Four
Three weeks ago
I have my pitch meeting in one hour, a little mountain of gigabytes of files to review, and I’m pretty sure that my interns are currently eighteen floors above, trying to decide whether I abandoned them to join a cult or have been abducted by an urban Sasquatch. But I cannot help staring at Corporate Thor’s mouth as he tells me, matter-of-factly:
“Money laundering front.”
“No way!”
He shrugs. We are sitting right next to each other on a bench in a pocket park that, as it turns out, is just behind my building. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, I’ve spotted at least three butterflies, and yet I remain vaguely intimidated by his size. And his cheekbones. “It’s the only possible explanation.”
I bite my lip, trying to think it through. “Couldn’t Faye just be, you know . . . a really bad baker?”
“She certainly is. Her coffee is also questionable.”
“It is very reminiscent of brake fluid,” I concede.
“I always thought of plasma coolant. Point is, she was here ten years ago, when I started working in that building, and she’ll be here long after you and I are gone. Despite that.” He points at the croissant I’m still clutching. Honestly, I should just bite the bullet and choke it down. My hand sweat is not going to make it any tastier. “There is no valid entrepreneurial reason for her to still be in business.”
I nod thoughtfully. He might have a point. “Aside from money laundering operations and ties to organized crime?”
“Precisely.” Okay, his grammar might be perfect, but I’m starting to pick up a vague foreign accent. I want to ask a million and ten questions about it—a wish in direct competition with my desire to not come across as a weirdo. A lofty goal, as I am, in fact, a weirdo.
“I see your theory. But. Hear me out.” I blow my bangs out of my eyes. Erik’s expression doesn’t move a nanometer, but I know he’s listening. There is something about him, like his attention is something physically tangible, like he’s good at seeing and hearing and knowing. “So, remember how I talked about my . . . problem?”
“The magical-thinking one? Where you believe that your professional success relates to the items you ate for breakfast?”
I cannot believe I admitted to it. God, he already knows I’m a weirdo. Though, to his credit, he seems to be taking it in stride. “Okay, listen, I know it sounds like I’m foolishly clutching the atavistic remnants of ancient times.”
“Sounds?” His eyebrow lifts.
I might be flushing. “I like to think of it as . . . more of a way to bind myself and celebrate the traditions of my previous successes, you know? And less as establishing an empirical causal connection between the color of my underwear and future events.”
“I see.” The corner of his mouth twitches upward. Just barely, though—still not a smile. Maybe he’s not capable. Maybe he has a debilitating medical condition. Smilopathy: now with its very own ICD-10 code. “So, what’s the lucky color?”
“What?”
“Of underwear.”
“Oh. Um . . . lavender.”
He seems briefly stumped. “Purple?”
“Kind of, yeah.” I forgot that most men can’t name more than five colors. “A little lighter. Between purple and pink. Pastel-like.”
He nods slowly, like he’s trying to picture it. “Cute,” he says, and his tone is as simple and straightforward as it’s been in the last few minutes. There is absolutely no creepy lasciviousness, as though he’s complimenting a flower or a puppy. My heart skips a beat nonetheless.
Would he . . . ? If he saw me wearing my . . . would he still think that . . . ?
Oh my God. What is wrong with me? This poor man just gave me his croissant.
“Anyway,” I hasten to add, “maybe there’re a lot of people buying good luck croissants, because I’m not alone in my . . . magical thinking—nice way to put it, by the way. For example, my friend Hannah works at NASA, and she says that the engineers there have had whole complex routines involving Planters peanuts and mission launches for the past, like, fifty years. And I’m an engineer. Basically, I’m professionally required to—”
“You’re an engineer?” His eyes widen in surprise.
My heart sinks with disappointment. Oh God. He’s one of those. I can’t believe he’s one of those.
I scowl and stand from the bench, looking down at him with a frown. “FYI, in the U.S., fifteen percent of the engineering workforce is made up of women. And that number has been steadily increasing, so there is no need to be so shocked that—”
“I’m not.”
My frown deepens. “You sure looked like—”
“I’m an engineer myself, and it seemed like a coincidence of sorts.” His mouth twitches again. “I thought your magical thinking might be tickled.”
“Oh.” My cheeks burn. “Oh.” Wow. Am I the Asshole, Reddit? Why, you kind of are, Sadie. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply—”
“Where did you study?” he asks, unruffled, pulling at my wrist till I sit again. I end up a little closer to him than I was before, but it’s fine. It’s okay. Siri, how many times can I utterly humiliate myself in the span of thirty minutes? Infinite, you say? Thank you, that’s what I figured.
“Um, Caltech. I finished my Ph.D. last year. You?”
“NYU. Got my master’s . . . ten, eleven years ago?”
We stare at each other, me calculating his age, him . . . I don’t know. Maybe he’s calculating, too. He must be six or seven years older than me. Not that it’s in any way relevant. We’re just chatting. We’re going our separate ways in twelve seconds.
“Where do you work?” he asks.
“GreenFrame. You?”
“ProBld.”
I scrunch my nose, instantly recognizing the name—from both the plaques in the lobby of my office building and the New York engineering grapevine. There are lots of firms in this area, and he works at my least favorite. The big jellyfish that keeps expanding by eating the smaller jellyfish. Not that they’re terrible—they’re fine. But they’re old-school and don’t focus on sustainability nearly as much as we do. But they do have a solid rep, and some of our potential clients even choose them over us because of that. Which: bleh.
“Did you just make a repulsed face when I mentioned my company?”
“No. No! I mean, yeah. A little. But I didn’t mean it in an offensive way. They just don’t seem to adopt a whole-systems approach to problem-solving when dealing with environmental challenges . . .” His eyes shine. Is he teasing me? Does Corporate Thor tease? “I mean, I am now over twenty minutes late for work. Realistically, I’ll probably be fired and end up begging you guys for a job.”
He nods, lips pressed together. “Good. I have an in with the partners.”
“Is that so?”
“I’m sure they’d love to have you on board. To develop a whole-systems approach to problem-solving when dealing with environmental challenges.” I stick out my tongue, which he ignores. “What name should I give when I recommend you?”
“Oh. Sadie Grantham.” I hold out my non-croissant hand. He looks at it for a long moment, and I am suddenly, inexplicably, tsunamingly afraid. Oh my God. What if he won’t take it?
Yeah, Sadie? A wise, mean, pragmatic voice whispers in my ear. What if a stranger won’t take your hand? How will you deal with the zero-point-zero impact it’ll have on your life? But the voice is moot, because he does take it, and my heart gallops at how nice his skin feels, solid and a little rough. His hand swallows my fingers, warming my flesh and the cheap, cute rings I put on this morning.
“Nice to meet you, Dr. Grantham.” My breath hitches. My heart melts. I’ve had my Ph.D. for less than a year, so I still relish being called doctor. Especially because no one ever does. “Erik Nowak.”
Well. No one ever does except for Erik Nowak.
Erik Nowak. “Can I ask you something kind of inappropriate?”
He shakes his head, slowly, gravely. “Unfortunately, I am not wearing purple underwear.”
I laugh. “No, it’s . . . when you write your last name, are there cool, fancy letters in it?” I blurt the question out and instantly regret it. I’m not even sure what I’m asking. I’ll just roll with it, I guess?
“It has an n. And a w. Are they considered fancy?”
Not really. Pretty boring. “Sure.”
He nods. “What about the k? It’s my favorite letter.”
“Er, yeah. That’s fancy, too.” Still boring.
“But surely not the a?”
“Uh, well, I guess the a is . . .”
His mouth is twitching. Again. He’s teasing me. Again. I hate him.
“Damn you,” I say without heat.
He’s almost smiling. “No umlauts. No diacritics. No Møller. Or Kiærskou. Or Adelsköld. Though I did go to school with them.” I nod, vaguely disappointed. Till he asks: “Disappointed?” and then I can’t help hiding behind my croissant and laughing. When I’m done he’s definitely smiling, and he says, “You should really eat that. Or you’ll lose your client and NASA’s next rocket will explode.”
“Right, yes.” I tear a piece away. Hold it out to him. “Would you like a bite? I don’t mind sharing.”
“Really? You don’t mind sharing my own famously disgusting croissant with me?”
“What can I say?” I grin. “I’m a generous soul.”
He shakes his head. And then adds, as though it just occurred to him, “I know a really good French bistro.”
My entire body perks up. “Oh?”
“They have a bakery, too.”
My body perks up and tingles. “Yeah?”
“They make excellent croissants. I go there often.”
The sun is still shining, the birds are still chirping, I’ve now spotted five butterflies, and . . . the noise in the background slowly recedes. I look at Erik, study the way the shade from the trees falls across his face, study him as closely as he’s studying me.
In my life, I’ve been asked out for drinks by enough random acquaintances that I think maybe, just maybe, I might know what he’s trying to get at. And in my life, I’ve wanted to say no to drinks with every single one of those random acquaintances, which is why I have learned to prevent the question from even being asked. I am good at broadcasting disinterest and unavailability. Very, very good.
And yet, here I am.
On a New York bench.
Clutching a croissant.
Holding my breath and . . . hoping?
Ask me, I think at him. Because I want to try that French bistro that you know. With you. And talk more about money laundering and a whole-systems approach to environmental engineering and purple underwear that is actually lavender.
Ask me, Erik Nowak. Ask me, ask me, ask me. Ask me.
There are cars in the distance, and people laughing, and emails piling up in my inbox, eighteen floors above us. But my eyes hold Erik’s for a long, stretched-out moment, and when he smiles at me, I notice that his eyes are just as blue as the sky.