Cecelia Ahern - The Gift

The only thing that was static out there was Gabe, tucked away in a doorway near the building entrance, wrapped up on the ground and watching the shoes march by, the opportunities for him not quite as hopeful. Though only slightly bigger than a dot on the pavement thirteen floors down, Lou could see Gabe’s arm rise and fall as he sipped from his cup, making every mouthful last, even if by now the coffee was surely cold.

Gabe intrigued Lou. Not least because of his talent for recanting every pair of shoes that belonged in the building, as if he had a photographic memory, but, more alarmingly, because the person behind those crystal-blue eyes was remarkably familiar. In fact, Gabe reminded Lou of himself. The two men were similar in age, and, given the right grooming, Gabe could very easily have been mistaken for Lou. He seemed a personable, friendly, capable man. Yet how different their lives were.

At that very instant, as though feeling Lou’s eyes on him, Gabe looked up. Thirteen floors up and Lou felt like Gabe was staring straight at his soul, his eyes searing into him.

This confused Lou. He knew that the glass on the outside of the building was reflective, knew beyond any reasonable doubt Gabe couldn’t possibly have been able to see Lou. But there he stood staring up, his chin to the air, with a hand across his forehead to block out the light, in almost a kind of salute. He was probably looking at a reflection of something, Lou reasoned; a bird perhaps had swooped by and caught his eye. That’s right, a reflection was all it could be. But so intent was Gabe’s gaze, which reached up the full thirteen floors to Lou’s office window and all the way into Lou’s eyes, that it made Lou wonder. Before he knew it he lifted up his hand, smiled tightly, and gave a small salute to the man below. But before he could wait for a reaction, he wheeled his chair away from the window and spun around, his pulse rate quickening as though he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

The phone rang. It was Alison, and she didn’t sound happy.

“Before I tell you what I’m about to tell you, I just want to remind you that I qualified from UCD with a business degree.”

“Congratulations,” Lou said.

She cleared her throat. “Here you go. Alfred wears size eight brown loafers. Apparently he’s got ten pairs of the same shoes and he wears them every day, so I don’t think the idea of another pair as a Christmas gift would go down too well.” She took a breath. “As for the shoes with the red soles, Melissa bought a new pair and wore them last week, but they cut into her ankle so she went to return them, but the shop wouldn’t take them back because it was obvious she’d worn them because the red sole had begun to wear off.”

“Who’s Melissa?”

“Mr. Patterson’s secretary.”

“I’ll need you to find out from her who she left work with every day last week.”

“No way, that’s not in my job description!”

“You can leave work early if you find out for me.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you for cracking under such pressure.”

“No problem, it means I can get started on my Christmas shopping.”

“Don’t forget my list.”

So Gabe had been right about the shoes and wasn’t a lunatic, as Lou had secretly suspected. He remembered Gabe asking if Lou needed an observant eye around the building, and right then and there he rethought his earlier decision.

“And can you get me Harry from the mailroom on the phone. I’m going to cure his little short-staffing problem. Then take my spare shirt, tie, and trousers downstairs to the guy sitting at the entrance. Take him to the men’s room first, make sure he’s tidied up, and then show him down to the mailroom. Harry will be expecting him. His name is Gabe.”

“What?”

“Gabe. It’s short for Gabriel. But call him Gabe.”

“No, I meant — ”

“Just do it. Oh, and Alison?”

“What?”

“I really enjoyed our kiss last week, and I look forward to screwing your brains out in the future.”

He heard a light laugh slip from her throat before the phone went dead.

He’d done it again. While in the process of telling the truth, he told a total and utter lie. Almost an admirable quality, really. And through helping Gabe, Lou was also helping himself; a good deed was indeed a triumph for the soul. But Lou also knew that somewhere beneath his plotting and soul saving there lay another plot, a saving of a very different kind. That of his own skin. And even deeper down in this onion man’s complexities, he knew that this outreach was prompted by fear. Not just by the very fear that — had all reason and luck failed him — Lou could so easily be in Gabe’s position at this very moment. In a layer so deeply buried from the surface, there lay the fear of a reported crack — a blip in the fine engineering of Lou’s career. As much as he wanted to ignore it, it niggled. The fear was there; it was there all the time, but it was merely disguised as something else for others to see.

Just like the thirteenth floor.

WHEN LOU’S MEETING WITH MR. Brennan — about the thankfully not rare but still problematic slugs on the development site in County Cork — was close to being wrapped up, Alison appeared at his office door, looking anxious, and with the pile of clothes for Gabe still draped in her outstretched arms.

“Sorry, Barry, we’ll have to wrap it up now,” Lou said in a rush. “I have to run. I’ve two places to be right now, both of them across town, and you know what traffic is like.” And just like that, with a porcelain smile and a firm warm handshake, Mr. Brennan found himself suddenly back in the elevator, descending to the ground floor, his winter coat draped over one arm and his paperwork stuffed into his briefcase and tucked under the other. Yet, at the same time, it had been a pleasant meeting.

“Did Gabe say no?” Lou asked Alison.

“There was no one there.” She looked confused. “I stood at reception calling and calling his name — God, it was so embarrassing — and nobody came. Was this part of a joke, Lou? I can’t believe, after you made me show the Romanian rose seller into Alfred’s office, that I’d fall for this again.”

“It’s not a joke.” He took her arm and dragged her over to his window.

“But there was no man there,” she said with exasperation.

He looked out the window and saw Gabe still in the same place on the ground. A light rain was starting to fall, spitting against the window at first and then quickly making a tapping sound as it turned heavier. Gabe pushed himself back farther into the doorway, tucking his feet in closer to his chest and away from the wet ground. He lifted the hood from his sweater over his head and pulled the drawstrings tightly, which from all the way up on the thirteenth floor seemed to be attached to Lou’s heartstrings.

“Is that not a man?” he asked, pointing out the window.

Alison squinted and moved her nose closer to the glass. “Yes, but — ”

He grabbed the clothes from her arms. “I’ll do it myself,” he said.

AS SOON AS LOU STEPPED through the lobby’s revolving doors, the icy air whipped at his face. His breath was momentarily taken away by a great gush, and the rain alone felt like ice cubes hitting his skin. Gabe was concentrating intently on the shoes that passed him, no doubt trying to ignore the elements that were thrashing around him. In his mind he was elsewhere, anywhere but there. On a beach where it was warm, where the sand was like velvet and the Liffey before him was the endless sea. While in this other world he felt a kind of bliss that a man in his position shouldn’t.