Page 1 of The Tenant
PARTI
BLAKE
1
Six months ago,someone stood in this exact spot—on the twenty-fifth floor of the high-rise building that houses Coble & Roy, the Manhattan marketing firm where I work—and tried to jump.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) for him, the window only tilts open to allow a gap of about three inches, which isn’t enough for a grown man to squeeze through. He attempted to wrench it open enough to contort his body into the space, but it didn’t quite work. Security stopped him before he plummeted twenty-five stories to his death, and now he’s at some retreat in upstate New York, picking daisies or singing songs or getting shock therapy or whatever crap they do at those places.
And now I’ve got his job.
I wanted the job. I’ve wanted it since I started working here. It’s agreatposition. Everyone was vying for it after Quigley tried to take that nosedive. And now it’s mine.
And my new office? It’s phenomenal. The leather desk chair perfectly contours to the shape of my spine and cost more than my first car. The brown leather sofa matches the Peruvian walnut bookcase, which in turn is the same shade as the desk in the center of the room, like someone built them from wood harvested from the same tree.
But the best part of all is the nameplate on the desk, spelling out in gold lettering:
Blake Porter, Vice President.
I stare out the window at the view of the skyline of New York City, dotted with its legendary skyscrapers. When I was a kid growing up in Cleveland, I wanted to see the Empire State Building more than anything, and now I get to look at it every day. Then I drop my gaze to the street below, where twenty-five stories down people mill around like ants and the vehicles look like the toy cars my mother used to snag for me at neighborhood yard sales.
What kind of chump tries to jump out the window when he’s got an office like this? What an idiot.
He couldn’t handle the pressure. I can.
My phone buzzes from where I left it on my desk. I swivel my head so I can make out the nameKrista Marshallflashing on the screen, and I snatch it up. There are calls I duck and calls I take, but Ialwaysanswer when Krista is on the other end of the line.
“Hey, babe,” I say.
“Hello, Mr. Vice President,” Krista giggles.
Man, I won’t get sick of that for at least another week.
“So how are you holding up?” she asks.
I eye the piles of paperwork on my desk, which are only rivaled by the hundreds of emails waiting for me in my inbox. If I take a bathroom break, I’ve got twenty messages waiting for me when I get back. And I piss fast.
But you know what? That’s perfectly fine. I landed the promotion to VP of marketing last week because I could handle it. Because Iearnedit. You got a week’s worth of work I need to blow through in an hour? Great. Bring it.
“I’m good,” I say.
“Will you be home in the next few hours?” she asks me. “Do you want me to grab Chinese food?”
It’s nearly six, and no, I’m not anywhere close to finished. But also, I’ve been stumbling home at bedtime to eat cold takeout or a protein bar every night for the last month. I close my eyes and imagine my fiancée waiting for me in the living room of our Upper West Side brownstone, her strawberry-blond hair pulled into that sexy, messy bun she always wears piled on top of her head, her black leggings fitted to her waist just right.
I popped the question two months ago with a diamond that I hoped would make her head spin, and I’ve barely had a minute to catch my breath since then. We haven’t had the engagement party she wanted; we haven’t even had an engagementdinner. She deserves much better than this.
“No takeout tonight,” I say. “I’m leaving early.”
“Really?”
The fact that she seems so astonished tugs at me. “Yes, and I’m taking you out to dinner.”
“Blake,” she says softly. “You don’t have to do this. If you need to work, I understand…”
“You’re more important.” My voice is firm—it’s the voice people don’t say no to. “We are going out to dinner, and it’s going to be someplace really nice, so save your appetite. I’ll be home by seven-thirty.”
She sounds so happy. And all this work will be here tomorrow. Also, I’ve got a laptop I can crack open after she’s gone to sleep.
