Chapter 5 The Tour of Terror
The Tour of Terror
Max
The limousine that pulls up to the penthouse is not a car. It is a land-yacht. It is black, sleek, and long enough to require its own zip code.
"It looks like a hearse for a giant," Jax mutters, drinking his fourth espresso of the morning. He is vibrating. Whether it is the caffeine or the impending doom, I cannot be sure.
"It’s a Rolls-Royce Phantom Extended Wheelbase," Preston corrects him, adjusting his silk scarf. "Mother likely had it armour-plated. She treats wedding planning like a motorcade through a hostile nation. Which, given who she invited, is accurate."
The rear door opens. A driver in a cap steps out.
"Dr. York," the driver nods to me. "Mr. and Mrs. York are waiting."
We climb in. The interior is cooled to a precise sixty-eight degrees.
Mother is sitting on the back bench, looking like the CEO of winter, while Father sits beside her looking uncharacteristically tired and jet lagged.
She is wearing a white pantsuit and oversized sunglasses, despite the fact that the windows are tinted to ninety percent opacity.
Opposite them, looking entirely unimpressed, is Rosa Ortiz.
Rosa is not wearing scrubs. She is wearing her "Sunday Church" outfit: a floral dress with a structured blazer that commands respect, sensible heels that could double as weapons, and a handbag that I know contains peppermint candies, a rosary, and possibly a shiv.
The air inside the car is so thick with tension it could be cut with a scalpel.
"Good morning," I say, sliding onto the bench next to Jax. Preston takes the jump seat, crossing his legs with practiced elegance.
"You’re late," Mother says without looking at her watch. "We are three minutes behind schedule. The traffic on the FDR is suboptimal."
"We were waiting for the elevator," Jax says.
"Buy a faster building," Mother replies smoothly. She turns her sunglasses toward Rosa. "Ms. Ortiz. I understand you are joining us as a... consultant."
"I’m here as the Chief of Staff," Rosa corrects her, her voice flat. She pats her handbag. "And to ensure my boys don't starve. I heard rumors about your catering, Catherine. 'Foam' is not a food group. If I see a foam, I am calling the health department."
Mother lowers her sunglasses an inch. Her eyes narrow. "It is molecular gastronomy, Rosa. It is art."
"It’s gas," Rosa counters. "And it causes bloating. If you serve gas at a wedding, you are asking for a melody you do not want to hear during the vows."
Preston snorts, quickly covering it with a cough. "I believe what Ms. Ortiz means is that we prefer solid matter, Mother. Legally, it has to be chewable to count as dinner."
Mother looks horrified. "Driver," she snaps. "Drive. Before I lose my appetite."
Venue 1: The Aerie
Location: Hudson Yards, 100th Floor.
The elevator ride takes forty-five seconds and makes my ears pop twice. When the doors open, we are not in a room. We are in a cloud.
"Behold," Mother says, stepping out onto the floor. "The Aerie."
It is a glass box suspended one hundred stories above Manhattan. The walls are glass. The ceiling is glass. The floor is glass. It offers a 360-degree view of the city, the river, and the terrified pedestrians a thousand feet below.
Jax takes one step out of the elevator, looks down between his feet at a yellow taxi the size of an ant, and immediately emits a high-pitched sound only audible to dogs. He flattens himself against the central support column, hugging the concrete like a koala.
"Nope," Jax wheezes, his eyes squeezed shut. "Absolutely not. I am a ground-dwelling mammal. This is a bird feeder. Why is the floor transparent? Who hates a solidly visibly opaque surface this much?"
"It is breathtaking," Mother declares, walking to the edge and looking down as if she owns gravity. "We will have the ceremony on the cantilevered deck. The guests will feel as if they are floating."
"They will feel nausea," I correct her, my own stomach doing a slow roll as I calculate the shear stress on the glass panels.
"Vestibular disruption is a known side effect of visual-proprioceptive mismatch.
You will have four hundred people vomiting on a transparent floor.
The visual impact from the street level will be. .. unfortunate."
"And the acoustics are a nightmare," Preston adds, clapping his hands. The sound ricochets sharply around the hard surfaces. "It sounds like the inside of a blender. If anyone laughs, it’ll sound like a manic episode. If a baby cries, we’ll all need hearing aids."
Rosa Ortiz marches to the centre of the glass floor. She stomps her heel. Thud.
"Where is the kitchen?" Rosa asks the venue manager, a terrified man named Stefan who is wearing a turtleneck.
"We have a prep kitchen in the basement," Stefan squeaks.
"The basement?" Rosa repeats. "That is one hundred floors down. So you are telling me that the hot food will come up in an elevator? By the time it gets here, the steak will be rubber and the mashed potatoes will be cement."
"We use warming boxes—" Stefan tries.
"Warming boxes breed bacteria," Rosa snaps. "I run an ER, Stefan. I know what food poisoning looks like. It looks like a lawsuit. This venue is a petri dish in the sky."
She turns to Mother.
"Veto," Rosa says. "Unless you want the grooms to faint and the guests to get E. coli."
Alistair, who has been standing at the very edge of the cantilevered deck looking down with his hands clasped behind his back and the serenity of a man who has absolutely no survival instinct, turns around.
"It reminds me of a rooftop in Cannes," he says cheerfully.
"1979. A Danish architect named Sven convinced me to stand on a ledge to 'feel the city breathe'.
I felt it. I also felt that my shoes were very poor quality for the occasion and that Sven had significantly underestimated the wind speed coming off the Mediterranean.
" He pauses, gazing fondly at the memory.
"Sven is now a liability lawyer in Copenhagen.
He specialises in personal injury claims. I imagine the irony sustains him. "
He looks at Jax, still plastered to the support column, knuckles white.
"Also," Alistair adds, walking back toward the group at a pace that suggests he finds the glass floor entirely unremarkable, "I agree with Preston.
The acoustics in here are catastrophic. We had a space not unlike this for the Foundation Gala in '94.
Glass walls, glass ceiling. A woman laughed too hard at the keynote and the sound bounced for forty seconds.
We could not establish whether she was still laughing or whether she had simply become part of the room.
It was deeply unsettling." He reaches Catherine and pats her arm.
"Veto from me as well. The floor is see-through and Jax is going to pass out. "
"I am not—" Jax starts.
"You've stopped blinking," Alistair says. "That's a clinical sign. Ask the surgeon."
Mother stiffens. "The view is non-negotiable."
"The view is giving me a stroke!" Jax yells from the pillar. "My heart rate is one-eighty! I am chemically compromised! Get me off this shelf!"
"Fine," Mother sighs, checking her notebook. "It lacked gravitas anyway. To the next location."
Venue 2: The Void Location: Chelsea Arts District
The second venue does not have a view. In fact, it does not have anything.
It is a former industrial slaughterhouse converted into a "Deconstructed Art Space." The walls are raw concrete. The floors are poured resin. There are no windows, only skylights that let in a cold, grey light.
It is silent. Oppressively silent.
"The Void," Mother announces. "Minimalist. Chic. A blank canvas for our legacy."
"It looks like a bunker," Preston observes, his voice echoing strangely in the vast room. "Are we attending a wedding, or are we waiting for the zombie apocalypse? I feel like I should be hoarding canned goods."
"It is acoustically perfect," Mother argues. "We will have a string quartet playing dissonant avant-garde pieces. The guests will stand in concentric circles."
"Stand?" Jax asks, peeling himself off the wall where he was checking for exits. "Where are the chairs?"
"Chairs interrupt the visual flow," Mother explains. "It will be a standing ceremony. Twenty minutes. Efficient."
"Catherine," Rosa says, stepping forward.
Her voice is low and dangerous. "My Tía Maria is eighty-five years old, and will be invited to the wedding as her great-nephew is one of the best men and dating the brother to the groom.
She has sciatica and a bad hip. If you make her stand on concrete for twenty minutes, she will sit on the floor.
And she will take her shoes off. Do you want Tía Maria barefoot in your Vogue spread? "
Mother pales slightly. "We can... arrange a bench for the elderly."
"A bench?" Rosa scoffs. "You need seating, Catherine. People need to sit, eat, and judge the centrepieces. That is the point of a wedding. This isn't a celebration; it’s a hostage situation."
"Also," I add, looking up at the lights. "These are fluorescent halogens. They cast a green pallor on the skin. Everyone will look jaundiced in the photos. We will look like we are in liver failure."
"It’s edgy," Mother insists. "It’s modern."
"It’s a morgue," Rosa declares. “I’ve been in a morgue, so I know what one looks like. The St. Jude’s morgue has better lighting and more comfortable tables. Veto."
"This place smells like rust and pretension," Preston adds, wrinkling his nose. "And I’m pretty sure that stain in the corner is forensic evidence. Veto."
Meanwhile, Alistair has been walking slow circuits around the perimeter of the space, hands in his pockets, head tilted, as if he is appraising a painting he suspects is a forgery.
He stops. He sniffs the air.