Return Billionaire to Sender
I may be a shy, lowly letter carrier, but when my beloved apartment building is threatened by a mysterious and reclusive billionaire, I’m willing to push the envelope.
I’m going to march right up to Malcolm Blackberg’s fortress of fierceness and deliver a cease-and-desist notice he can’t refuse.
Except as soon as I get inside his gilded doors, things go sideways—I’m mistaken for Malcolm’s court-ordered emotional intelligence coach—they think I’m acting out a wacky postal carrier cosplay.
They drag me in, a sacrificial lamb for the big bad.
Make that big, smolderingly sexy bad.
So I make up a lesson involving a story about our building. He doesn’t seem happy. Can he tell that I have no idea what I'm doing?
Before I know it I’m flying around the country, up close and personality testing the most devilishly exasperating man I’ve ever met.
He’s scary for sure…but the way he sometimes looks at me turns my knees to jelly, and has me writing love letters to his gorgeous eyes, his mouthwatering smile, his impressive…package.
Our coaching sessions are getting hot-hot-hot, but I can’t let my guard down. If he ever finds out I’m a first-class fake, I’ll lose everything I’ve ever loved in this world!
1
Noelle
“Are you nervous?” my roommate, Francine, asks. “I’d be nervous.”
I tuck a pen into one of the pen-holding slots inside the flap of my bag. I rotate it so that it’s perfectly lined up with the other pens, all nestled in their slots, then I look up and smile, putting a brave face on it. “It’s just another delivery, right?”
She snorts. “Ummm…it’s a little more than that, I think!”
I shrug and review my pen-alignment situation, then I snap the bag shut.
When I look up again, she’s beaming at me. Like she thinks I’m a heroic person.
It so helps.
I’m not a heroic person—in fact, I’m scared out of my wits, but I’m our last hope. It would probably be better for my friends if they had somebody else for their last-ditch effort to save our home, but they have me.
Maybe he’ll listen. Maybe he’ll rethink his wrecking ball plans. If there’s one thing I’ve learned after seven years of being a letter carrier, it’s that people sometimes surprise you, and more often than not, it’s a good surprise.
Then again, the person we’re talking about here is business mogul Malcolm Blackberg—the ultimate big bad.
Still.
I unsnap my bag and do one last check. In addition to my wallet and phone, I also have my iPad, two backup iPad chargers, extra subway tokens, and my pepper spray—not that I’ll need it, but I’ve gotten used to carrying it over the years.
I arrange my carefully curled hair in the mirror and then I clip on my favorite brown butterfly bow tie.
Francine comes up next to me. Her silky black hair is up in her ballerina bun, all ready to take and teach classes today. She groans at my reflection.
“Don’t even,” I say.
Two years I’ve lived here, two years my friends have teased me for wearing a butterfly bowtie whenever I have somewhere official to go. I know they see it as a total backwoods thing to wear in the big city, but I love how practical it is, like a cross between a small neck scarf and a bowtie, and I think it’s pretty, too. Most of all, it’s what I’m used to, and today of all days I need to feel comfortable.
Honestly, I find it unnerving to go new places alone when I’m not wearing my United States Postal Service letter carrier uniform, but I’ve figured out some non-work outfits in life that operate like my uniform, like the pantsuit and butterfly tie. I have several colors.
I like how uniforms take the guesswork out of dressing. For going out, I have a proven-cute skirt and top set that I copied from my friend, Mia—also in different colors. For staying home, I have a specific brand of yoga pants and T-shirts.
“Fashion-reeducation camp with armies of Tyra Banks clones working round-the-clock to break you of those weird ties! That’s what we need.”
“We’ll see,” I say. “Maybe when this is all over…”
Francine’s delicate features are suffused with sadness, making me wish I hadn’t said that.
Everything we say about the future is suffused with sadness because of Malcolm Blackberg.
He sent us all eviction notices last week. His dreaded wrecking ball is scheduled. Our beloved building will soon be rubble.
People from our building have tried to get meetings with him, called him, sent emails and even letters; we’ve visited lawyers, petitioned the city.
Nothing. Nobody seems to be able to get to Mr. Blackberg.
I’m determined to try.
“Forget it, you look cute,” she says. “You look like young Sissy Spacek.” She hugs me and wishes me luck.
Two subway rides and five blocks later, the August humidity has flattened out my curls—I can see this clearly in the gleaming row of glass doors of Blackberg Plaza. I pause, looking up at the six stories of polished black marble with actual gargoyles on top.
I belong here just as much as anyone else does, I whisper to myself, though I wish I had my uniform on. A letter carrier belongs everywhere.
I straighten and tip my chin up and put my shoulders back—the posture I take when I’m trying to remind myself that I can face anything—and push into the lobby.
It’s like a cathedral of black marble inside. The sleek and gleaming walls are caressed up and down with light from elegant black sconces, and there’s a large fountain in the middle that features a massive, jagged black boulder that’s maybe two stories tall. Is it also black marble? Did Malcolm Blackberg leave any marble for the rest of the world? How did they even get a boulder in here? Did a giant pop off the top of the building and lower it from the sky? Water streams down the sides in gleaming rivulets. Voices and footsteps create an echoing din.
I clutch my bag and stride across polished black marble, avoiding clusters of people while trying to look purposeful, making my way into the belly of the building toward the elevators on the far side.
Halfway in, I pause at the wall to examine the directory, just to gather my courage and to show I have business here.
I don’t need to look at the directory, of course. This isn’t my route, but I know that this building has six floors. I know that Malcolm Blackberg’s firm, Blackberg, Inc., occupies them all. I know their zip code and their delivery office; I know they have their very own plus-four code.
All of a sudden, the din of voices quiets. Did something happen? Did a shooter enter the building? Did the giant pop off the top of the building again, wanting his boulder back? I spin around, alarmed.
That’s when I see him.
I recognize his dark, elegant looks from the few photos of him that we could find, though I think I’d know him just from the way his people walk a little bit behind him, like fighter jets flanking the fiercest and most important jet.
I stand there stupidly, heart racing.
The photos didn’t do him justice. They didn’t prepare me for his beauty. Or let’s make that his terrifying beauty.