City Lights At Night
alyssa
I'd barely heard from Julian in a week. He'd been traveling for business. Atlanta, then L.A., then somewhere I lost track of, and the version of him that came back, didn’t come up for air. Back-to-back sixteen-hour days at a stretch, running on coffee and protein bars.
I texted him a little after six.
Haven’t heard from you all week. You alive over there?
JULIAN
Barely. Long week.
Have you eaten anything that didn’t come out of a wrapper?
JULIAN
Protein bars.
Julian. You need to eat.
JULIAN
I’ll eat later, when I’m done
It’s almost nine, Julian. Soon later will be tomorrow
There was no “done” with him. I’d watched this man work at home on a Saturday and stay in the same chair from sunup to dark. “Later” was what he said to get people off his back.
Around nine I tried again.
You home yet?
Still at the office.
I didn’t write back. I just got up off the couch.
Micah was gone for the night, a sleepover at Simone and Raschad’s, a tent full of eight-year-olds in the living room, God help Simone.
I’d already eaten, already cleaned up, already packed the leftovers into containers.
I pulled them back out of the fridge: baked chicken, yellow rice, and smothered green beans.
I warmed it up, tucked a fork and napkin into a bag, and grabbed my coat.
It was a short walk. That was the thing about living downtown: WadeHouse was maybe four blocks away, lit up against the dark, keeping its own hours.
The lobby was quiet and the guard at the desk knew my face; he buzzed me through with a nod and a “he’s still up there” that told me I wasn’t the only one who’d clocked it.
Most of the building sat dark, but the bass from the studio level vibrated up through the floor.
The executive floors weren’t locked. They were just empty.
I rode up to Julian’s floor alone. His assistant’s desk sat dark outside his office, and the door was open a few inches, throwing a wedge of light into the hall, letting his voice out with it.
“That’s not the structure we agreed to,” he was saying. “You don’t get to renegotiate the split because you think we’re under the gun.”
I knocked and pushed the door the rest of the way open. He looked up mid-sentence, and something flickered, surprised, then a smile. A second later it smoothed back over and he lifted a hand. Five minutes. He tipped his head toward the couch. Sit.
I didn’t sit.
I crossed to his desk instead, set the bag down, and started clearing him a space. I laid out the container, the fork, the napkin, and peeled the lid back so the steam came up between us, and set the whole thing in front of him.
He put his call on mute. “You didn’t have to come all the way down here.”
“Word on the street is you’ve been living off vending machines.”
He unmuted the call and his hand found my waist, warm through my shirt, there and gone, and he kept talking. “Then we revisit the cap table from the top…” he paused, grabbed the fork, and ate a forkful of the rice, “…because if you’re moving the goalposts on equity, nothing downstream of it holds.”
I grinned, satisfied, watching him eat something.
While he negotiated, I wandered around his office.
I’d been there several times in daylight, and it hadn’t looked like this.
Two of the four walls were nothing but floor-to-ceiling glass.
One behind his desk, the other along the adjacent side, so the whole corner of his office hung out over downtown like the prow of a ship.
He had a huge desk, a low couch, a little round table with three chairs, a media nook with albums and a stereo and speakers, a door to a private bathroom. Everything squared away.
I drifted to the side windows and looked out at the city doing its slow night breathing. Headlights threading the streets, a billboard cycling color over the south end, all of it laid out and glittering. I’d always loved city lights at night. Something about them undid me a little.
Julian was still on the call. I caught his eye and mouthed it. Eat.
He nodded and took a bite of the chicken, then held up a finger while chewing. One second.
One second became ten minutes. Somebody else came on the line and he muted it, glanced at me. “Sorry, Lyss. They’re being difficult.”
“They’ll still be difficult tomorrow.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” He unmuted and dove back in.
I sat on the couch, scrolling my phone, looking up when his voice climbed. The edge sharpening, and his patience wearing out. I tapped my wrist at him, giving up on subtle.
I came around behind the chair and put my hands on him.
He went rigid for half a beat, then as I dug my thumbs into the granite at the base of his neck, the breath went out of him all at once.
The voice on the speaker kept droning about payout provisions.
I worked the knot under his shoulder blade, and felt the fight start to leave his body under my hands.
“—which brings us back to minority shareholder protections,” the voice said.
His eyes had closed. When he spoke again, the steel had gone out of it. “You know what… let’s table this. It’s late, and nobody’s thinking clearly tonight. Tomorrow, ten a.m. My assistant will send the invite. Good night.”
He ended the call before anyone could argue and let his head drop forward into my hands.
“That was a cheap trick,” he said.
“That was an intervention.” I came back around. “Finish eating.”
He sat back and actually ate, and after a few more bites nudged the container toward me. “You want some?”
“I ate hours ago, like a regular person. That’s all yours.”
For a while neither of us said much, and the quiet didn’t need to be filled.
“When’s the last time you took a vacation?” I asked finally.
“I travel constantly.”
“For work. That doesn’t count and you know it.” I tucked my feet under me. “When’s the last time you did something that wasn’t for the company or your family or this whole city? Something for you.”
He chewed, didn’t answer.
“That’s what I thought.”
“I’m doing something for me right now,” he said. “I’m eating chicken.”
“Don’t deflect.”
“It’s good chicken.”
I let him win that one, because the smile was worth it.
“This really is stunning,” I said. “I’ve never seen it up here at night. It’s a whole different building.”
He came up behind me, put his arms around me, his chin settling on my shoulder, both of us looking out at the spread of light. I leaned back into him. “You can see the whole city from up here,” I said.
“Most of it.” He lifted a hand past my shoulder and pointed past the bright part of downtown to a darker block where the buildings went smaller. “You see that corner. The little building with the blue awning?”
I followed his finger to see a barely lit building, a single sign I couldn’t read from here.
“That was my great-uncle Marvin’s record shop,” he said.
“Long before any of this. My parents grew up in that place. Met there as kids, nine, ten years old. Used to ride their bikes together to it every day after school, back when half these roads were still dirt. They’d spend whole afternoons in there playing records, arguing about which song was better. ”
“Their story sounds beautiful, Julian.”
“It was. She worked at that shop for a while after high school, while Pops went on the road. His career just taking off.”
I stayed very still. I knew his mother was gone.
I knew his father was out there somewhere, a fact that hung over the whole family but no one really talked about.
I’d gathered the rest in pieces over time, from Simone, from things Julian didn’t quite finish saying.
But I had never once heard him just offer it up, unprompted.
“He came back for her,” Julian said. “He came home, got her, and took her back on the road with him, and that was that. Everything started on that corner.” He paused.
“I chose this view because of that. On a bad day I can look down there and remember it started in a room the size of the bathroom in here.”
The light from the window caught the side of his face. “I just wish she could’ve seen what it turned into,” he said, and the steadiness in his voice gave, barely.
I turned in his arms so I could see him. “She would be so proud of you, Julian. Beyond proud. Not just of the business, but of who you are. I know if Micah grows up to be half the man you are, I would be so proud. I’d know I’d done something right.”
He didn’t reply to that, but whatever was on my face made something in him shift. The corner of his mouth turned up. He'd given me something real, and now he was done being looked at that closely.
“You ready to go? It’s late.”
“I know it’s late. I told you that.”
He’d opened up to me, and I knew better than to reach for more. So I lightened the moment. I looked back out at the city.
“You ever bring a woman up here?” I asked. “To see all this.”
“No. You’re the first.”
I leaned back against the cool of the glass, the whole lit city dropping away behind me, and let a slow smile go. “So you’re telling me you’ve never broken in this office? All this beautiful space. All this privacy.” I tilted my head. “That’s a shame, Julian.”
He moved closer, crowding me against the window until my back was flush against the glass. “Is that what this is?” A hungry look came over his face, his voice dropping an octave. “You want to break it in?” His hands came to rest on my hips, fingers digging in.
“I-I was joking,” I half laughed without much conviction.
“No you weren’t.” His grip got tighter. “And we're not leaving here until we've properly christened every surface.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. “Julian, someone might see.”
He let out a predatory laugh. “We’re thirty floors up. It’s midnight.” His mouth found the side of my throat and his hands slid up under my shirt. “And if there’s anybody out there with a telescope and that much patience… let them have the show.”