Chapter 3
THREE
Inside the glossy lobby, warm air con blasts.
The open marble area is oozing with red poinsettia plants and a towering fake Christmas tree.
Checking the time again, I walk briskly over to the Coffee Dock and order a caramel latte.
As I lean on the high counter waiting, I watch the red leaves of the plants dance and sway in the manufactured breeze.
I thank the barista and take a step forward when something crunches under my foot.
Looking down, I lift my olive suede ankle boot to see a silver chain.
It twinkles and glistens on the white floor under the overhead spotlights.
When I pick it up, I see it’s a man’s necklace, a heavy thick-link chain with a silver half-moon swaying on it.
Lost property is handed into the reception desk, and I start to head over but as I make my way someone tips me from behind, I spin around.
‘Morning, Magpie, you’re early? It’s only ten past seven,’ Eliza says through a wide, open-mouthed yawn using her pet name for me.
‘It is? Ten past? No, I’m actually late.
’ I eye up the queue at reception then I drop the heavy chain into my inside pocket until after my meeting.
Picking up the pace, I head across the lobby for the security doors with Eliza hot on my heels.
I impatiently tap my pass, and the doors swing open with a whoosh.
‘How are you late? You never start until eight thirty,’ Eliza says, sneezing softly now into her elbow as she always does with the warm air con playing havoc with her allergies.
‘I have a pre-work breakfast meeting with Amanda, she told me to bring my lookbook, you know what that hopefully means?’ I keep up the pace striding towards the row of gold elevators.
‘Promotion? To feature writer?’ Eliza is now basically jogging beside me, the ice in her smoothie rattling as she sneezes again and cusses the air con.
‘I think so.’ I stop dead in my tracks, and Eliza almost crashes into me.
‘At bloody last!’ Eliza announces brightly, happiness crossing her face. Her thick kohl wing is so long it makes her eyes look amazingly cat-like. I stop at the first elevator, calling it by jabbing the button impatiently like a demented woodpecker.
‘Good morning, gals.’ Salma Shuster stands beside us, in a wide-legged, double-breasted navy suit, tie and a white backpack.
She only joined the magazine last year as an assistant in the writers’ room but she’s already made enemies.
Without being asked, she re-wrote a piece Eliza did on afternoon weddings at the Tavern on the Green and sent it to Amanda, who ran it. A real no-no. Eliza was fuming.
‘You don’t have to start work until nine, Salma, we keep telling you there isn’t any overtime,’ Eliza says in her professional tone. Let’s just say Salma isn’t in her good books.
‘I have a breakfast meeting with Amanda shortly, but actually I’m early so any chance you can grab me a matcha, Maggie?’ She eyeballs me.
‘Maggie doesn’t get your matchas, Salma.’ Eliza’s voice is ice cold. ‘She doesn’t get your anything.’
Before I can say a word, Salma just shrugs with a fake smile that doesn’t reach her eyes and sashays off
‘Oh, brilliant!’ I collapse in the shoulders; I tap my foot on the ground repeatedly.
‘Relax, you’re giving me anxiety.’ Eliza puts a hand on my arm.
‘Why is she meeting Amanda too? I swear to God, Eliza, if I’m passed over again, for her . . .’ The thought of that disappointment knocks me for six.
‘Listen to me, you’re an amazing writer. Amanda knows that. Just go in there and do what you got to do. Go get that promotion.’ Eliza squeezes my arm. I start jabbing the call button again. Then Eliza moves her hand to my shoulder and massages it softly.
‘Thank you.’ I groan softly.
I’m impossibly fond of Eliza, who is as confident as I am unsure.
We regularly take lunch together. In the air-less city summer months we people watch and enjoy the shade under the honey locust trees on the Great Lawn of Central Park on a blanket with a packed lunch.
Eliza spends most of the time pointing out (and waving at!) hot, half-naked guys much to my absolute embarrassment.
‘By the way tension isn’t exactly a fashion statement but girl you literally look like Christmas this morning.’ I open my eyes as Eliza drops her hand, clamps the rolling straw from her green smoothie between her lips.
‘I glance down at my outfit. I’m wearing a tie-detailed linen midi-wrap red skirt, cashmere white round neck sweater, thick black pantyhose and olive suede ankle boots with my green wool coat swinging open, sprinkles of light snow still on it.
‘Ha! I guess I do, didn’t plan that, just grabbed whatever I saw that was clean.’ Trying to relax, I twist my coffee cup facing the minuscule hole towards my lips.
‘Magpie, you’d look good in a garbage bag, girl.
’ Eliza laughs loudly. ‘You put the figure in figment of my imagination and don’t get me started on that porcelain skin of yours, I’m one sneeze away from shattering it into a million pieces.
’ Eliza rolls her eyes dramatically so all I can see are the whites. She makes me laugh despite my anxiety.
I sip my latte, stare back at the elevator willing it down. The rich smooth taste of the espresso and steamed milk, swirled together with the sweet, buttery flavour of caramel syrup, erupts on my tongue.
‘I’m exhausted. I was up half the night finishing my Guggenheim piece for the February issue.
Come on, you know how good you are? That lookbook is a career all of its own!
I keep telling you, that is a business you can go online with tomorrow!
A personal wedding location planner. Your talent astounds me.
’ Eliza smiles warmly and lightly taps my lookbook for emphasis.
She is not someone who throws compliments willy-nilly.
‘Thank you,’ I tell her lifting my two fingers, crossing them as more men and women in sharp suits from the various finance floors start to file past us to the Coffee Dock.
The elevator finally pings its arrival. The gleaming gold doors part at a leisurely pace and we both step into the empty space.
‘Alright, I need to confess something awkward?’ Eliza is grimacing at me in a weird way that immediately gives me a new knot of tension in my stomach.
‘What is it?’ I look at her quizzically as I press our floor.
‘I have a crush on Ben Laird. Please tell me you are still just good friends?’ Eliza tilts her head, shifts her weight from one foot the other.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been out with Ben, Frederick’s assistant from Acquired Finance, but just as friends.
‘Yes, we’re just friends, there is absolutely no romantic connection there .
. . well, for me,’ I tell her, ‘but we went to see Tobacco Road and for a drink after at the Empire and he told me he’s looking for marriage and, as you know, I’m definitely not after that!
’ I tell her and curiously narrow my eyes.
‘So, if you’ve no intention of asking him for a sleepover, Magpie, he can borrow the bottom half of my pyjamas!
’ Eliza shimmies her shoulders. She has no filter, says exactly what she thinks and I find it inspiring and empowering.
‘I had to tell you. You know me.’ She clasps her index finger and thumb together and pretends to zip her mouth shut.
‘No problem! Go for it. He’s a super sweet guy but yes, most definitely just a friend,’ I assure her, thinking I probably need to talk to him to put things straight.
‘No sparks?’ Eliza questions.
‘I’m not after sparks. I’m not after anything, you know that. I’m the supplier of my own happiness.’ I catch my refection in the backlit elevator mirror and curl a loose strand of hair behind my ear as the elevator shudders and stops.
‘That’s good for me then.’ Eliza’s gaze drops briefly to the floor; I can tell she’s relieved.
The doors part. People pile in.
‘Hold the elevator!’ someone calls out and three men rush in and immediately turn their backs on us. I narrow my eyes at one of them. I lean forward.
It’s that man.
The running man in the bright burnt orange hat.
That hat is unforgettable. It’s definitely the man from earlier that nearly knocked me off my feet.
Should I reach over and tap his shoulder, so he turns around? Give him a piece of my mind? I should. I want to!
‘Will I?’ I think.
‘You can’t,’ I answer.
Eliza’s so focused on stabbing the unblended fruit at the end of her smoothie with her straw, she doesn’t catch my reaction.
The two men he’s with are from the sales and acquisition division in Acquired Finance.
I recognise their side profiles, as one of them presses their floor button.
Ben had only been telling me at the Empire about how they bought up a chain of boutique motels worth billions.
Carefully I elbow Eliza. Slowly I point my finger discreetly to the man’s back, jab it back and forward.
Eliza narrows her eyes in confusion. I copy her.
Eliza’s brow wrinkles in puzzlement. I shake my head, put a finger to my lip, lean across.
‘He’s a jerk,’ I whisper directly into Eliza’s ear now.
‘You know him?’ Eliza says to me in a barely audible whisper as the buttons light up slowly on the elevator panel in front of us and we rise up the skyscraper.
‘Tell you after,’ I mouth, with a shake of my head, let the Christmas muzak mask the silence.