Tracy Guzeman - The Gravity of Birds

His eighteen-year-old self had imagined a far different future for the man of thirty-one he was now. There should have been a wife by this point. Some children would have been appropriate, to say nothing of several milestones illuminating the trajectory of his career. He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger to ward off a sneeze. The air ducts delivered a steady stream of dust and other noxious particles into his office, and in the two and a half years he’d been at Murchison & Dunne, he’d developed full-blown allergies as well as occasional migraines. A tickle haunted the back of his throat, giving him a hesitant intonation as he tried not to wheeze.

His desk phone rang, and after glaring at it with an intemperate eye, he mustered what remaining energy he had and raised his head.

‘Stephen?’

‘Speaking.’

‘It’s Sylvia. I left a voice mail for you earlier. Didn’t you get it?’

He sat up in the chair and straightened his tie, as if Cranston’s executive assistant was scrutinizing him from the opposite side of a two-way mirror instead of speaking to him from thirty-five floors above. Sylvia Dillon took a perverse delight in making his already wretched existence more so. She was a small-mouthed, crab-faced, M & D lifer with wispy blond hair that did little to cover her patchy pink scalp. As executive assistant to the president, she controlled all access to Cranston, giving her an unfortunate amount of power and an imagined degree of authority, the latter of which she did not hesitate to exercise. Her typical expression was crafted from suspicion, disdain, and disgust, and she favored Stephen with it often. Unless she was speaking with Cranston, she ended her phone conversations by abruptly hanging up on whomever she was talking to, minus the standard offering of good-bye, thanks , or even ta .

Those in the know made efforts to stay in her good graces: obsequious compliments, elaborately wrapped boxes of candy at the holidays, even the occasional potted plant. Stephen had silently mocked them for being stupid and toadying but now wondered if his lack of deference caused her to single him out. Either that, or it was a not-so-subtle reminder that she, like everyone else, knew exactly why he’d left his previous position four years ago.

‘Sylvia. I just walked in. Just now. I stopped to look at a painting. On my way in, that is.’

‘What painting was that?’

Bloody St. Christopher. Why hadn’t he offered up a dental appointment or a traffic delay due to some minor smashup involving a pedestrian? He’d never been a good liar. A good lie called for a degree of calmness, a quality he did not seem to possess. He pictured Sylvia sitting behind her desk, her shoulders pinched toward each other with a military discipline, shaping her nails into talons with calculated strokes of an emery board.

‘Bankruptcy case. I mean, insurance claim. Around a bankruptcy case. I wanted to have another look before putting a final valuation to the piece. Now about your message …’

She sighed loudly, as if their brief interchange had already exhausted her. ‘Mr. Cranston would like to know if you’ve finished the appraisals for the Eaton estate.’

Eaton. Eaton. He rubbed his forehead and worked his way backward as was his habit. Eaton rhymed with Seton. Seton Hall. Seton Hall was in New Jersey. New Jersey was the Garden State. His favorite gardens were at Blenheim Palace. Palace Place—4250 Palace Place. The Eatons’ address! The image he reeled in from the corner of his brain was of a withered eighty-seven-year-old, propelling his wheelchair down a marble-floored gallery, gesturing with a frozen finger at one painting, then another. He remembered the man’s bald pate, the fascinating birthmark in the shape of Brazil that covered most of his head. Unfortunately, this Eaton was the same man foolish enough to believe his twenty-eight-year-old, third wife had married him for love. Now he was gone and she was wasting no time liquidating the estate’s assets.

There was nothing extraordinary about the collection save for some Motherwell lithographs and an acrylic by Mangold that would bring a fair price at auction. Some nice furniture, most of it Louis XIV: a pair of inlaid marquetry side tables, an oak bonnetière , a Boulle-style, burl mahogany bronze clock that might bring fifty thousand. But most of the pieces were of lesser quality, collectibles purchased by a wealthy, bored man whose primary interest was in one-upping his neighbors.

Stephen remembered inventorying and photographing the collection more than eight months ago. The camera flash bouncing off all that blinding white—the walls, the marble floor, the sheer curtains in the gallery’s Palladian windows—had given him a throbbing headache. But when had Cranston asked for the appraisals? And where had he put the file? Nothing had been transferred to his computer yet; a quick glance at his directory showed an empty folder marked ‘Eaton.’ He pushed his chair back and flipped through the folders on top of his desk, on top of the filing cabinet, on top of the bookcase. Nothing. If he couldn’t locate it, he was done for. Cranston wouldn’t be inclined to give him another chance.

‘Stephen?’

‘Yes, Sylvia?’

‘The Eaton estate?’

‘Right. Just finishing up with it.’

‘Good. He wants to see you at four this afternoon to go over the paperwork.’

‘Uh, that would be difficult. I already have an appointment at four.’

‘I checked your online schedule. It doesn’t show you being out today.’

The woman was practically purring. He pictured himself tearing the phone out of the wall and hammering her with it until pieces of her chipped off, then reconstructing her à la Picasso: an ear attached to her hip, an arm shooting out from her head, lips springing from her big toe.

‘In fact, Stephen, I don’t show you with anything on the books for the next several days.’

‘My fault, I suppose,’ he said, sifting through a stack of conservation reports and greasy sandwich wrappers on the corner of his desk. ‘I haven’t synced my calendar. I was planning to do it this morning. So today would be difficult.’

‘He really needs this done.’

Stephen tried to visualize Cranston standing in front of her making this plea . I really need this done, Sylvia . Unlikely. Maybe she’d taken it upon herself to put this on Cranston’s agenda in an attempt to undermine his credibility. But Stephen detected a distracted quality in her tone that indicated her attention was flagging. Perhaps another unfortunate had crept into her field of vision. Please, please, please, shit, please. He bit down hard on his lower lip, drawing blood.

‘If there’s no way you can do it today, I suppose I could fit you in tomorrow morning.’

‘Let me just check.’ He flipped through the empty pages of his agenda. ‘Yes, that would be better for me, Sylvia. I’ll plan to see him then. Good-bye.’ He hung up the phone, waiting for a second before taking the receiver off the hook and stuffing it in his top desk drawer. He penciled a brief note on the legal pad on his desk: ‘Buy potted plant.’

Four years paying for a mistake that had taken him less than a minute to make. Stephen had obliterated his oh-so-promising career single-handedly. Perhaps not single-handedly. He hadn’t known Chloe was married; at least, he hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on the possibility. He certainly hadn’t known who she was married to. She hadn’t acted like a married person, though looking back he wasn’t sure how he’d thought a married person would act, aside from the obvious assumption of fidelity. Rather an unhappy omission , he’d told her on his cell phone, standing outside of his ex-office building waiting for a cab, his possessions crammed into a cardboard box.