Page 5 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
Becca started to leave the room, but then she popped her head back in. “Hey, even though you got canned, you’ll still be able to pay the rent, right?”
This was one of those moments when Chloe didnotlike having a blunt “big sister” as a roommate. But Chloe wasn’t capable of glaring at Becca, because that was one thing Rob had gotten right when he let her go—Chloe was soft. Not in a bad way, she thought. Just that she had more in common with sunrise-tinted clouds and spring blossoms than hard-edged steel and concrete. And she liked that about herself.
Did she even belong in a place like New York?
Instead of answering Becca, Chloe simply rolled off her bed and took her origami rose with her, finishing it as she went out into the hall, down the gray cement stairs, and to the Hell Room.
It was even more of a disaster than usual, like a UPS truck had vomited everything in its belly into this single room.
Chloe let out a long exhale.
“Well, the only thing to do is start digging,” she said to herself as she crouched and began sorting boxes and plastic mailers.
Behind her, Thelma—the grouchy elderly woman in unit 1A—opened her door to take her terrier out for its early evening walk. As usual, her hair was impeccably blown out in a style worthy of Meryl Streep on the red carpet, but her silk blouse and slacks—though once elegant—were now a bit tatty. The other residents had nicknamed her the Threadbare Countess.
“You young people need to stop buying so much crap!” Thelma said, eyeing the mail room as if Chloe had personally brought the scourge of every single one of those boxes into their lives. “And I see that yellow paper flower thing sticking halfway out of your back pocket! Don’t you dare let it fall out and then leave your litter!” The Threadbare Countess scowled one more time before she turned on her heel and led her dog away.
Chloe frowned, but she pulled the yellow paper rose out of her pocket and temporarily set it on the small table to her left, where residents sorted their mail and recycled what they didn’t need.
Except, by the time she found her roommate’s package, Chloe had forgotten about the origami.
And the next person who came in accidentally knocked the paper rose off the table, to be buried under piles and piles of boxes on the Hell Room floor.
Oliver
Oliver Jones was having a fantastic day. No one had talked to him all afternoon—no “friendly” knocks on his office door to invite him to lunch, no inane chatter in the break room, and no team-building gatherings to celebrate the birthday of someone who worked on an entirely different floor and with whom he’d never cross paths again. Instead, Oliver had been able to shut himself in his office and enjoy the rapid-fireclick-clackingas his fingers flew over the keyboard, working out the complex math behind his latest financial model.
Until recently, Oliver had worked in hedge funds at Goldman Sachs, but three months ago, Hawthorne Drake had poached him to help them revamp their quantitative analysis program. Complex mathematical models and data science were becoming increasingly important in the world of finance, and people with Oliver’s combination of having a PhD in mathematicsandinvestment experience were rare.
To add to the great day, Oliver had just received final confirmation for the talk he’d be giving at the Neo Fintech Conference next month. It was an incredible opportunity to get in front of the VIPs of the financial industry. Besides playing with numbers, Oliver’s favorite thing was talking about math, and conferences like Neo Fintech were full of his intellectual brethren. It was also quite a coup that someone as young as he was—only thirty-two last month—would be giving a talk on his own, rather than being one of several on a panel.
In light of the massive success of this Friday, Oliver decided to wrap things up at the office early. He saved his work and shut down his computer, grabbed his suit jacket off the hook on the back of the door, and headed to the elevator.
The doors were about to close when someone shouted in a British accent, “Hold it, please!”
Oliver jabbed at the “close” button several times, but Zac Billings stuck his briefcase in between the doors and slipped inside.
They were a study in contrasts. While Oliver was broad-shouldered and over six feet with auburn hair, Zac was blond, a few inches shorter, and built like a marathon runner, all lean muscle that seemed unthreatening at first, until you realized he could probably out-endure you in any contest that involved stamina. Which, unfortunately, office politics was.
As usual, Zac was impeccable in a three-piece suit without a speck of lint in sight. He probably even woke up looking like aGQmodel, or whatever the British equivalent was. Unlike Oliver, who still bought clothes off the rack at Men’s Wearhouse. He’d spent too many years without money and it was still hard for him to spend it now, even though he had plenty.
“Oh, hello,Tolly,” Zac said.
Oliver made a noise in the back of his throat that was as close to a growl as professionally permissible. “I have asked you several times not to call me that.” Tolly was a nickname for little boys, not grown men. Which was precisely why Zac had chosen it.
Most people found Zac charming, because he was the kind of person who invited higher-ups to lunch (and then paid for it personally, without charging it to the firm), while simultaneously dazzling those ranked below him with generous holiday gifts because he knew they were the gatekeepers to the executive suite.
But anyone who was Zac’s equal—like Oliver—was deemed a mortal enemy.
“Leaving the office already?” Zac asked. “Isn’t it a touch early to be abandoning your post?”
“You’re getting in the elevator at the exact same time,” Oliver pointed out.
Zac smirked. “Indeed, but I’ve got a client dinner with the Steinbrenners.”
Oliver was not impressed by name-droppers. His mother had been one.
“I heard about your Neo Fintech invitation,” Zac said. “Congrats. It’s not as big as Finovate, but you’ll get there. Neo Fintech is a great start.”
