The Gravity of Birds. Tracy Guzeman

       Chapter Three

      Stephen Jameson shook the rain from his umbrella, stepped into the ancient elevator, and punched the button for the twenty-second floor with his elbow while carrying a thermos cup of coffee, his briefcase, and several manila folders. The doors closed, and he was enveloped in humid, clotted air, thick with the smells of mold and other people’s body odor and a trace of something sweet and slightly alcoholic, like a rum drink. The car lurched. As it headed up, he gazed wistfully at the button marked ‘57,’ where the executive offices of Murchison & Dunne, Auctioneers and Appraisers of Fine Art and Antiques, were located.

      His office—the only one on the twenty-second floor—was directly adjacent to the elevator shaft, which meant the hours of his day were punctuated by the creaks and groans of transportation, as the elevator ferried those individuals more highly prized than himself to higher floors. Clutching his briefcase against his chest, he fumbled with the knob while pushing the warped office door open with a thrust of his hip. He elbowed the light switch on and glanced around the room on the off chance that some miraculous transformation might have happened overnight. No, it was all still there, exactly as he’d left it the night before. A rope of twisted phone wire emerged from a small hole in the upper front corner of the room and exited through a slightly larger hole that had been gouged in the drywall at the upper back corner; popcorn-colored insulation puffed out from one of the acoustic ceiling tiles; and there was the small but constant puddle of stale-smelling water on the floor next to the radiator.

      Framed diplomas, awarding him graduate degrees in art history and chemistry, hung on the wall opposite a walnut desk, the varnish of which had peeled off in large patches. There was a catalog wedged beneath one of the desk legs where a ball foot was missing. His attempts at decoration were limited to a ‘Go Wolverines!’ pennant he had pilfered from a neighboring student’s wall following a 42–3 blowout between Michigan and the University of Minnesota’s Golden Gophers, and a crisp philodendron entombed in a pot of cement-like soil, its skeletal leaves papery against the side of the file cabinet.

      He dropped the folders on top of the cabinet and plopped himself behind his desk, the leather of the chair cracked and pinching beneath him. The message light on his desk phone blinked frenetically and his cell vibrated in his pocket. He ran the tip of his finger over each button on the desk phone three times, left to right, right to left, then left to right again, but made no attempt to retrieve his messages. Instead he chewed on a hangnail as he opened his bottom drawer. From there he retrieved a bottle of Maker’s Mark, generously dosed his coffee, and loosened his tie before folding his arms on the desk. He buried his head. God, he was miserable.

      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