SEPTEMBER 2017
I woke to the promise of a storm. It wasn’t in the air but I felt it in my bones. Sunlight edged the corners of my covered window and if I’d told anyone to pack an umbrella, they would have told me I was crazy because when I threw the curtains wide, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. But my body never lies and by the time I get to the train station, it’s raining.
“Damn.”
I slowly raise my eyes from my lap, unclenching my fingers from fists. My cab driver is leaned forward, staring through the windshield at the dark gray shroud overhead. I dig my wallet out of my pocket and fumble for some bills, passing them over the seat before getting out. The first few drops of rain land cold against my skin and the downpour starts in earnest the moment I’m safely through the automatic doors. I turn to watch the people who didn’t get so lucky as they scramble for cover.
“Fuck’s sake,” a woman mutters as she fumbles in, drenched, dragging two miserable toddlers alongside her, a boy and girl. The boy starts to cry.
I face the station and check the noticeboard against the wall. I’m ten minutes early; no delays. A relief, though not in terms of arrival. When I close my eyes, I see the mess of blankets atop the bed I forced my aching body from, awaiting me.
I turn and stumble into a human wall, a man. Or a boy. I’m not so sure. He might be a little older than me, maybe a little younger. Time has yet to stake a claim on him in any definable way. His eyes widen just slightly at the sight of my face.
“Do I know you?” he asks.
The apples of his cheeks are a fevered red against his pale white skin, and there are dark circles under his brown eyes, like he hasn’t known sleep in any recent sense of the word. He has a greasy mop of curly black hair and he’s very thin. I’ve never seen him before and I like the way he’s looking at me less and less, so I sidestep him, leaving him to his mistake.
“I know you,” he says at my back.
I join the crowd gathering at my platform. I hate the preboarding jostle, of finding myself amid an impatient collective that has lost all sense of assigned seating. Soon, I’m surrounded by twitchy passengers, their shoulders touching my shoulders, elbows touching my elbows. I press my lips together and close my eyes, rubbing my hands together. I love wasting a day off at the doctor’s office for my annual diagnosis of still kicking, whatever that means.
“Whoever will lose his life for my sake will find it.”
I still at the strangeness of the words, at the newly unwelcome familiarity of the voice they belong to. I open my eyes and glance beside me to see if anyone else heard, but if they have, they do what I don’t, keeping their faces pointed down the tracks, awaiting the train. I decide to do the same, ignoring the heavy presence behind me until there’s a push against my back, and those words again—but closer.
“Whoever will lose his life for my sake will—”
I face him. “Look, would you back the fuck off—”
“You’re Lo,” he says.
It stuns me into silence. His eyes broker no argument, more certain of me than I’ve ever been of myself. Before I can ask him how he knows my name, where he ever could have heard it, he opens his mouth once more. The rumble of the oncoming train drowns him out, but I read his lips: Find it. He grasps my arm and moves me aside to push through the disgruntled travelers standing between him and the edge of the platform. The edge of the platform and the …
“Hey,” I say at his back. “Hey!”
No one sees him until he’s made a clean jump onto the tracks and then everyone sees him and they all watch, waiting for what he’ll do next.
“There’s still time,” someone yells.
There’s still time. Maybe he just had to get this close to the other side to realize it was there all along because sometimes that’s the moment life brings you to. But more often than not, it feels like it’s this one: you lie down on the tracks and the train is coming.
The boy, trembling, lifts his head to be sure.
I turn away, my heart pounding, and force myself back through all the bodies until I’m free of the immediate crowd, only to be trapped by another greater swell of onlookers.
One of them screams, “Don’t do it!” But it’s already done.
OCTOBER 2017
I’ve been answering Paul Tindale’s phone, replying to Paul Tindale’s emails, scheduling Paul Tindale’s appointments and getting Paul Tindale’s coffee for exactly one year. Lauren brings this to my attention—as if I wasn’t already acutely aware—when I arrive at the SVO office, eight a.m. as usual, balancing breakfast in my arms. I artfully arrange the assortment of bagels, croissants and donuts on the kitchen island and watch as she plucks a pastry from the center of my masterpiece, fucking with the whole aesthetic. She’s flawless as always: black hair knotted into a messy top bun; large, black-rimmed glasses a stylish interruption across her face; her signature merlot lipstick perfectly complementing her golden-brown skin. She says, “Happy anniversary, newbie,” ahead of her first delicate bite before wandering away.
Low-rolling thunder sounds over the building, a precursor to a greater storm. I grab a chocolate croissant and make my way to my desk tucked in the corner directly outside Paul’s office. I pass a row of cubes to get there, empty for now, but in another hour, the dissonant sounds of keyboard clatter and office banter will float over dividing walls. It’s a small space but SVO makes good use of it on account of having such a small staff. Two years ago, Paul founded the magazine out of pocket, envisioning a place for “radical perspectives and bold new voices.” He’s been paying for it ever since. He’s hoping a few out-of-the-box choices on his part—establishing outside of NYC, pushing premium content—will eventually pay off and get him acquired by a publisher that can pull him back into the city while retaining total control over his vision. For now, it’s respectably fledgling and it’s exciting waiting for the moment we take off and fly, knowing that when it happens, I’ll get to say I was part of it.
I log in to my desktop and check his Google calendar. He’s got something at lunch, but it doesn’t say what. After that, two conference calls with potential sponsors.
The phone on my desk rings. I pick it up.
“SVO. Paul Tindale’s office.”
After twenty seconds, there’s no response—just the faint sound of someone breathing. I look to Lauren, rolling my eyes.
“Breather?” she asks.
I hang up. “I’m so sick of this shit. Who did he piss off this month?”
“Who doesn’t he piss off?”
I close his calendar and open up the feedback inbox next, sorting hate mail from constructive criticism, and, every so often, a compliment or two. I’ve just deleted a message that says Paul Tindale is a real asshole when he makes his entrance, clapping his hands together. “Hustle harder, folks.” His rallying cry. I still remember the heady thrill I got the first time I witnessed the morning ritual I’d read about—and memorized—from his New York Times profile.
Paul Tindale: Any Truth, Any Cost.
He winks at Lauren and raps his knuckles against my desk as he passes, says, “Straight up, Denham,” which means coffee. I make my way to the kitchen and put the percolator on, trying to ignore the flush of embarrassment his lack of anniversary-acknowledgment inspires. I couldn’t believe it when the Paul Tindale caught me at the end of his public lecture at Columbia University. I’d braved NYC for the first time on my own just to see it, and I was—for once in my life—immediately rewarded: he asked me to work for him. Paul made a name for himself in his early twenties by connecting the dots on a series of cold cases, ultimately uncovering a still-active serial rapist who just so happened to be a rising star in the NYC political scene—then made an even bigger name for himself by exposing every bigwig who knew and helped cover it up. I said yes on the spot, thinking it was as close to a movie as my life was ever going to get. Now I’ve been answering his phone, replying to his emails, scheduling his appointments and making his coffee for exactly one year.
* * *
Arthur Lewis is Paul’s twelve o’clock. He arrives wearing the storm, his clothes soaked through. I immediately understand it as something he’s subjected himself to on purpose; a way for the world to bear witness to his pain. His suit hangs heavily off his frame, reminding me of a boy playing dress-up in his dad’s clothes, though this man is long past his boyhood. Rain collects in the harsh lines of his ruddy face and plasters his thinning black hair to his forehead. His red-eyed gaze travels over the room with a certainty belied by his pitiful demeanor. It’s an odd juxtaposition, his being so out of place and still somehow looking like there’s no place else he’s supposed to be. This is the first time I’ve seen Arthur in over a month. A series of condolences float through my mind, all of them offensively lacking. It doesn’t matter anyway, because when Arthur shuffles over to my desk, the black hole of his grief steals my voice away.
I didn’t tell Paul I was at the station the day Jeremy died. Didn’t tell him even after he told me Arthur was Jeremy’s dad. Arthur, who shows up at the office every now and then to grab lunch with Paul. He’s always been nice to me.
After it happened, I was haunted. I lay in my bed at night and replayed the moment over and over: the rain and the train, Jeremy saying my name, the slow forming of words on his lips—“Find it.”—and the feel of his hand on my shoulder as he gently moved me aside for his own ending. It was a relief when his connection to Arthur revealed itself because I knew, then, I must’ve been a story his father told him that Jeremy couldn’t quite shake. Girl with a face like mine. The only remaining question was what to do with the story Jeremy gave me. Tell it to Paul? Let Paul tell it to Arthur?
There’s black-painted lettering on the stark white wall of SVO’s office:
ALL GOOD STORIES SERVE A PURPOSE.
I realized mine served none.
So I didn’t tell Paul.
Arthur blinks, dazed as the wounded, but before either of us can say a word, Paul emerges from his office. The contrast between the two of them is almost obscene. Paul’s face hasn’t hurt his career any, which is something I’d never say to him. Even in his forties, he has a rugged handsomeness that, when he was younger, they called beautiful. He’s white with thick, dark blond hair gelled back from his face and a neatly kept beard taking up its lower half. There are hints of middle age at the corners of his eyes and mouth suggesting a life well lived outside. His body is in the kind of shape that suggests it too. He might as well be the sunrise to Arthur’s gloaming and it makes it painfully uncomfortable to look at them both.
“Art,” Paul says, his forehead creasing. “Hey.”
Arthur loses himself in Paul’s tenderness, reaching his hands out to his old friend. It becomes a scene: Paul folds Arthur into his arms, acting as a shield between him and everyone else in the office who can’t seem to turn away. Arthur sobs, and the spectacle of him makes my stomach turn. Paul is easy about it, though, because Paul is easy about everything. He begins guiding Arthur into his office and then his eyes meet mine over the top of Arthur’s head. He asks me to pick them up lunch.
* * *
SVO shares the building with a bar and it’s possible Paul meant something liquid when he said lunch, but I head across the street to this trashy diner, Betty’s Kitchen, and pay for two to-go bowls of bacon mac because it’s the most comforting sounding thing on the menu and maybe Arthur needs something like that, if he can eat at all. The place is busier than it usually is; people seeking refuge from the weather for the cost of a dollar pop. I wait for my order by the door, leaning against the noticeboard on the wall with my eyes shut, flyers fluttering against my shoulder with the arrival of each new customer. Forks and knives against plates. Murmured conversations happening over them. The television in the corner plays Days of Our Lives, which makes me think of Patty, who missed more church than episodes even though there was no one she loved more than Jesus.
“Mommy, her face.”
I open my eyes.
“Mommy, what’s on her face?”
The tiny, inquisitive voice comes from my left, and I turn to it and find a young girl—maybe four or so—staring up at me from the table she’s seated at with her mother. She has wild, curly hair pulled into tight pigtails that look like pom-poms on either side of her head.
“Mommy,” she says again, while looking right at me. “What’s on her face?”
Her mother finally looks up from her phone. “What, baby?” Then she follows her daughter’s gaze to mine, her expression immediately desperate, begging me for an out. She wants me to pretend I didn’t hear it or, barring that, explain it kindly to her daughter for both their sakes. I look to the little girl and her eyes widen. My undivided attention and its absence of warmth unsettles her to the point her lower lip trembles and she starts to cry.
“Thirteen,” the woman at the counter calls. My order. “Lucky thirteen.”
* * *
When I get back to the office, Jeff stops me at the door. Jeff is cool. It’s Jeff’s job to be cool. He’s tall and striking, with deep black skin and medium-length dreads tied into a ponytail. His job at SVO is social media manager—which sounds like a nightmare to me—but he looks every part an influencer with his phone permanently attached to his hand.
“Wouldn’t go over there if I were you,” he tells me.
I look toward Paul’s office and before I can ask, I hear it: Paul and Arthur shouting over each other through the closed door. It’s a shocking sound and despite Jeff’s warning, I follow it until I’m standing at my desk watching Paul’s and Arthur’s silhouettes through frosted glass. Arthur’s moves back and forth, agitated.
“You’re not fucking listening—you haven’t been listening—”
“Art, I’ve done what I can—”
“Bullshit! They murdered my son!”
There’s a brief hush through the entire office.
Copyright © 2021 by Courtney Summers
