After half an hour the expanse of Eggshell was too much for him. It was like a blank banner reminding him what he’d lost. He left the windows open and headed up to watch the sunset.
He walked out onto the roof and Tim saluted him with a beer. “Did you get any sleep last night?”
“Some,” Nate said. “Three or four hours.”
“You look like you’re doing pretty well.”
He shrugged. “I got some sleep at work. It’s not like I’m doing anything important there.”
Tim grinned. “I could never sleep at work. I snore if I try to sleep upright.”
Nate pulled a beer from the ice-filled cardboard. “You look like you’re doing pretty good, too. Did you still wake up early to run?”
“Always.”
“Freak.”
“Force of habit.”
Nate settled into the deck chair next to him. After a moment’s thought, he used his heels and toes to pry off his sneakers and let them drop to the wooden deck. He wiggled his toes inside his socks.
“Feels good?”
“Oh yeah,” said Nate. They clinked their bottles together.
“Where’s Veek?”
“She’s coming from Santa Monica.”
Tim nodded. “That’s right.”
They sat in silence for a few more minutes. The clouds changed from white to gold as the sun settled down toward Century City.
“They painted my place,” Nate said.
Tim nodded. “Mine, too.”
“They were waiting for me when I woke up. They stood in the hall while I got dressed for work.”
“I saw them,” Tim nodded. “They finished your place just after nine-thirty, then they came over to mine. It took them two hours. All those extra walls and not much room for their rollers.” From his position on the chair, he mimed a man trying to work with a long pole in a small space.
“Oskar?”
“Stood there the whole time but didn’t say anything to me. He’s calmed down a bit, but he’s still pretty angry.”
Nate swallowed some more beer. “Joy.”
“It’s a setback, yeah, but you’ll get past it.”
He looked over at Tim. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“How did I become the guy in charge? Veek’s been into this for over a year now. So’s Clive. You’ve got a lot more experience being the boss. Why is everyone looking at me?”
Tim shrugged. “Because you’re the guy in charge.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“What do you want me to say? We secretly met and pulled your name out of a hat?” He shrugged again. “Sometimes everyone just understands who’s in charge. Not often, but it happens. In business, in the military, in politics, all the people involved just get it.
This
is the person we all listen to. And that’s you.”
Nate drank his beer.
“I’m going to play grown up for a minute,” said Tim. “Do you mind?”
“Somebody around here ought to. Might as well be the old guy.”
“The old guy can still kick your ass,” Tim said, gesturing with the neck of his beer. “Keep that in mind.”
“Sorry.”
“I dealt with a ton of different professionals over the years. Big guys and little guys. Every one of them thought they were the top of the world. The best at what they did. And some of them were. You know what made the difference?”
“Is this going to be about suits and power ties?”
Tim pointed with the bottle again. “The only thing that really mattered to them was achieving their goals. If they were going to get something, then they got it. If they needed to eliminate the competition, they annihilated them. They’re the ones who succeeded, the ones everyone else looked to as an example.”
Nate took a hit off his beer. “Are you telling me I have the eye of the tiger?”
“That’s one way of looking at it, yeah. Somehow, solving the riddles of this place became important to you. And that importance—that enthusiasm—spilled over to the rest of us.”
“Veek was interested, too. She was interested first.”
“She was interested,” said Tim with a nod, “but you
want
it. Getting the answers here matters to you.”
Nate swallowed some more beer and looked at his friend. “Was that how you did things? Annihilating the competition?”
Tim took a hit off his beer as the sun approached the buildings of Century City. “For a while,” he said. “For a long time. Thirty years or so. And then one day I realized there was more to life than grinding your opponents into the dirt.”
“And hearing the lamentations of their women?”
The older man glanced at him and grinned. “Something like that.”
“Sounds like getting out of publishing was a good move.”
“You have no idea.”
They heard the clomp of footfalls on the stairs. Roger stepped out into the sunlight. A six-pack of beer swung from one hand, a small bag of ice from the other. “Bro,” he said. “Told you I was buying this week.”
“You are,” said Tim. “I figured we’d have extra people.”
Roger nodded. “Saw Veek. Said she’ll be up in a couple minutes.” He set the six-pack down next to Tim’s case, pulled one free, and twisted the cap off.
“Cheers,” said Tim. He held out his bottle. The glass chimed.
Roger tapped Nate’s bottle. “My apartment got painted. Sorry, bro.”
“Not your fault,” said Nate.
“Learn anything about all the math?”
Nate shook his head. “We found some other stuff, though.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
They told him about the words written in old blood, revealed by the black light and now hidden again under a blanket of fresh Eggshell. Roger drank half his beer while they talked. “That,” he said when they were done, “is some grade-A fucked up shit.”
“Hey,” said Veek from the fire door. She wore an untucked blue shirt and a loose necktie. With her glasses, the look was somehow less working professional and more uniformed schoolgirl. Nate glanced over and could tell the thought had crossed Roger’s mind, too.
“I was starting to think you weren’t going to make it,” said Tim. He turned to the west, where the sun grazed the rooftops of tall office buildings.
She pushed Nate’s legs off to the side and sat alongside his knees on the deck chair. The ice shifted as she grabbed a beer. She wrapped the tails of her shirt around the cap and twisted it off. It left a dark spot on her shirt. “You know,” she said, “I’ve been looking forward to this all week.”
Nate glanced at her. “Sitting up on the roof with a beer?”
“Sitting up here with everyone.” Veek took a long drink and they watched the sky turn orange as the sun slipped between buildings. “They painted my walls.”
“Yeah,” said Nate, “they got everyone’s, it sounds like.”
“We could peel them all again,” she said. “Just be more careful.”
Tim shook his head. “No real point to it,” he said. “We’ve documented everything in all our apartments. If we were going to do it again, we’d have to do it in other apartments.”
“So,” said Roger, “why d’you think somebody wrote in blood?”
Veek gave him a look. “Blood?”
“Yeah,” said Roger. He dipped his head at Nate. “The words on his wall.”
Her mouth fell open for a moment. “They were written in blood?”
“Not those,” said Nate. “I found more.”
She blinked. “What did it say?”
They told the story again.
Veek shook her head. “Why didn’t you come get me?”
“You said you were busy, remember? I didn’t want to bother you.”
“You woke up Xela.”
“I didn’t wake her up,” Nate said.
“But you went and got her.”
“She’s got the best camera.”
Veek bit her lip and took a hit off her beer. “I thought we were in this together.”
“I’m sorry,” Nate told her. “You said you didn’t have time, so I just figured it meant...well, you didn’t have time.”
“Bro,” said Roger, cracking open a new bottle, “don’t you know anything about dealing with women? They never say what they mean. No offense,” he added to Veek.
“No,” she muttered, “I said I didn’t have any time.”
“Right. Which meant you wanted to spend more time with him.”
She lowered her bottle. “No, it means I was busy and didn’t have time.”
Roger gave her a wink and nodded.
“I have a job, y’know,” she growled.
Someone cleared their throat. It was a prissy sound. “Pardon me.”
Andrew stood back by the rooftop door. He was wearing his usual khakis with a polo shirt and a sweater vest.
Everything the man owns must be tan or pastel
, thought Nate.
“I’ve...I’ve heard a few things,” he said. “I understand a few of you are looking at some of the oddities of our building.”
Veek’s eyebrows went up behind her glasses. “What do you mean?”
Andrew put his hands behind his back and scuffed at the tarpaper roof with his shoes. “I’ve lived here for almost three years,” he said. “I try not to complain, and our Lord tells us to be patient, but I can’t help but notice how many questions are never answered regarding our home.” He looked up and his lofty tone reasserted itself. “I’d like to help. I want to find what’s been hidden here.”
Tim coughed. Roger and Veek looked at Nate.
“Tomorrow,” Nate said. “We’re all meeting up in the lounge to talk about stuff. You’re welcome to join us.”
“What time?”
“Around four.”
Andrew nodded. “I’ll be there.”
“Bring snacks,” added Veek with a straight face.
“Sweets encourage gluttony,” said Andrew.
“Then you can bring chips,” she said. “Or crackers. Something crunchy.”
He thought for a minute and gave another nod. “I will. Have a wonderful evening,” he said to them before heading back downstairs.
They all looked at her. “What?” said Veek. “The guy’s never helped with anything and he’s lectured me half a dozen times about being a single woman living alone. And it’s Memorial Day weekend. He can bring chips.”
The lounge was full of people by the time Nate came down the back stairwell. Debbie and Clive sat on a couch, talking with Tim. Mandy stood nearby and listened without saying much. Xela and Roger chatted by the fire door. Veek stood up front with a gleaming Toshiba laptop on top of a stack of milk crates. She double-checked a cable running from the computer to the flatscreen.
Andrew had a plate of celery sticks. It sat on a low table and he stood next to it like a bodyguard. There was a small cup of white stuff in the middle of the plate. Nate thought it might be sour cream. Or maybe mayonnaise.
Sitting in the center of the couch opposite Andrew was a woman with too-black hair pulled back in a tight bun. On a guess, she was pushing eighty. She had a straight back and a few spots on her thin hands. An aluminum cane lay across her lap. It stuck out just enough on either side to make it uncomfortable for anyone else to sit on the couch. Nate wasn’t sure if she’d done it deliberately or not.
Most of them waved or greeted him on the way over to see Veek. She looked up and smiled. “Hey,” she said. “A couple of us were thinking of going over to get Thai food afterwards. You in?”
“Ahhh,” he said, “I don’t think so. I’m kind of tight since they cut my hours.”
Her smile shifted. Not in a bad way. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’ve got you.”
“Thanks.” He twitched his head in a look-behind-me gesture. “Who’s the old woman?”
“That’s Mrs. Knight from number four,” said Veek. “She’s the one who told me about the suicide in apartment sixteen.”
“Right,” said Nate. “Okay.”
“I don’t think she’s as mean as she looks. Or sounds.”
“Great.”
“Check this out,” she said. The computer screen had a dozen or so large thumbnails on it. “Xela’s laptop and pictures, my know-how. Just click on any picture and it’ll come up on the TV.” She slid the cursor over a few pictures of the building and they snapped up on the big flatscreen one after another.
“Is this PowerPoint or something?”
“Not even that complicated. It’s just a photo viewing program I ran through the television. And if you drag the mouse anywhere on this side...” She slid the little arrow to the right side of the screen and the pictures were replaced by the menu screen for a movie. It took Nate a moment to recognize
The Dark Knight
. “The movie plays underneath. If Oskar comes in, just act like you got up to adjust something.”
“Aren’t you the clever one,” he said.
“Thanks, Shaggy.”
He smiled at her and glanced over his shoulder. The others had closed in when he moved up front. “Hey,” he said. “We must have half the building here now, yeah?”
They all glanced around. Ten people in the lounge was impressive.
“Mrs. Knight,” he said, “Andrew, I’m going to go ahead with new stuff and maybe we can fill you guys in afterwards. Is that okay?”