and Nate nodded. He took a long drink before answering.
“You could say that.”
“Girl trouble?”
“Is there another kind?”
“Not too many others that drive a guy to drink, no. Especially with a face like yours.”
Nate laughed in spite of himself. “Is it that obvious?”
“I may be young sir, but it doesn’t take long to learn the signs.”
This was going to be interesting. “Really? So what’s my tell?”
The young bartender looked down, slightly embarrassed. “Well, a good looking, well-dressed man like yourself walks into the bar of a nice hotel and it’s usually one of three possibilities.”
“Go on.”
“They could be meeting someone–business or otherwise, in which case they look somewhat excited, or at least have a sense of purpose. You can almost see the wheels turning in their heads as they go over what they’re going to say or how they’re going to act.”
“Ok, what’s the second possibility?”
“The usual bad day at work. In that case though, the look on their face is more–well, more pissed off sir.”
“And third?”
The young man smiled. “That would be you.”
“Which is?”
“Somewhat confused, forlorn and dejected looking. Sir.” Nate chuckled and took another long drink, nearly draining the glass. The bartender picked it up to refill it. “And they drink ‘em hard and fast.”
Nate clasped his hands together on top of the bar. “What’s your name, man?”
“Jimmy.”
Jimmy didn’t look old enough to be behind a bar, much less giving advice. “Jimmy, you seem very insightful. What is it you do when you’re not bartending?”
“I’m in school at NYU. Computers.”
“Really? I work with computers myself.”
Jimmy handed him another. “That’s great. Will you excuse me?”
Halfway through the third drink the guilt and anger fused into a hard lump in the center of his chest and with every sip it sank lower and lower, until it roiled once again in his bowels, a distant acid with a slow, meandering burn.
He was beginning to regret ordering that third round when a hand clamped down on his shoulder and he just about flew out of his chair. Nate swallowed one last time. It was talk about Frank that had started this whole episode. How ironic that it should end with him in the flesh.
“Mind if I sit down?”
Before Nate could say anything, Frank was already on the stool next to him and Jimmy had made himself scarce. Smart kid.
“So, is this your office away from the office?”
Frank smiled. “Well, it’s close to home and it’s a lot more informal than the boardroom, if you know what I mean.”
“Besides, if you lubricate the gears, the engine runs a lot smoother, doesn’t it?”
“Fringe benefits can sometimes be found tucked into the most imaginative places.” Frank smiled again. “Speaking of which, how’s Paige?”
“Great. Out with some friends tonight. I’m on my way home from a late meeting. Just stopped in to whet my whistle.”
Frank eyed the empty glasses in front of him. “You must have been pretty thirsty.”
Nate was silent.
“I talked to some of my senior management staff this afternoon. We discussed your ideas and they’d like to move on launching a new marketing campaign right away. They feel that given the timing of some other, unfortunate incidents, it’s imperative that we come down strong and show our competition that we’re not only alive and well, but we’ve also ‘moved into the twenty first century’ as you call it.”
“Great. I’ll give you a call next week.”
Frank shook his head. “I’m leaving in the morning. I have to be in London tomorrow night. I had a couple of my staffers put together some information for you to start working on. I have it on a disk at home. Would you mind coming by real quick? It’s just a short walk from here.”
Nate couldn’t think of anything better to do while he was killing time. Business might as well occupy his thoughts. It was, at least, safer that way. Besides, he definitely needed to walk off the gin. He’d been stupid to down three drinks in the space of a half-hour.
“Sure Frank. No problem.” He started to reach for his wallet but Frank waved him off and nodded to the young bartender, who nodded in return.
“Goodnight Jimmy.”
Nate took a deep breath. “Thanks Frank.”
“My pleasure.” The young man waved as he and Nate slid off their chairs and started for the door. “Do you like Scotch?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On the scotch, of course.” Nate smiled and followed cautiously as Frank led the way. His father was a scotch drinker and had taught him to be discerning. Nate didn’t actually enjoy scotch, but it was all part of the game, and he’d been groomed for it since his infancy.
They walked the opposite direction on the block and came to a building directly on Madison that was literally just around the corner from theirs, although city blocks did tend to be larger than most.
The red carpet and matching awning were a dead giveaway. It was just the kind of place he’d imagined Frank Evans would own; and almost an exact replica of the apartment his parents still owned. The doorman that materialized looked like a cross between a marine and a guard at Buckingham Palace. He looked sideways at Nate and waited for Frank’s nod before leading them into the massive marbled lobby, then disappeared like a good waiter with a water pitcher.
“He flying back to London with you?”
Frank laughed. “He’d probably take that as a compliment.”
When they got into the elevator the operator also nodded to Frank. “Good evening Mr. Evans.” He pushed the button for Frank’s floor and they rode up in silence.
The bell sounded at the fifty-fifth floor, just one floor shy of the fifty-six listed on the wall of the elevator. There were only two doors on the entire floor.
Frank pushed his key into the one on the right and then slipped what looked like a credit card into an electronic reader at the side of the door. A green light came on, enabling him to turn the key in the lock.
The door opened to reveal an expansive foyer with at least ten-foot ceilings. This was no apartment. It was an entire house. It even had what looked like an upstairs.
“Technically, there is no fifty-sixth floor, so this actually is the penthouse.” Frank seemed to answer Nate’s question before he could even ask it.
“You have an upstairs too?”
“Yes. It’s really quite ingenious how they’ve arranged the space. Over to the right there–that wing basically belongs to my son. Oh, and the housekeeper’s room is over there too. And laundry and what not.” He waved his hand in circles in order to ball up all the inconsequential things at once.
“In the middle here we have the formal areas for entertaining, the kitchen is just beyond that doorway and several rooms wrap around the side of the building over there, which is where the master suite is. My home office is just upstairs.”
“Would you mind if I used the uh–”
“Certainly! There’s one just past the archway on your right. I’ll let Ginny know you’re here.”
“Thanks.”
He followed Frank’s directions into a hallway with several doors. He tried one and found himself face-to-face with a handsome young man who was sitting in front of his computer, smoking a joint. Nate couldn’t help smiling. It was just too good to
be true.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Nate.” He took a few steps and extended his hand to the young man, who took it cautiously, but had a firm grip and looked him in the eye while holding the joint in his other hand. The kid had balls. He liked him already.
“Brendan. You here to see my dad?”
“Yes. He’s a business associate.”
The look of distaste on the boy’s face told him more than he wanted to know. “You look a little young to be one of my dad’s business associates. Unless of course you come with a pretty young girlfriend.”
Nate was momentarily speechless. “How old are you?”
“I’ll be eighteen in a few weeks.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yup. I can finally vote and kill terrorists.”
“Listen, I was just–”
“Looking for the bathroom?”
“Yeah.”
“Across the hall.”
“What are you working on?” Nate pointed to the computer. The boy blew the smoke right at him and put the joint down in an ashtray. Nate tried unsuccessfully to wave it away from his face.
“Just some graphics and stuff.”
“Really? I do a fair amount of graphic design myself. Well, not really myself anymore, but it’s what my company does.” Nate watched the change in the young man’s face.
“I’m trying to learn some new programs so that I can pair computer graphics and photography for a project I’m working on.”
Nate’s interest was piqued. “That’s a really nice setup you’ve got. Of course, nothing beats a Mac for design.”
“Nothing but the best.” He picked up the joint again and took a long drag off of it, challenging Nate with his eyes. They were hard and cold, but inside there was a little boy who somehow reminded him of Paige. “You want some?”
“No, thanks. Show me what you’re working on?”
“Sure.” Brendan clicked over to some of his favorite pieces and spun the screen toward Nate, who squatted down, viewing them with interest. He looked at the elements on the page and started asking questions about vector graphics and the different tools and techniques he’d used.
“Wow. This is seriously good. You have a real talent.” He started naming the version-specific programs Brendan had used and the boy’s face lit up. “Are those your photographs as well?”
“Yeah.” He was almost smiling. The more they talked the more his countenance changed. He snuffed out the joint and sat up higher in his chair, his enthusiasm growing by the second.
“You want to see some more?”
Nate looked behind him. Frank could wait a few more minutes. “You bet.”
Brendan clicked through his meager portfolio and talked in animated tones about the effects he was trying to create. Nate showed him a few simple tricks embedded in the program he was using and the boy was genuinely grateful. Nate watched as he rubbed his eyes a few times, trying to focus through the fog but he was too far-gone.
“These your poems?”
Brendan shuffled the papers off to the side of his desk. “No. They were-” He took a deep breath in. “–a friend of mine’s.”
“Hey man, it’s no big deal. I write poetry too.”
The boy’s head shot up but he kept quiet.
“You know, I wrote a program when I was in college as a project. It was a tutorial for one of the graphics programs you’re using. Would you like a copy of it? It might be a little less tedious than trial and error.”
“Yeah! That’d be awesome!”
“Maybe you could come over to my office and shadow some of our designers one of these days. You’d learn a ton just being around people who do this for a living.”
“Really? That’d be great!”
“Is this what you’re planning to go to school for?”
The shutdown was on scale with Chernobyl. Brendan grabbed his iPod and flopped onto the bed. “I’ll bet my dad’s looking for you.” He closed his eyes and turned it up until Nate could hear the song selection from across the room.
The boy and his room were like polar opposites. Everything was neatly in place. His shirts were grouped by color in the closet and most of them had price tags still hanging off the sleeves. He was dressed in ripped designer jeans with holes at the knees and white long johns underneath, but what caught Nate’s attention was the shirt he had on.
He took a couple of steps toward the bed to get a closer look. The olive green shirt had an eagle on it with the word “Stranded” scripted in yellow drips from an eagle’s talons. There was also a graphic with a winged woman’s mirrored reflection and the words ‘love’ and ‘hate’ on either side of the mirror. The image speared his heart. It took all he had to walk away. “Thanks. It was nice meeting you.”
Brendan never opened his eyes. Nate found the bathroom and returned to the large open area just as Frank was coming out of one of the other doorways.
“There you are!” He handed Nate a small rocks glass with a splash of brown liquid in it and started for the stairs. “Come on up to my office and we’ll have a look, shall we?”
Nate followed Frank up the spiral stairs into another huge open area that served, presumably, as an office. An enormous mahogany desk floated in the center of the space and there was Frank’s chair behind with no other chairs in the room at all. A wall of bookcases lined one side and a few well-placed sculptures and paintings gave the eye something to feast on, but only from the perspective of the person sitting in the chair. The wall behind the desk was blank, giving the person standing in front of the desk no choice but to look directly at Frank.
A sliding glass door off to the right looked like it led to a balcony with a beautiful view. Frank sat down at his desk and turned on his computer, then began rifling through the drawers in his desk.
Nate fingered a few plaques and pictures on the bookcase before walking over to the door that led outside. “Do you mind?”
Frank looked from Nate to the door. “If you go outside? No, why would I mind? I never go out there–there’s not much to see from this side of the building. It’s the master suite that has the killer view.”
Nate slid the door partly open and stepped out onto the balcony. He couldn’t believe they lived so close. Hell, they could probably see each other from their windows. He scanned their building, trying to find the fire escape where Paige seemed bent on spending so much time. When he did the calculations in his head, it suddenly clicked in his brain. He looked all around and when his gaze fell down and to the right he sucked in his breath.
Earphones still attached to his brain, there was Brendan, just below him, standing out on his balcony. Paige was not going to believe this. He looked over at their building again and thought just maybe he could make out her shape on the fire escape, but it was too dark to tell and the angle made it difficult to judge. Still, line of sight would work both ways.
When he looked down again Brendan was sitting, writing in some kind of a book. Maybe they were his poems after all.
Frank looked up when he walked back inside. “I told you. Nothing to see out there.”
“Nope–nothing at all.” Nate glanced over his shoulder and thought about Frank’s son and his nightly ritual of contemplating suicide. Killer view indeed. Poor kid. Paige was probably right. He wasn’t really serious, just messed up. Come to think of it, inhaling the air in Brendan’s room had made him a bit woozy himself. Or maybe it was the two gin and tonics he slammed at the Carlton. Or was it three? Either way, he tried to focus on what Frank was saying, but it was getting harder to stay on task, and he hadn’t even tasted the scotch. Nate blinked a few times and realized he was not in his right mind.
“Would you excuse me for a minute?”
“Sure, what do you need?”
“One too many gin and tonics. I need to use the bathroom again.”
“No problem–I’ll just get some of this on its own disk and send it with you to look over. It’s getting late and I should let you get on home.
”
“Thanks. Be right back.”
Instead of using the bathroom in the upstairs hall Nate went back down to the one he’d used before. When he was finished he splashed some cold water on his face and peeked through the open door into Brendan’s room again. Brendan was back on the computer, and looked at him through eyes that could barely focus.
“What the hell is that shit you’re smoking?”
“What do you care?”
“It messed me up man, and I didn’t even try it.”
A smile spread across Brendan’s face. “I know–it’s really good. Like right now for instance, I could care less that you’re one of my dad’s ‘business associates’. Fuck him.” The lilt in his voice and the dripping sarcasm were hard to escape. Brendan tried to keep his mouth shut but snorting laughter ripped through his sinuses until he fell, quite literally, out of his chair.
Nate couldn’t help it. He took one look around the room engulfed in a cloud of smoke and laughed. When Brendan finally righted his chair Nate slid a business card over onto the side of his desk.
“When you’re ready to get serious about graphics and photography, give me a call.”
The laughter disappeared as quickly as it had come. Brendan looked at the card, then back at Nate. “You were serious?”
“Dead serious.” He let the words hang in the air. “But not like this.” He looked around the room. “Not like this.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“These walls are funny.
First you hate’ em, then you get used to ‘em.
Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them.
That’s institutionalized.”
- The Shawshank Redemption
Two hours after he’d left, Nate quietly turned the key in the lock and stepped back into the apartment. It wasn’t much different from how he’d left it. The knife and the vegetables were still out on the counter, but Paige was nowhere to be seen. He checked the bathroom, but she wasn’t there. A walk was highly unlikely, with her purse and cell phone still on the table in the kitchen. Then he noticed her sweater against the window.
The fire escape. Aptly named.
Letters From The Ledge Page 7