“I understand,” I said, and she turned around.
“I think we both have stories that need to be told,” she said firmly, then approached me and flung her arms around me in an uncharacteristic display of physical affection. “I hope you do the right thing.”
I nodded, and she loosened her embrace, freeing me for a hasty escape.
Chapter 24
Carmen lasted until nine o’clock on Thursday evening before calling my office, presumably to press me for an answer. I ignored her call, silencing the ringer and letting it go to voice mail, before heading out to work from home and avoid a potential drop-by from her. Though I’d been trying to weigh the pros and cons of her offer, I knew I had no real intention of reporting my affair with Peter. I had wanted him, had even initiated at least one of our encounters—but more importantly, it wasn’t high on the list of battles I knew I should currently be fighting.
As soon as I stepped out into the marble lobby, the night sky cracked open with a bolt of lightning and the sound of a downpour reverberated through the walls. I looked back at the closing elevator doors and contemplated heading back upstairs to get an umbrella, but then I remembered that Lincoln always kept a few on hand. The security desk was empty, but I spotted him a few paces away, heading out of the building for a cigarette.
“Lincoln! I’m grabbing an umbrella, okay?” I shouted, and he threw me a thumbs-up as he stepped outside and under the awning. As I reached into the brown cardboard box under his desk for a Klasko-branded umbrella, I noticed a new column of moving images on one end of the screen, labeled “56th Floor.” I leaned closer to the screen and noticed the bare floors and the scaffolding I’d seen the night of the keg party, plus the yellow caution tape around the exposed elevator shaft, and . . . I leaned in closer. She just stood there, looking down. She wasn’t moving. I thought for a moment she might have been praying. I squinted at the grainy image, less clear than the ones on the other screens because of the lack of light on the floor. Shoes? Were those shoes? My spine snapped into a straightened position. Shit. I dropped my bag at the security desk and ran to the elevator bank, where I pushed the up arrow five times fast then held it down. C’mon c’mon, I prayed silently.
When the elevator finally came, the ascent to 56 felt like an eternity as my thoughts raced. Fuck. I don’t have a plan. What am I supposed to say? I’m not qualified to handle this. Maybe I should make up a reason to be there so I don’t embarrass her. I ripped my pearl earring out of my ear and held it in my palm, my idea just beginning to take shape.
As the metal doors opened, I saw her before she saw me. She was standing in the darkened room, lit only by the city lights surrounding our building, peering out into the unfinished elevator shaft at the far end of the floor, her bare toes hovering at the edge of the precipice, and crying. I narrowed my eyes, hoping to find evidence that what I feared was happening wasn’t actually happening. But instead, I saw her shoulders shake slightly, and I heard the echo of her soft weeping even from the other side of the room. Calm. Calm. Be calm, I told myself. Don’t make any sudden movements. The last thing I wanted to do was make her lose her balance.
I felt her register my presence, and I immediately dropped to my hands and knees, focusing on the floor as I crawled toward her, my hands patting the ground in front of me as the concrete dug into my kneecaps.
I looked up slowly, as if I was just noticing her in that moment. “Nancy. I’m so glad you’re here. I lost my earring earlier when some of us came up to scout office space. Can you help me? I’m sure it’s here somewhere.” She turned only partially to me before taking one more longing look fifty-six stories down into the dirt floor below Fifth Avenue. For a moment, I panicked that she would do it. “Please,” I begged, “can you help me?” I stretched my arm out to her, my voice breaking.
As she took a step away from the edge and toward me, then sank onto her hands and knees, I let go of the earring in my fist. Leaving it on the ground, I continued past it. I snuck a few glances at Nancy’s tearstained face as we inched past one another, moving like two toddlers.
“I got it!” she declared, sitting back on her calves.
“Oh my god! Nancy! You’re amazing! You’re a lifesaver!” I took the earring from her hand and hugged her close to my chest. The tension in my spine released, and I sank into her, realizing that tears were now streaming down my face too. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I said into her hair. “So glad,” I repeated, barely above a whisper.
She began to cry again, covering her face with her hands as I sat cross-legged on the floor and rubbed her back.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I finally asked. There was a long pause, and Nancy looked everywhere but at me. Her gaze finally rested on her bare feet.
“Sometimes I don’t want to be here,” she said quietly. “I don’t fit in here. I’ve never fit in—my whole life I’ve never fit in. Anywhere. You don’t understand. Everything is so”—she lifted her eyes to mine and held out her palms, as though waiting for the correct words to fall into them—“easy for you.”
I sat back for a moment, the concrete digging into my backside. “This year is hard for everybody. Even me.” I shrugged, putting the earring back into my lobe. “I just wear the struggle differently. We all do. But we’re all feeling the pressure. It will get better. Things always do. Nothing is forever.” This was a horrible don’t-kill-yourself speech. “I’m a disaster right now, by the way. Our clients are pigs, my closest friend at the firm and I slept with the same guy, and my boyfriend and I broke up a couple months ago and you’re the first person I’m telling about it. We come to work in skirts and heels, but it’s all just a costume to keep people from seeing how messed up we are.”
Nancy stared at the floor as I spoke, then finally looked up.
“You should see somebody if you feel like you don’t want to be here,” I continued. “Will you do that?”
She looked over at her shoes and blushed, realizing that I knew what she had been doing on the vacant fifty-sixth floor. She nodded, locking her eyes with mine so I knew she took my request seriously.
“I really am so glad you’re here,” I reiterated, my voice and the meaning of the words in the broader, more mortal sense not lost on me. “This place can be super lonely. Which is weird, I know, because we’re in an office surrounded by people. But we all feel alone. I’m always here for you. For whatever. Even if you just want to walk around the block.”
“Maybe we could just . . . get dinner every once in a while?” she said sheepishly.
I brought Nancy down to my office, where I prattled on about how I’d gotten mixed up in a romantic relationship with somebody at work and how it ruined my relationship at home, how Sam had packed and left. It felt cathartic to share my mistakes with her, though I didn’t feel like I could let her in on the dark pockets in my mind that Gary had left in his wake. And Nancy, while she was sympathetic, was clearly comforted by the knowledge that I was not remotely as together as she had thought.
“Jordan was my first boyfriend,” she finally blurted out. I looked at her, slightly confused. “I know he’s married. And that we weren’t really conventionally dating . . .” She stopped and laughed nervously. “You wouldn’t understand.”