Gloss Lies

You have no idea how long a German phone call lasts.

You bend down until the model is at eye level, the way your professor taught you. Stand in it. Don't fly over it like God. Nobody lives in a building from above. Your eyes are at the height of a person on the plaza, looking up past wire trees at a glass tower that peels away from the river like a sail.

It's beautiful. Of course it's beautiful. It's hers.

You walk your eyes around it. The tower's footprint. The retail along the avenue. The little plaza on the river side, granite and benches, and the main lobby doors facing straight onto it, straight onto the water.

West. The doors face west.

You think about February on the Hudson. About standing on the West Side Highway last winter waiting for a bus with the wind coming off the river like it had a personal grudge, so hard you had to turn your back and walk the last block sideways.

You look at the base again. The flare. The way the glass skirt curves out over the plaza. Your stomach drops in the specific way it does when a building is wrong and you know it before you can say why.

Wind hits a tall building and slides down the face. Your fluid dynamics professor called it downwash and drew it with angry arrows. It hits the ground and has to go somewhere. And that curved base doesn't block it. It catches it. It funnels it, like cupped hands, straight across the plaza and into the lobby doors.

Behind you, the German stops.

"Well?" Ulla says.

You straighten. Your knees crack, which is humiliating. She's put the phone down and is standing with her arms folded, and the man in the linen shirt has drifted to the open office door with a coffee, smiling the way people smile at car accidents.

"The lobby faces west, onto the river," you say. "In the winter the prevailing wind comes off the Hudson from the northwest. It's going to hit the tower, run down the face, and the flared base is going to catch it and channel it across the plaza. Right into the doors." You touch the plaza with one fingertip. "In January, nobody's going to be able to open those doors. Old people. Kids. Someone with groceries. It'll be like pushing against a truck. And the plaza'll be empty eight months a year because nobody'll want to sit in a wind tunnel."

Silence.

The man in the linen shirt laughs. Not a mean laugh. A charming one, warm, the kind that makes you feel like the joke is something you're both in on, except you're the joke.

"We ran the wind study," he says. "It's fine. Phineas Laskaris." He holds out his hand. He's absurdly good-looking, dark curls, perfect stubble, the kind of face that sells watches. "Senior associate. The plaza's mine. Welcome, by the way. Day one, you're already redesigning the building?"

"I'm not redesigning it. I'm just saying the..."

"The wind study modeled the tower without the base flare," Ulla says.

Phineas's smile holds. "The flare was added after. The consultant said the difference would be marginal."

"Did they model it?"

"They said it would be marginal."

Ulla looks at the model for a long moment. She doesn't look at you. She doesn't look at Phineas. She picks the model up in both hands, carries it back to the shelf under the table, and sets it down.

"Go home," she says.

You think she's talking to Phineas. Then you realize she's looking at you.

"Ms. Rademacher, I..."

"It's five o'clock, Ava. Go home."

Phineas winks at you on his way out of the office. It's a nice wink. It says better luck at your next job.

Ziva doesn't look up when you collect your coat.

"Early dismissal on day one," she says. "That's new."

"Is it bad?"

"Everything is new, here. Bad is a conclusion." She pushes her glasses up. "Did you tell her something she didn't want to hear?"

"I told her the lobby of her building is in a wind tunnel."

Ziva's pen stops. For a second she looks at you with something you can't read. Then she glances at the jar of eleven paperclips and back at you, and says, very dryly, "Well. Wear sensible shoes tomorrow. If there is one."

Your apartment in Bushwick is a fourth-floor walk-up over a laundromat, which means it's warm and smells like dryer sheets and the floor hums all day. Waverly is on the couch with her red curls in a scarf and a sheet tray of failed croissants on her lap, eating the evidence.

"How was the Glacier?"

"I think I got fired."

"On the first day? Iconic." She holds out a croissant. It's lopsided and perfect. "What did you do?"

"I told her the truth about her building."

"Oh, Ava. Babe." Waverly makes room on the couch. "You can't do that to rich people."

You tell her everything. The paperclips. The shoes. Gloss lies. The model. Phineas's handsome laugh. The way Ulla carried the tower away like you'd hurt it.

"Okay, but," Waverly says, "were you right?"

You think about the arrows. The cupped hands of glass.

"Yes."

"Then she'll either fire you or marry you." She licks butter off her thumb. "That's how it works with geniuses. I've seen every movie."

You don't sleep. You lie on your back on the mattress that takes up most of your room and replay it. You should have said it more carefully. You should have said it privately. You should have asked a question instead of making a statement, the way your mom does with the principal at her school, I wonder if we've considered... You should have let the building be wrong. It's not your building. It will never be your building. You're an assistant with a squeaky pair of outlet-mall shoes and sixty-one thousand dollars of student loans, and you just told the best architect in New York that she designed a wind tunnel.

At midnight you start drafting an apology email. Dear Ms. Rademacher, I'm sorry if I overstepped. You delete it. I'm sorry. Delete. She said the last three apologized at length.

You don't apologize.

At 1:30 you finally doze off with your phone on your chest.

At 2:07 it buzzes.

You jolt awake, fumble it, nearly drop it on your face. Email. From: Ulla Rademacher. No preview text. One attachment: TT_GF_PLAN_REV_K.pdf.

Your thumb shakes when you open it.

It's the Tideline ground floor. Redrawn. Not marked up, redrawn, by hand, scanned, the linework so clean it looks printed. The main entrance has moved. It's on the south side now, sheltered, opening onto the avenue under a deep canopy. The plaza is still there by the river, but she's pulled the base flare back on the windward side and dropped a low glass wall along the water, angled like a breakwater, and planted a line of trees behind it. In the corner, in red pencil, a small note in her blocky capitals: WIND STUDY RERUN W/ FLARE. TUES.

She did this tonight. Between five o'clock and two in the morning, she sat at that drafting table and moved the front door of a forty-story tower because you said so.

You scroll up to the subject line and read it three times.

You were right. Do not let it go to your head. 7 a.m.

No signature. No Best. No Regards. Just a period, like a door closing. Or opening. You lie in the dark with the laundromat humming under you and the phone's glow on your face, and you realize you're smiling so hard it hurts.

Then a second email arrives. 2:09 a.m.

Also, buy different shoes.