CHAPTER 19 – NELLIE #2
“Ms. Alburn,” she said slowly, as if she believed Nellie was not all there in the brain function department, “maintains a very full schedule. Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes, I have a meeting,” Nellie said again. “With Sawyer. Alburn.”
“And your name is?”
“Nellie Fuller.”
The receptionist typed something. Or appeared to type something; the keystrokes were so light they might have been decorative. She studied whatever had or hadn’t appeared on her screen. Then she looked up with a smile so tight it could have been stenciled. “I’m afraid I don’t have any record of—”
“She called me herself. About an hour ago.”
“I understand. Unfortunately, without a confirmed appointment in our system, I’m not in a position to issue a visitor pass, which means I can’t grant access to the—”
“Could you call up?” Nellie suggested. “Or email? She’s expecting me.”
The smile didn’t flicker. “Ms. Alburn’s schedule is managed through her executive assistant. In order to arrange a meeting with Ms. Alburn, you’d need to submit a request through our website, and the team would—”
“I don’t need to arrange a meeting,” Nellie said patiently. “I have one. It was arranged this morning, via phone call, by the woman whose building this is.”
The receptionist arched a sharp eyebrow. “With respect, Ms. Alburn doesn’t take unscheduled meetings with”—she paused, and her gaze made one final, very deliberate circuit of Nellie’s general presentation—“walk-ins.”
Nellie sighed.
She heard what had almost been said, the words that had been left hovering in the space where the pause was, and clung resolutely to exactly how much she was not going to escalate this.
She was familiar with the dynamic. She had, at various points in her career as a woman who regularly showed up to meetings that happened around trees, run headlong into the particular wall that got erected in front of people who didn’t look like they belonged, in places that had been built to discourage them from thinking they did.
She was not going to argue with this woman. Instead, she was going to call Martha.
Plastering on a saccharine smile to rival Ms. Blowout, Nellie pulled out her phone.
Martha picked up on the first ring.
“Nellie. On your way in?”
“Technically, yes,” Nellie said pleasantly, looking at the receptionist. “Physically, I’m standing at the front desk of your lobby, and the receptionist is declining to let me through to the elevator.”
Nellie could almost hear Martha pursing her lips.
“Which receptionist?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t get a name. Dark hair. Lots of… volume.” The receptionist in question was staring at her as if she were a dancing monkey. “She mentioned Sawyer doesn’t like walk-ins, but I think it’s because I’m not wearing a blazer.”
“I see.” Nellie might have been imagining it, but it very much sounded like Martha was trying to bite back a laugh. “Leave it to me. Stay right where you are.”
“You got it.”
She ended the call and smiled at the receptionist again, genuinely this time, in an effort to not look too smug. “Someone’s going to be in touch,” she chirped. “Should just be a second.”
The receptionist narrowed her eyes.
Approximately four seconds later, the phone at the front desk rang.
The receptionist picked it up—already in full professional form, head tilting, the standard greeting beginning—and then she stopped talking.
Her eyes, which had been directed at her monitor, widened.
They went to the phone receiver, then back up, then over to Nellie, in a very short, involuntary sequence that Nellie had seen before in slightly different contexts, usually when someone received information they had not anticipated.
A rapid sequence of nods began. The receptionist’s mouth opened once, to produce what appeared to be the words “of course,” and then opened again for an “absolutely,” and then she was quiet for a further stretch during which her posture underwent a small but marked revision.
The composed, architectural confidence of it dropped by about half an inch.
“Yes,” she said, quietly. “Of course. I apologize for the— Yes. Immediately.” She hung up.
She looked back at Nellie. The meticulous smile had been replaced by something less frosty and considerably more chastened.
“Ms. Fuller.” Her hand went to her keyboard, and this time the keystrokes were real.
“I’m so sorry for the confusion. I’ll have a visitor pass printed for you now.
Ms. Alburn’s office is on the thirty-eighth floor.
You’ll take the elevator bank on your left, the one at the end.
” She had already printed the pass, and she extended it across the desk with both hands, as if that had been her intention the entire time.
“You’ve been granted full floor access. Martha Chen will meet you when you arrive. ”
“Wonderful,” Nellie said. She took the pass. “Thank you so much.”
She swiped her way through the electronic gates and turned toward the elevator bank the receptionist had indicated. Her boots crossed the pale marble without a sound.
The elevator doors opened immediately.
Nellie stepped in and turned to face the lobby. The receptionist was already looking away, a scarlet flush creeping from beneath her starched collar.
The elevator doors slid shut.
She pressed thirty-eight.
Then she pulled out her phone, typed six words in a message to Paloma—“I am in the evil tower”—and grinned at her own reflection in the brushed steel doors as the elevator began, at considerable speed, to rise.