Page 24 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
“Personally,” Zac said, “I think the paper roses are darling. It’s a small but nice gesture, you know? Spreading good cheer, et cetera, et cetera.”
Zac was likely saying that because he’d overheard Puja talking about her own origami flower. A small growl unfurled in the back of Oliver’s throat. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately, but only around one particularly insufferable British colleague.
“Anyway,” Zac said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your conversation; I know we have a big meeting with the whole quant team later this morning. But I just popped in because I heard Puja’s voice and thought you might like this piece of chocolate pound cake?” He held it out to Puja.
“I’dlike a piece of chocolate cake,” Oliver said.
Zac ignored him. “The fellow at the coffee shop gave me the wrong order—I’m a savory breakfast type, myself—but he couldn’t take the sweet one back after he’d given it to me. Something about food safety laws. Anyway, I seem to recall you like cake?”
Oliver rolled his eyes. Surely Puja would see right through this.
But she smiled and said, “Idohave a weakness for cake. Thank you, Zac.”
“Anytime. You’re doing me a favor, really, by taking it off my hands. I would have hated to see it go to waste.”
Puja got up from her chair, and she and Zac left Oliver’s office together.
Today’s score: Zac, 1. Oliver, 0.
Left alone with the origami flower, Oliver directed his irritation in its direction. It was made with yellow paper striped with gold foil. He yankedat the corners of the petals and splayed the rose open, revealing a message and a minuscule drawing of a heart-shaped rosebud, like an artist’s signature:
Sometimes wishing can make a dream come true.
Oliver grabbed a pen and wrote,I guarantee it ABSOLUTELY does not.He underlined it twice.
Then he sighed. What was he doing, getting pissed at a piece of paper?
He crumpled it up and threw it in the trash.
“Get your shit together, Oliver,” he muttered. “Dad and Ben need you.”
Ricky
At home in Colombia, Ricardo had graduated from university with a chemistry degree with a goal of becoming a pharmacist. Here in New York, though, he was just Ricky the driver. It wasn’t so easy to translate an overseas degree to work in the same field in the United States, and he needed to go through another four years of a pharmacology doctorate program before he could be what he’d intended to be.
But graduate programs didn’t come cheap, so here Ricky was, three years deep into working for a car service that shuttled around executives, bankers, and lawyers, while he was never acknowledged as an intellectual equal.
Never really acknowledged at all.
The only thing his passengers usually said as they got into his spotless black town car was “Hi,” followed by an address. They didn’t even look up to meet his eyes in the rearview mirror. Sometimes, they would glance at Ricky’s phone, mounted on the dashboard, to double-check that the right destination was showing on the map. But that was it for communication.
Ricky sighed silently as he picked up Michelle, a high-powered woman in a suit in the Financial District. She slid in, said “I’m going to Rockefeller Center,” then immediately went back to tapping away at her phone.
And to think, I picked driving because I thought it would be a good way to get to know Americans.Ricky shook his head. Colombians were so much more open. Even after three years of being here in New York, that culture shock still hadn’t worn off.
He navigated through the crowded streets efficiently, knowing exactly where all the construction was today in Manhattan. In the background, his car radio played inoffensive soft jazz. When he pulled up in front of Rockefeller Center faster than the map app had originally predicted, Michelle got out with only a mumbled thanks. Ricky hoped she would tip him wellfor the extra effort he’d made in avoiding construction backups. In reality, he knew she wouldn’t even notice the difference, but it wasn’t in his nature to do things half-ass. That’s how he’d been top of his class in bachillerato and then university. Ricky held himself to high standards, even if it was just driving a town car.
He was about to drive to his next pickup two blocks away when he glanced in his rearview mirror and noticed that Michelle had left something behind in the back seat. A yellow paper rose.
Ricky rolled down the window and shouted after her; she was almost at the entrance of the building. “Excuse me, ma’am! Michelle! You left a paper flower!”
She glanced over her shoulder with a frown. “What?”
By then he had gotten out of the car and retrieved the yellow rose. He left his car unattended on the curb and jogged over to return the paper flower to her, but as he held it out, she waved him away. “It’s not mine.” She pivoted on her stiletto heel and walked off without saying anything more.
Ricky winced. He had slowly developed a thick skin for being ignored, but sometimes, it still stung like windburn, the assault invisible yet biting. It was one thing to not be seen. It was another to be disregarded intentionally. It made him feel subhuman.
Back in the car, he allowed himself a minute to change the radio to a Spanish pop station. He leaned back against the headrest, closed his eyes, and inhaled the beats of reggaeton and the homesickness that came with it.
