His swept-back hair gleams dark as midnight, and the skin on his aerodynamically chiseled face seems to glow with health, or maybe annoyance—it’s hard to tell. His tea-colored eyes shine with gorgeous intensity, focused ferociously on the elevator he’s heading towards, as if it's not enough for him to merely reach it with his two feet as a normal mortal would. No, he must also mesmerize it with his darkly enchanting predator’s gaze.
Onward he strolls, legs long, steps strong and purposeful. I should look away, but I can’t.
The confidence he exudes feels like a physical thing, a phenomenon with mass and weight, the self-assurance of a man with total mastery over his environment.
Nervously, I clutch my bag. Why did I think I could even speak with such a man, no less get him to watch something on my iPad?
Did my butterfly tie cut off circulation to my brain like Francine always warns?
I find myself longing to be anywhere but here. Ideally at work, my happy place.
Unlike most of my girlfriends, I love my job. I love the routine of it—picking up my mail in the morning, planning out my route, strategizing deliveries with the boxes, settling letters and circulars into the proper boxes, tilting them just so for easy grabbing.
My boss couldn’t believe I was actually taking a vacation day. I never take vacation days. Why would I?
There’s an important-looking, briefcase-toting woman coming toward Malcolm from the other way. Malcolm stops her and issues a command that causes her to show him something on her phone, and then the exchange is over, and the groups proceed in opposite directions, like a businesspersons’ Ice Capades. And Malcolm is the star, the Grand Master of Ceremonies, the harsh and unforgiving god gliding among trembling masses.
He nears.
This is my chance—my chance to go up to him. To ask him for a few moments of his time.
But my feet stay rooted to the ground. Malcolm Blackberg seems too big, too fierce, not of this world.
I remind myself that we’re just two human beings, but it’s no use.
Sweat blooms up my spine.
This whole caper seems doomed. Who thought it up? Wait, I did.
I remind myself of this trick that I do when I’m scared during a delivery, like if an area is super dark, or if a building looks creepy, I remind myself that people inside there are relying on me. I imagine their faces, waiting for an important letter.
Standing there in the Blackberg lobby, I imagine my friends’ faces, waiting to hear if I’m successful.
I remind myself that I’m our last hope; if I don’t stop Malcolm Blackberg from destroying our building, my girlfriends and I will have to move away from each other to lord knows where. Sure, we’ll make an effort to see each other, it just won’t be the same as being able to pop down the hall and unload about the minutiae of our days, knowing there’s always somebody to commiserate with you about the man spreader you had to sit next to on the train or watch Bachelor with you.
The little community that we’ve built up and down the hallways of our seven-story brick building is like a family. Especially to me. And poor old Maisey—she’ll lose the rent-controlled apartment she’s been in for five decades. Same with John, always in his platoon hat, leaning on his cane, and first-floor Kara—who will watch her baby when she has to suddenly run out?
None of us will ever find a community like the one at 341 West 45th Street.
Cued up on my iPad is a video that Jada put together as a digital keepsake for all of us to remember the place by. It’s mostly us telling the camera our favorite things about living in our building and talking about how much we love it, and love each other. She strung together footage she dug up of parties, building meetings, historical footage, all kinds of things. She screened it to the group of us the other night, and it made everybody weepy. There may have been bubbly beverages involved.
But it really was so emotional, this sweet video of everything that we’ll be losing when our beloved building is knocked down. I’ve only been there two years, and even I can’t imagine losing it.
And then at one point during the night, I stood up in front of the whole group and declared that if Malcolm Blackberg were to see the video, like if we made him watch the whole entire thing, he would never, ever, ever tear down the building.
“You are soooo cute,” Vicky said. Mia declared that I definitely needed to live in the city a while longer. Tabatha and Francine just thought it was sweet and sad.
I didn’t think it was sweet or sad or cute at all. I was dead serious and definitely on a freaking roll. In fact, I stood up there like Winston Churchill addressing the House of Lords. “When people know each other’s stories, their hearts change. And Malcolm Blackberg is no different. And I’m serious, you guys—if we made him watch the video, his heart would change, guaranteed.”
They all scoffed, but I felt so sure. Who could see it and not be moved?
“Didn’t Rex even say that there were other ways for him to execute his plan without demolishing this building?” I asked. “If Malcolm Blackberg knew what this building meant to us, I know he would rethink his plan. I would bet any amount of money.”
“Okay, Professor Higgins,” Francine had said, throwing popcorn at me.
“It has to happen,” I’d continued. “In fact, I’m going to make him do it.”
Lizzie joked that the only way he’d watch it would be if I tied him up and propped his eyes open with toothpicks. People laughed at the idea of me doing that.
“I don’t know how I’ll get him to watch it,” I told them, “but no way are you going to see me standing across that street watching the wrecking ball fly without having done everything humanly possible to stop it. The worst he could do is say no, right?” And I made a big show of having Jada send me a copy to put on my iPad. I would make him watch Jada’s commemorative video right on my iPad.
I unsnap my bag. There’s a little notecard in there where I wrote down my impassioned speech that would get him to watch Jada’s movie, but as Malcolm nears, the words on the card feel irrelevant as alien hieroglyphics.
“Can I help you?”
I turn and find myself face to face with a bushy-bearded security guard. Can he tell that I don’t belong here? “No, thank you,” I say.
“Do you have business in this building?” he asks.
“I…I’m here to meet with somebody,” I say.
The security guard motions toward the elevator area. “Visitor reception’s on two,” he says, seeming suspicious of me. “You’ll check in there and get a visitor’s lanyard.”
I back up. “Thank you,” I say.
“Miss!” He gets this alarmed look on his face. “Watch your—”
I don’t hear the rest, because I run smack into somebody.
I spin around. Stuff dumps from my open bag. “Oh my god, I’m so—” The apology dies on my tongue as I find myself face to face with the obsidian glare of Malcolm Blackberg himself. “S-sorry,” I say. “I didn’t see where I was going—”
“To be expected when one walks backwards,” he bites out in a cut-glass British accent, reminding me that I read somewhere he’s from England. The accent adds to his strange viciousness, and also to the rate of my banging pulse.