Black Buck(11)

“Yeah,” I said. “Sounds fair.”

We crossed Park Avenue and entered the building. But instead of cutting left for Starbucks, I went straight: across the lobby, past the security guards, and into an elevator headed for the thirty-sixth floor.





4





We entered the elevator. A woman already inside pressed the button for the thirtieth floor. On seeing Rhett, she smiled.

“Which floor?” she asked, beaming like a firefly’s ass.

“Thirty-six, thanks,” Rhett said, grinning at me.

She folded her arms, squinting. “So you’re the floor making all of the noise and having the best parties, huh?”

Rhett backed into a corner, raising his hands in surrender. “Guilty.”

“Rumor has it that you have to pay the security guards not to call the cops when you all get too rowdy.”

“The truth is that it’s usually the security guards who are the rowdiest when they hang with us.”

The elevator bell rang, signaling we were at her floor. She walked out but not before looking back at Rhett.

“So, are you going to invite me to one of your parties?”

“Every Friday at six,” he said, giving her a mock salute.

As the elevator climbed, the sound of bass-heavy music shook the cab like a mild earthquake. The higher we went, the more violent it became. My heart beat irregularly at the thought of cables snapping and me plummeting thirty-six floors to my death.

“What is—?”

Rhett placed a soft finger on my lips. “This is where men and women are made, Darren. If you don’t just survive but thrive here, you will be able to do anything.”

The doors opened to an elevator bay with see-through glass doors to the left and a pair with frosted glass to the right. Through the transparent doors sat a young white girl with short hair, glasses, and sharp features. A blond guy, who could’ve been her twin, leaned over her desk and caressed her face before she slapped his hand away. But it was the frosted doors to the right that the noise blared from.

Fuzzy silhouettes moved beyond those doors: jumping, running, and whizzing by all to the sound of Wiz Khalifa’s “We Dem Boyz.” Something small and round, like the Golden Snitch from Harry Potter, ricocheted off the glass.

Rhett turned to me. “You ready?”

I straightened out my shirt and nodded, unsure of what I had to be ready for.

The minute Rhett opened the door, something flew at his face, and before I could register what it was, I found one in my hand.

“Whoa, the brother can catch!” someone shouted from the lawless scene in front of us.

Brother?

“Good reflexes,” Rhett said, pointing to the purple stress ball in my hand.

Everything happened so quickly, I hadn’t even realized someone had thrown one at me. I turned it over and saw the word SUMWUN in white cursive. When I looked back up, my eyes readjusted to the chaos in front of me.

A sea of people ebbed and flowed, spilling out of every corner, entering, leaving, standing on desks, huddling in offices, sitting under tables with fingers in their ears as mouths moved at hyperspeed, throwing balls at one another. Is this real or was there something in those pancakes?

People zipped by on scooters with mugs of hot coffee in their hands. Clusters of guys and girls wrote on floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the East River like they were in A Beautiful Mind. Dogs barked and chased one another. A few people wielded purple-painted Louisville Sluggers behind others sweating on phones, as if they would bash their heads in for saying one wrong word. There was a girl walking around with a piglet in her arms, petting it as she laughed into the headset nestled in her orange-red hair.

I turned to Rhett, who was casually scrolling through his phone. “What is this?”

“This?” He shrugged, smiling at me. “This is the sales floor at 9 a.m. What else?”

“But how can anyone work?” I swung my head around, searching for an answer. “People are on the phones, but there’s music blasting from—where’s the music even coming from?”

“Everywhere. We had speakers installed in every room, even the gym. It’s good for parties, but it also lets everyone know when we’re celebrating a new deal, like now.”

“Gym?”

“Yeah, you wanna see?”

“Sure.”

“Twenty K, Rhett!” an indistinct voice yelled from the void.

“Throw it up!” Rhett said, pointing toward the whiteboard nailed to the wall next to us.

“Already did!”

We took a right and walked down a narrow corridor until we arrived at a door with a workout calendar on it. Rhett opened it. Inside was a small spotless gym with weight benches, dumbbells, treadmills, a flat-screen TV, and other meathead paraphernalia. A white guy with Mediterranean features—black hair, chestnut eyes, olive skin—and more chiseled than Adonis and Hercules put together abused a leather punching bag.

“Mac, Darren. Darren, Mac,” Rhett said.

I had seen Mac in Starbucks before, accompanying Rhett on some of his afternoon coffee runs, so I stood there waiting for him to recognize me as the “Starbucks guy,” but he just pulled off his gloves and extended a calloused hand. I extended mine and he squeezed it, almost bringing me to tears, but I didn’t relent. I just held his stare until he laughed and smacked the shit out of my back.