Линвуд Баркли - Elevator Pitch

“Dear, you’ve misunderstood,” Clement said. “Bucky here—”

At the mention of his name, Bucky cleared his throat and gave Clement a disapproving look. Clement, realizing his mistake, paused to start again. But he didn’t get a chance.

“I kept wondering, why New York?” Estelle said, her voice shaking. “At first I thought, maybe you were trying to make a point. That it was some bizarre Flyovers statement, walking into the enemy camp, looking — I don’t know — for some kind of dialogue or confrontation or whatever. Then,” and she suddenly laughed, a short, almost hysterical hoot, “I even wondered, was it you? Did you make those elevators crash? Hire some genius to do it?”

“That’s absurd, Estelle,” Clement said.

“Well, I know that now!” she said. “I almost wish that was what you’d been up to.” She touched the corner of her eye to catch a tear. “It would certainly be less humiliating than this.” Her lip quivered. “God, I feel like such a fool. How long, Eugene. How many other men?”

Behind her, a man came striding into the room, already tugging at the top of his zipper. But he hit the brakes when he saw Estelle, then spun around and left.

Clement began to laugh.

“Oh, this is too much,” he said, and the laughs turned into guffaws. “Really, really, this is beyond outrageous.”

He looked at Bucky, clapped his hand on the man’s shoulder again and continued laughing. Bucky, however, did not see the humor in the situation. He pushed Eugene’s hand away and started heading for the door.

Estelle sidestepped to block his path. When he attempted to dodge around her, she moved again.

“Bucky, is it?” she asked. “Are you married, too? Does your wife know she’s married to a queer?”

“For fuck’s sake,” he said, glancing back at Clement. “Mr. Clement, with all respect, you need to straighten out your lady here.”

Clement nodded. “Estelle, I can tell you, in all honesty, that I am not having an affair with Bucky.” A short laugh. “If I was thinking of switching teams, it’d be with someone a little better looking.” He grinned at Bucky. “No offense intended.”

Bucky looked increasingly distressed.

“Then what the hell is going on?” Estelle demanded.

“Bucky here is... a business associate.”

“Oh, please, Eugene. Don’t treat me like a moron. What the hell business would anyone conduct in here ?”

Bucky said, “Mr. Clement, I don’t think you should get into—”

“Bucky here is my number one... man in the field. An operative, you might say. He—”

“Is he one of your followers?” Estelle asked. “Goes around blowing things up?”

Clement blinked. Bucky said, “Shit.”

“You think I don’t know?” Estelle said, looking at her husband. Her voice rose. “The thing is, I don’t know which is worse. If he’s your boyfriend, or one of your bombers?”

“Lady — Mrs. Clement — you need to shut the fuck up,” Bucky said.

Clement shot him a look. “Don’t speak to my wife that way, Bucky.”

Bucky looked at Clement as though he’d never set eyes on him before. He was seeing him in a new light. No longer the mentor. Now a threat.

“Or maybe he’s both,” Estelle said, not shutting up, and definitely not getting any quieter. She glared at her husband and shrieked, “Maybe makes your bombs, and then he gets down on his knees and—”

That was when Bucky shot her.

He’d quickly taken the silencer-equipped Glock from where he’d tucked it into the back of his jeans, hidden under his jacket, pointed it at Estelle and pulled the trigger.

The bullet caught her in the throat, passed through her neck and struck the closest urinal, shattering porcelain and spilling the deodorizing urinal puck to the floor.

Estelle went down.

Clement screamed “NOOOOO!” and, momentarily paralyzed by what he’d seen, looked at Bucky, eyes wide, mouth open.

“What in God’s—”

Bucky shot Clement in the chest. He staggered back a step, looked down disbelievingly at the blossom of red on his shirt. He dropped to one knee.

Bucky put another bullet into him, this one into the forehead. Clement went down.

“I’m real sorry, Mr. Clement,” Bucky said. “Especially this being your anniversary and all.” He tucked the gun back into his pants, straightened his jacket, and walked out of the men’s room.

Barbara threw back the covers and padded quietly on her bare feet to the kitchen.

There was a pounding in her head demanding coffee, but it was calling out for painkillers even more insistently. Barbara opened the cupboard, tapped out two pills from a container, popped them into her mouth, and washed them down with a handful of tap water.

She put a paper cone into the coffee maker and spooned in twice as much ground dark roast as she usually put in each morning. Once the water had been added, she pushed the button and waited for the first drops of coffee to appear. The pot could not fill quickly enough. She glanced at the four empty wine bottles on the counter. She was, to put it mildly, very hung over.

When the coffee was ready, she filled a mug and stirred in some sweetener. Then she stepped quietly back into the bedroom and sat down gingerly on one side of the bed.

“Hey,” Barbara whispered. “I made some coffee.”

Arla, sleeping on her stomach, had her face buried in the pillow. She made a low, barely audible grunting noise, then slowly rolled over, her hair dragging across her face.

Blinking several times as she adjusted to the light coming in through the window, Arla said, “I feel like a piece of shit that’s been stuffed inside another piece of shit.”

“Join the club,” Barbara said. “You want some Tylenol or aspirin or anything? You want it, I’ve got it.”

Arla started to pull herself up, her back resting against the headboard. As she reached for the mug, she said, “Let me see if this does the trick first.”

She glanced at the cell phone on the bedside table, picked it up. “It’s dead. What time is it?”

“Nearly ten,” Barbara said.

Arla snorted. “Looks like I’m gonna be late for work.”

Barbara said nothing. With her free hand, Arla patted her mother’s knee. “Joke.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ve said that enough.” Arla took a sip of coffee, closed her eyes briefly. “Bliss. You did it just right. What time did we finally fall asleep?”

“Around five, I think,” Barbara said.

“God.”

“Let me get a cup. I’ll be right back.”

Barbara slipped out to the kitchen, filled a mug for herself, and returned. Arla hadn’t moved. Barbara went around to the opposite side of the bed and got in it, back to the headboard, next to her daughter.

“I haven’t got much in the way of breakfast,” she said apologetically. “Does Uber Eats deliver this early?”

“I need a hangover breakfast bad,” Arla said. She glanced down at herself, took in the blue T-shirt and white pajama bottoms she was wearing. “Thanks for the PJs,” she said.

“No problem,” Barbara said, her shoulder touching Arla’s. It was, she thought, the greatest feeling in the world.

“It’s all really fucked up, isn’t it?” Arla said.

“That’s an understatement.”

“The mayor of New York is my father.”

“Yeah.”

“And he’s never known anything about me.”

“That’s right.”

“And Glover is my half brother.”

“Yup.”

“And he’s never known about me, either.”

“That’s right.” Barbara paused. “And that’s all on me.”

Arla ran her finger around the rim of her coffee cup. “I wonder if that’s why I was feeling this, I don’t know, kind of attraction. To Glover. Maybe I saw something of myself in him. We were connecting on some genetic, sibling-like level.”