Audrey’s Door

by Sarah Langan

  “I just got here,” Audrey said. “I need to talk to you.”

  Jill gripped the side of her desk and slouched so deeply that she folded upon herself. Audrey surfaced from her own grief long enough to feel sorry for her. She looked exhausted. Then again, you reap what you sow: Who the hell has four kids these days, except an egomaniac?

  “I need to talk to you, too. I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about your mother,” Jill said. The shirt looked worn, like she’d bought it back in the nineties, when everyone else had been listening to grunge.

  Audrey looked out the window. Those scissors. Holy mackerel. What had she been about to do? Kill her boss for sending flowers? “I had to sign the papers to turn off her life support. But I couldn’t do it. She’s still out there, in Nebraska. Trapped in that bed. My fiancé left me, too. I think I was going to tell him I wanted to get back together, but he left me in a deadbeat motel in Lincoln, Nebraska, before I had the chance.”

  Jill blinked. Her face was pale. Audrey noticed for the first time that the items on her desk were organized in ninety-degree angles. Not a single pen askew. “He left you in a motel?” she asked.

  “Yeah. The night after I had my first orgasm, too. I didn’t know they were real, did you?” she blurted this, heard herself, turned red, and lowered her head. But the talking felt good. Less like she was the member of a different species, viewing humans through glass.

  Jill wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyes got wide. Then something unexpected happened. She laughed. The sound was a quick hiccup. “You never talked about that with anyone?”

  Audrey shook her head. The scissors in the corner shone like an accusation, and before she had the time to think about it, she picked them up, and shoved them under a pile of drafts on Jill’s desk, so she didn’t have to look at them anymore. Jill noted this, but didn’t comment. “I don’t get out much,” Audrey said.

  “You’re an island,” Jill answered.

  “I don’t want to be. I’m trying.”

  “You don’t have to be.”

  Audrey sniffled. “Sure. I know.” If she looked at Jill sidelong, she didn’t think the terrible thoughts. The scissors didn’t fly up from under the pile and snip.

  “Well, like I said, kiddo. Chin up,” Jill said. “I didn’t know you wore glasses.”

  Audrey adjusted the black frames on the bridge of her nose. “My mother’s. She was an opera singer.”

  Jill nodded. Then she made a strange sound, like a squeaking animal was trapped in her throat. She looked away fast, but not before Audrey saw her ruined expression. Pruned face, knit brows, tight grin just about to crack. Her pain was so deep that it radiated from her in waves.

  “Oh, God,” Jill whispered. She held the lower part of her stomach with both hands. Audrey realized that those four names on the T-shirt had to belong to her sons.

  “Oh, no,” Audrey said.

  Jill picked up the cell phone from her desk as if to call someone, then threw it across the room instead. Audrey cringed. It broke into big hunks of black plastic and wires.

  “Sorry,” Jill said.

  Audrey didn’t answer. In a way, it reassured her. Maybe, sometimes, everybody goes a little crazy.

  “I have to take a leave of absence. A few days, at least.” Jill bent down to collect a piece of the phone, then dug her sneaker into it instead. It broke with a single snap!

  “I bought this for him, in case something happened. I hate cell phones. Just another excuse for those asshole brothers to call me at midnight and tell me about their money problems. Maybe if they stopped hiring their relatives, we’d be in the black.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Audrey said.

  Jill nodded, then pinched the bridge of her nose until her eyes cleared. “I’ve got to talk to you about something.”

  “What?” Audrey asked, quite certain that Jill knew. The scissors. Her apartment. What she’d done to the condolence cards at her cubicle. There was so little, save this job, that kept her tethered to this world.

  “The Pozzolanas sold the company to a corporation based in India. They’re announcing layoffs at the end of the week.”

  Audrey’s mouth went dry, and she realized, for the first time in a long while, how much she loved her job. How proud she’d been to finally get here, under the big top.

  Jill waved her hand. “Oh, no. You’re fine. But we’re losing some of the team. I had to switch the Parkside Plaza meeting with the Pozzolanas until next Friday, obviously. But I’m taking a leave of absence, and somebody needs to run it. I was thinking Simon Parker.” Jill let this statement hang in the air.

  Audrey shrugged. “I gave him a job. How did it turn out?”

  “Not good. He’s not a creative. But I’m out of options. Unless you plan on coming back this week.”

  “How far along are we since I left?”

  Jill shook her head very slowly, to convey the severity of the problem. “Some ideas. At least you got them stepping up. But I haven’t been around, and neither have you. There wasn’t enough direction…You’re good. I should have told you that before now. I see myself in you, though maybe that’s not what you want to hear. Want to be a middle manager the rest of your life?”

  Audrey took a wary breath. “Not really.”

  Jill dropped her hands from her temples, turned to Audrey, looked at her for a long while, and grinned very slightly. “Sometimes I want to throw you out a window.”

  Audrey nodded. “I feel the same way about you.”

  “Either you do the presentation, or Parker. If the Pozzolanas didn’t treat this place like a country club and hire their friends’ kids, this wouldn’t be an issue. But that’s not how they roll. The rest of us do the work for the ones who can’t.”

  Audrey moaned. She thought about all the work she’d done that would be lost if Simon screwed up the presentation, and the client passed. AIAB would hire a whole new firm. Jill would lose her promotion. So, for that matter, would Audrey, who was in line for a serious raise next year. No joke before, when she’d been talking to Bethy; her temporary crown was three years old. She needed a dentist. And maybe staying at work was best. Look how she’d acted all morning. Did she really want to go home, to be left with no one but herself, and The Breviary?

  “I think I can do it, but I can’t promise.”

  “Good girl,” Jill said. “I knew you’d come through. You always do.”

  Audrey was moved. It had been a long while since anyone had approved of her. “Thanks.”

  “Just the truth. Oh, right. The other thing.” Jill scribbled something on a yellow Post-it, and handed it to Audrey. “My home number. I’m busy, obviously. But if there’s something urgent about the job, or if you trash your place again, give me a call.”

  Audrey’s eyes watered. Was this woman her friend, after all? “Oh, stop,” Jill said. “I hate tears.”

  She tried to return Jill’s kindness. “What’s his name? The one who’s sick?” she asked.

  “Was,” Jill said. “I just got the call.” She tried to smile. Her mouth was a piano string pulled tight.

  Audrey stifled a gasp. She knew that if she showed any emotion, it would spread through the air like a sneeze, and start Jill crying. “What was his name?”

  Jill’s eyes filled. She wiped them with the heels of her hands, then leaned on the desk, like it was the only thing holding her up. “Julian. After me…People always say you’re supposed to face cancer with bravery. Why would they say something like that? What’s the difference?”

  Audrey’s bad thoughts were gone, and so was her anger. It all seemed so small, in the face of Jill’s tragedy. “They don’t understand illness. That’s why. They want to pretend that they’re the lucky ones, who’ll never get sick or old. They think it’s something you can fight when really, like my mom, it’s something you have to accept.”

  Jill’s voice cracked. “Yes. I think you’re right.”

  “Julian,” Audrey repeated. “A good name.”
>
  “And your mother?” Jill asked.

  “Betty Lucas,” Audrey answered.

  “Betty Lucas. I’ll remember that,” Jill said.

  Audrey took a step in Jill’s direction. Jill let go of the desk. They stood close. Audrey was the first to reach out. She squeezed Jill’s shoulder, and Jill looked down, so her tears were unseen. “Thank you,” she sniffled.

  Between different women, it might have turned into a hug, but for them, this was just as good. When they separated, they nodded, as if to wish each other luck.

  28

  For Whom The Bell Tolls

  Back at her cube, Audrey swept up the mess of torn papers she’d left on her desk. The glasses were too heavy for her face and pinched the nub of skin between her eyes, so she took them off and put them in her sweatpants’ pocket, then thought better of it and broke them in half. The difference was immediate. Everything appeared brighter, and less like she was viewing the office through a thick glass aquarium.

  Her headache returned, but the pain grounded her and diminished the effect of the Valium. She remembered then, that she’d taken lithium, which, in healthy individuals, can induce temporary psychosis. In individuals with family histories of mental illness, it can permanently alter brain chemistry and cause psychosis. She also remembered that she’d been taking it regularly since Saturday. Not so smart.

  First thing she did was check messages. About ten were from the 59th Street team, and another five were from the therapists whose appointments she’d missed. The shrink with the Staten Island accent sounded the most annoyed. “It’s 6:30, and I’m waitin’!” she’d announced in the first message, and then, ten minutes later. “I’m lookin’ at my watch, and it’s 6:40!”

  “I’m looking at my watch, and it’s Monday,” Audrey grumbled, then returned the call and left a message: “I had a family tragedy, but I’m still crazy and I still need to see you.”

  On her desk were the blueprints she’d been working on last Monday. They were marred by about a hundred penciled-in doors. It took her a second to remember that she’d been the one to draw them. They were out of character from her usual doodles in that none were uniform. They weren’t even all rectangles, but hobbit-shaped warren holes, squares, even five-and six-sided figures. She began to erase them, then stopped and narrowed her eyes. Something interesting. She tacked the entire four feet of plans along the length of her cube wall and stood back to look.

  The placement of the doors followed the imprecise pattern of a swirling conch shell. It gave the design a flow, where before it had been rigid. What if the hedges were curved and lowered in the places she’d drawn doors, so that pedestrians could see clear across to the next hedge? This wasn’t a maze at all. People would never feel lost inside it, because on tiptoe, they could always find their way out. The varying heights would make the hedges look like they were growing while people walked. A grin spread across her face. A whimsical, cheerful design. For the first time in her career, she’d created warmth!

  She pulled the plan down and began to work. She sketched for hours and got lost in it. The feeling was good and returned a sense of normalcy. When she was done, she looked the job over and smiled broadly to reveal a row of unevenly spaced pearly whites. The plan was good, exactly what the Pozzolana brothers were looking for. Unless they were drunk, they’d approve it. So would AIAB. Her grin got bigger, stretching ear to ear: hot damn!

  It was nine at night, and she knew pretty soon she’d have to leave. She thought about Jayne’s hula girl, which surely by now she’d seen, and the deflated air mattress, and her clothes. She didn’t want to go back to The Breviary. She’d sleep here if she could. But security had gotten tight over the last few months after a couple of laid-off employees broke in and trashed the lobby. After midnight, rent-a-cops patrolled all the cubes, and even the bathrooms.

  She decided to delay the inevitable and check her e-mail. Amidst the spam, there wasn’t a single note from Saraub. So she composed one:

  Dear jerk,

  Thanks for leaving me in a motel room. You probably should have kicked in a few bucks for the bill.

  She deleted this, and wrote:

  Saraub,

  I was very surprised by your departure, but trust you know what you’re doing. Good luck with your film, and all future endeavors.

  That one got deleted.

  Next, she wrote: I’m slowly becoming possessed by my apartment. So…can I stay at your place while you’re gone? I don’t have keys anymore. She erased that, too. Finally she wrote: I miss you. A lot. She pressed SEND fast, before she reconsidered and deleted it.

  After that, her curiosity got the better of her, and she searched “Breviary apartment building.”

  The first link led to an archived New York High Society article from 1932: “The Secret History of New York through Its Venerable Grande Dames, IV: Chapter four of a six-part series.” She scanned the whole thing, and found the sections devoted to The Breviary:

  In 1857, fifteen coal tycoons had an idea. Instead of traveling to faraway summer homes on Long Island and the Adirondacks, they’d build their own, self-contained community in the hills of Harlem. A grand apartment building sequestered far away from the sewaged streets of Washington Square, and close enough to the bucolic Hudson River for daily swims. They’d have no need to send for kith and kin: they would bring the party with them.

  They commissioned the popular architect Edgar Schermerhorn to design the building, and he rendered it with his trademark Chaotic Naturalist details, though the building itself was not affiliated with that religion. The Breviary took five years to erect, and its two-degree slant from perpendicular remains a feat of engineering to this day.

  In the absence of an Episcopalian place of worship, the fifteen requested that a church be built in The Breviary’s lobby, and a rectory constructed out of its basement. The Irish immigrants who laid the stones, resentful of a Protestant God, named their creation “The Dark Church.” The name stuck, but its true origin has been forgotten, which is why locals misguidedly claim that the building is haunted.

  The Breviary was born in turmoil. The “Great Panic of 1857” had led to a decade-long economic depression. The dollar’s value dropped. Collapsed land speculation, grain prices, and the manipulation of gold’s value drove banks into failure. New York shouldered the brunt of the crisis. Riots, most notably between Bayard Street’s Bowery Boys and Five Points’ Dead Rabbits, plunged the city into chaos. For weeks, the dead were buried along dirt roads in unmarked graves. Violence spread as far north as the Astor Slums of the Upper West Side. Local and state police could not rout the violent tide. Finally, our dear President Lincoln recalled the nearest Civil War regiment from Bull Run to occupy the city and restore order.

  Like all storms, the crisis passed, and the city recovered, much like we will recover from our own black Tuesday. When Manhattan yawned, stretched, and awoke from its nightmare, it cast its gaze on the dazzling Breviary.

  By far the most regal edifice of its era, if you walk by it, you’ll see that it does not face forward but turns slightly to the west, as if posing coyly for passersby. Its limestone is now gray with soot, but its unevenly distributed gargoyles are still sharp as cut glass. Like the city which it inhabits, its strength is a miracle.

  Perhaps the most defining aspect of The Breviary is its occupants. Those same fifteen original investors who commissioned the property raised their families on each of its fifteen floors, and it is now their children and grandchildren who reside there. They are members of a genteel and endangered class who still leave calling cards and equip their doormen with top hats. They throw parties each Monday evening, hopping from floor to floor in the small town that is their building. Many of them attended Yale, Harvard, Radcliffe, or Bowdoin before returning home and wedding each other. Each year at their annual New Year’s Eve Ball, they raise money for the neighbourhood homeless, and on winter Sundays, they set out a pot of spiced rum, which they serve to the needy.

&nb
sp; Reflective of the city in which it resides, The Breviary has not only survived the precarious environment of its birth, but thrived. We are New Yorkers, after all; we will always endure. So if you’re in the neighbourhood, you ought to say hello to the residents of the Dark Church of Harlem, and remember that you are one of them!

  Reading that, Audrey sighed with relief. So, “dark” meant “Protestant.” She could live with that. It made sense that The Breviary’s inhabitants were weird. All native New Yorkers are weird. Lock them in the same apartment building for 150 years, and weird easily turns inbred and crazy.

  It was late. The pills had worn off and left her exhausted and depressed. She’d gone a little bananas. Not so surprising given the stress and self-medicating, but nothing twelve hours of sleep couldn’t cure. She almost closed the link and went home to 14B. But she’d already clicked on the first link, and there were nine left on the page. She didn’t like leaving things undone. It was the same as leaving things open. She clicked the second link and her smile drowned.

  The article was a personal history piece from the New Yorker magazine, written by an author whose name sounded familiar: Agnew Spalding. He’d been involved in some kind of scandal, she thought, but couldn’t remember the details. She didn’t want to read it, but she knew that if she closed the application on her screen, her imagination would invent something even worse.

  The article read: