Page 33 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
Nobody said a word.
“It had to be someone here,” Oliver said. “This rose didn’t putitselfon my desk.”
Everyone started to look anywhere but at Oliver.
“Fine, don’t say anything now. But when I figure out who—” He stopped short. Because he knew precisely who was most likely to mess with him.
Zac. That motherfucker.
Seething, Oliver marched back into this office, grabbed a pen, and added something new.
Under
I respectfully disagree, and I’m willing to bet you on it.
Oliver scrawled,
Name your wager. Because the odds are against you.
He crushed it in his fist again, then strode over to Zac’s office. The door was open—unlike Oliver, who liked his door shut so he could focus on his work, Zac “believed” in a culture of free-flowing exchange of ideas and camaraderie—and Oliver walked right in and threw the balled-up paper at Zac.
With his typical, infuriating calm, Zac looked up and said, “Why are you throwing trash at me?”
“Grow up, Zac. Are you messing with me because of the interview? Were you watching the show live, just hoping I’d crash and burn? Well, I don’t appreciate you wasting my time with idiotic pranks.”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” Without even looking at the paper, Zac scooped it up and threw it back at Oliver, who caught it by reflex.
“What I do know, though,” Zac said, “is that Puja asked me to take a look at the numbers for the Winston family foundation’s investments with her this afternoon.”
Oliver’s jaw dropped. “I thoughtIwas going to do that.”
“You were,” Zac said. “But I happened to stop by her office when she was thinking about it, and I told her I could take care of it instead. I had to movearound some things on my personal calendar, but when an opportunity like this drops into your lap, you don’t say no.”
“It didn’tdropinto your lap! You took it from me.” Oliver could barely control his body’s shaking. He channeled his rage into his fists and crushed the balled-up paper rose even tighter.
“You know,” Zac said, eyeing Oliver’s hands, “our firm has generous benefits. You might want to inquire about an anger management program.”
“You piece of—”
“Nuh-uh-uh.” Zac waved a finger. “Manners, Tolly.”
Oliver growled but spun on his heel and headed for the elevator. He needed to get away, far from Zac. He took the elevator down to the first floor and walked straight out of the building.
A few blocks later in Washington Square Park, he threw the paper rose into a trash can next to a hot dog stand. “Good riddance,” he muttered under his breath.
He passed East 12th Street, which he briefly considered turning onto to bury himself in the shelves of the Strand Bookstore. But Oliver wasn’t in the mood to stay still, so he kept walking.
He went north-ish, into and through Union Square and the kiosks of vegetables at its Greenmarket. Past the Flatiron Building, and then the National Museum of Mathematics, one of his favorite places to spend free time back when he had leisure time for himself and didn’t have to spend it in the office, trying to head off whatever new scheme Zac was plotting against Oliver.
Still, he kept walking, burning off the anger that seemed to constantly simmer under the surface these days. The truth was, Oliver suspected it wasn’t entirely anger, but he didn’t want to think harder about what it could be. The blue of loneliness was harder to face than the red fire of annoyance. Easier to blame things on Zac than to look too deep into himself.
Oliver passed the Empire State Building, then Bryant Park. Before he knew it, he’d been walking for almost an hour. He had just reached Rockefeller Center when his phone rang. It was a video call from Ben.
Had something happened to him or Dad? Ben usually just texted or did a voice call, so Oliver’s pulse broke into a sprint as he found a bench to sit on where he could take the call. Keeping his dad and Ben safe had been theprimary focus of Oliver’s life for so long that the fear was hard to escape, even though Jennifer, the inflictor of all their trauma, wasn’t a part of their family anymore.
Ben had only been twelve when they fled Kansas, and Oliver had tried his best to shield his baby brother from the shrapnel of their mother blowing up their lives. Even when they were in homeless shelters or living out of their car, Oliver tried to emphasize the slim silver linings of their situation: Look, isn’t this so amazing that you and I get to spend so much time together? Isn’t it great that I can teach you whatever subjects you want to know and you don’t have to deal with all the kids who were in your class who used to tease you? How cool is it that we don’t have to stay in any one place for long and instead get to road trip across the country?
That was probably why Oliver tended toward skepticism now. He had drained the well of optimism dry during those hard years.
