15. Celebrity #2
"Love you more. Now go iron something."
Friday morning I stand in front of my closet for forty minutes, which is thirty-nine minutes longer than this closet deserves.
It's a narrow cavity behind a bifold door with a bent track, and half my professional wardrobe is packed in a vacuum-sealed bag under the bed because the only hanging rod bows in the middle like a suspension bridge under load.
I reach for the bag. Unzip it. The smell of cedar blocks and the ghost of my old life hits me square in the face.
I choose the charcoal wide-leg trousers.
The black structured blazer with the asymmetric lapel—the one I wore to the zoning board presentation, the one that made me feel like I could walk through a wall.
A cream silk shell underneath, tucked clean.
My edges I lay down with a small brush and a prayer, smoothing the baby hairs along my hairline until they cooperate.
The twists are fresh enough. Three days old, still holding their shape, still catching light the way I need them to.
No silk scarf this time. I am not hiding my neck.
Hard-soled shoes. I lace up my black architectural boots—the ones with the steel-reinforced toe that pass OSHA standards while looking like they belong on a runway. I bought them when I got the Elkwood assignment. Haven't worn them since.
The L train to Manhattan. Transfer at Eighth Avenue.
The A train uptown to Columbus Circle. Walk west to Eleventh Avenue.
Every block closer to 57th, my pulse kicks harder.
Not my heart hammering—more like a metronome picking up tempo, steady and mechanical, the kind of rhythm you can't override with deep breathing or positive affirmations or any of the other coping strategies my therapist suggested before I stopped being able to afford my therapist.
I text Yolanda at 9:48 AM. Approaching the site.
She responds instantly. I'm on 56th. Black Camry. Mace is in my cupholder.
Pray for me.
Girl I been praying since Tuesday. Go.
The construction fence stretches the full block of West 57th.
Blue plywood panels twelve feet high, bolted to steel posts anchored in concrete footings.
I know the footing specs because I designed the temporary barrier system during the early excavation phase.
Eight-inch diameter posts, thirty-six-inch embedment, spaced at six-foot centers.
The details live in my body like muscle memory. Like breathing.
I approach the security gate. A guard sits in a climate-controlled booth—new since my last visit, upgraded from the old plywood shack. He's young, bored, scrolling his phone.
"Celebrity Nash. I have a site access letter."
I hold up the cream stock through the booth window. He barely glances at it.
"Yes, ma'am. You're expected. Go right in."
He buzzes the pedestrian gate. The magnetic lock clicks. I push through.
And stop.
The site is empty.
Not empty the way construction sites are on weekends—equipment parked, tarps secured, skeleton crew manning the perimeter.
Empty empty. No cranes moving. No welders throwing sparks on the upper decks.
No concrete trucks idling at the pour station.
No foremen barking into radios. No diesel generators humming their low, industrial bass note that vibrates in your molars when you stand too close.
Nothing. Dead air. Just the building.
And God, the building.
It's reached fifty-four floors. I count the decks automatically, the way I count stairs or ceiling tiles or any repeating structural element in any space I enter—compulsive, involuntary, the architect's version of a nervous tic.
Fifty-four floors of structural steel and poured concrete, the skeleton of the thing I drew on paper and built in my head a thousand times.
The core walls are up, the floor plates cantilevering outward in the exact spiral geometry I specified in my original load calculations.
From down here the twist is subtle. From across the river it'll look like the building is turning in place, like it caught wind and decided to dance.
My building. My bones.
I stand in the middle of the staging area, alone, the October wind cutting between the exposed beams above me and sending a low whistle down through the open elevator shaft.
My blazer does nothing against the cold, but I don't fold my arms. I stand straight.
Feet planted shoulder-width on poured concrete I specced at 8,000 PSI.
Why is there no one here? On a Friday? In the middle of a deadline Torrance would sooner die than miss?
Something is wrong. Or something is staged. With Torrance, those are often the same thing.
I bring my phone out to text Yolanda and catch movement in my peripheral vision. Not a person—a flag. A tarp. Something flapping overhead in the wind. I look up, past the staging area, past the temporary fencing, to the massive construction billboard mounted on the street-facing side of the site.
The billboard I've walked past a hundred times. The one that used to read WHITFIELD BOYD PARTNERS in silver block letters above a glossy rendering of the finished tower.
Whitfield Boyd is gone.
The silver letters have been stripped. In their place, mounted in clean black steel—the same matte finish I specified for the lobby signage in my original design package—new text:
LEAD ARCHITECT — CELEbrITY NASH
My name. Forty feet wide. Bolted to the side of my building.
My knees unlock. I grab the nearest barricade railing to keep from going down.