Boy Nobody (12 page)

“I hope it won’t be the last time,” he says.

“I’m sure it won’t.”

I take two steps toward the door, then I stop.

“Sorry to bother you, sir, but my pen—”

He looks back toward his desk. The pen is sitting there.

“Of course,” he says.

He hands it back to me.

Waiting.

How long has he been here?

What if I had finished my assignment and walked out to find him here?

But that doesn’t matter now.

The Pro looks at Sam, then at me.

“You’re not allowed in this part of the residence,” he says to me.

“This is my friend Benjamin,” Sam says.

He talks to Sam, but he doesn’t take his eyes off me.

“What were you doing in your father’s office?” he says.

“Talking to my father. Privately.” She emphasizes the last word.

He looks at Sam, nods, then cracks the door and peeks in, checking to make sure the mayor is in there.

“Satisfied?” she says.

“Just doing my job, ma’am.”

He closes the door and goes back to his gargoyle impression.

Sam pulls me in the opposite direction.

“Asshole,” she says. “Sorry about that.”

“I don’t think he likes me,” I say.

“He doesn’t like anyone,” she says, “but he
really
doesn’t like you.”

“Strange, because I’m very likable.”

“My father seems to think so.”

“And you?”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“Take your time,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I can’t go anywhere. I’ve wasted my first chance and I have to scramble to find another. I told Father I was going to finish quickly and make things simple. Instead I’ve screwed up and now things are getting more complicated.

I sense myself drifting into thoughts that are not helpful to me. Regret. Recrimination. I’ve learned not to dwell on such thoughts.

Things happen.

Adjust. Stay on task.

“Was my dad talking your ear off in there?” Sam says as we walk down the hall together.

“Both ears.”

“He has a big decision to make, and it’s got him a little crazy.”

“Is he going to change garbage day to Thursday?”

“Funny,” she says, “but it’s more like, ‘What am I going to do with the rest of my life?’ ”

“I didn’t know mayors thought about things like that.”

“Mayors in their final terms do,” Sam says. “That’s the beauty of term limits. They are fear-inducing.”

“I thought he’d go back to running his company.”

The mayor’s company, GRAM. Global Risk Assessment Modeling. Sophisticated data-mining algorithms applied to global security. It turned the professor into a businessman and the businessman into a billionaire. That billionaire became the city’s mayor at a time when the world felt the most unsafe.

At least that’s how the story is told. That was nearly eight years ago. I was in third grade at the time.

“Who knows what he’ll do,” Sam says. “My father has a way of making simple things very complicated. My mother used to call him on that, but now—” Her smile fades. “Now we’re sort of on our own.”

Her mother. I’m remembering the article I read about her mother’s car accident in Israel.

Sam stares at the ground, traces the pattern on the marble with one toe.

“You okay?” I say.

“Memories,” she says. “I hate them sometimes.”

“Me, too.”

“Really? What do you have memories of?”

Many things, all of them dangerous to me.

Before I can answer, a girl with bright red hair interrupts us coming down the hall.

“Great party!” she says.

“Thanks for coming,” Sam says to her.

Red gives me a double take, not recognizing the new guy with Sam. She lingers, waiting for an introduction.

She doesn’t get one.

“I’ll leave you guys alone,” she says, and keeps going down the hall.

“Any other questions about my dad?” Sam says.

“A lot more,” I say.

Her face darkens.

“I want to know more about him because I want to know more about you.”

“I see,” she says, studying my face.

“You’re always trying to figure out if I’m telling the truth,” I say.

“Professional hazard.”

“What profession is that?”

“Daughter of a famous person,” she says.

But I wonder if it isn’t something else.
Girl who got hurt by her ex.
Or maybe
Girl who lost her mother and doesn’t trust the world.

Whatever it is, it’s complicated.

We cross the threshold of the front door on the way back to the party, and I stop and grab the door handle.

I’m not going to get another opportunity with the mayor tonight. My best play is to get out now.

“Where are you going?” Sam says.

“I’m leaving.”

“April Fool’s?”

“For real.”

“You’re blowing off my party?”

“Not blowing it off. I was here; now I’m leaving.”

This is not a girl who is used to boys walking away from her. I see her wrestling with the idea. She wants to ask another question, but she stops herself.

“Okay, then,” she says. “But I think Erica will be disappointed.”

“I have a habit of disappointing women,” I say.

She twists a strand of hair between her fingers.

“And I have a habit of disappointing men. Something else we have in common.”

I go out the door, past the suit posted there.

I listen as I walk down the hall, measuring off the seconds before she closes the door. With a friend, you might close it right behind them. With someone you’re interested in, you might wait a few seconds before closing. And with someone you’re falling for—

“Hey, Benjamin,” she calls.

I look back, and she’s standing halfway out the door, one hand on the knob, the door still open.

With someone you’re falling for, you don’t go inside. You wait and watch them go. Just like she’s doing now.

“You haven’t disappointed me,” she says.

The elevator door opens. The operator waits.

“I haven’t disappointed you yet,” I say.

But I will when I kill your father.

She smiles and waves good-bye.

I step inside the elevator and let the doors close behind me.

I make a checkmark next to my name, and the cops tell me to have a good night.

A nondescript kid taking off from the party.

That’s how I want it.

I scan the street. My body remains casual, but I am very aware of my surroundings. I move, then pause, checking for reactions in the world around me.

There is nothing.

As I wait for the light to change at the corner, I pull the mayor’s card from my pocket. The seal of the City of New York is embossed at the top.

In a neat scrawl the mayor has written:

False familiarity. A politician’s trick, but a good one.

A normal person would be swayed by a card like this. At the very least, the mayor would have just earned a vote for life.

I’m too young to vote, so the charm offensive is wasted on me.

Almost wasted.

Something about the mayor’s energy stays with me. His image lingers after I’ve closed my eyes.

I think about him, then I think about Sam. The way she hugged her father.

I think about the fact that she lost her mother. Soon she will lose her father, too.

So be it. I did not make the choice.

A horn honks, snapping me back into the moment. I look up in time to see a black sedan cut off a cab. On the cab’s roof, the ad reads:

Home is where the
is.

The heart accelerates and disappears down the avenue.

I walk in the opposite direction.

I lost my home.

The thought appears like a strange, foreign thing.

I push it away.

I walk faster, feel the wind blow through my hair. I breathe in the motion of the city, the motion of the world, all of it spinning and moving and never stopping.

I am moving, too. I am moving and never stopping, one assignment after the next.

The thought gives me peace.

Briefly.

Because a half block down, I sense something. I glance in a store window, scanning the street behind me.

A black sedan. It’s moving slowly in my direction, tailing me from two blocks back.

Is it the same sedan that cut off the cab a moment ago? I can’t tell.

But I will find out.

I walk up to 86th Street and take a left toward Broadway. A busy street, traffic flowing. There’s no way to accomplish a slow tail in this situation.

The sedan doesn’t try. It accelerates into traffic and shoots past me. The windows are blacked out, so I can’t see the driver. It turns up Broadway and disappears.

Maybe it wasn’t after me in the first place.

I wait at the light, then I cross Broadway and keep going, walking along 86th Street.

I project my attention in all directions.

I don’t sense anything.

Not for a full minute. That’s when the sedan appears again, this time in front of me, speeding in my direction.

I put the pieces together. I was followed after meeting Sam, and now after leaving the mayor’s. It’s not a coincidence.

On my walk earlier, I noticed a construction Dumpster in front of a town house that’s being renovated. I’m ten feet away from it.

I don’t wait for the sedan to make its move. I cut hard right and
leap across the sidewalk and behind the Dumpster. I race up to the brownstone and use my shoulder to push against the wood planking on the front door.

The wood groans and the padlock gives way with a loud snap.

Exposed walls, torn flooring, wires dangling from the ceiling. A beautiful home that’s been gutted for renovation.

I drag over a dirty wheelbarrow, flip it sideways to prop the door from the inside.

Footsteps on the sidewalk in front of the brownstone. Two players, maybe more.

They walk past, then double back. I have to move quickly.

There’s a staircase to my left with the banister missing.

Up or down?

There’s a chance I could get trapped on higher floors, but it’s a small risk compared to the benefits. Elevation and surprise. Two key elements for repelling an attack.

I run for the stairs.

I make it to the second-floor landing before I hear the sound of the front door being forced. There are four levels in the residence, which means I’ll likely find a living room and dining room on the
second floor. I need space to fight, so it’s here or the roof. I choose here.

I move quickly down the hallway until I arrive at a door with a thick plastic sheet taped across to prevent dust from entering the rest of the house. Maybe it’s mold abatement. Maybe asbestos. You never can tell in these old buildings. The secrets behind the walls.

I pull the sheeting away from the door frame and enter a large living room. There’s a streetlamp at window level outside, the light spilling across the center of the room, dividing the space into shadows and light.

A second later the plastic rustles at the doorway. I fling myself behind a column as the first man enters. I peek around the edge, monitoring his movements.

He is nervous. He peeks into the room, his head swiveling as he looks for me. I hold my breath, make my energy soft.

After a moment he exhales and starts to back out of the room.

He stops, looks down.

Dust on the floor, illuminated by the window. The imprints of the paper booties of the men who work in the room, their steps arranged in a well-worn trail.

Crossing them is something else. My shoe prints.

I didn’t look down.

Stupid.

The man moves back into the room, following the footprints, looking for me. He snatches a pry bar off the floor and advances.

I wait for him to cross my path, moving to the other side of the column to get behind him. I let him get one step past and I strike, hooking him beneath his shoulder with one arm and clamping my hand over his mouth with the other.

The pry bar clangs loudly to the floor.

There’s a reaction from the floor below us. A second set of footsteps rushes up the staircase.

I grip the man as he struggles in my arms. We spin around the room in an awkward dance. I catch glimpses of expensive wallpaper partially stripped during construction.

I imagine this space fully furnished, elegant and clean, a happy family moving in and out of the room as they go about their day.

But that was a different time.

Now there is violence. Now there is struggle.

The man in my arms bucks hard, trying to throw me off his back. I increase the pressure against his shoulder, feel the rotator cuff strained to its limit. I don’t want to hurt him. Not if I don’t have to. I need to know who he is, ask him questions.