The Home She Built With Someone Else novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Napkin

Nathan redraws his own unit plan from memory in front of Margot, Gus and a panel. She offers him project director and tells him to be at the table in nine days.

The Tornquist tower lobby had a model of the whole city under glass, and I was told to wait beside it.

Every tall building on the table had a small brass plate with the firm's name.

The thirty-fourth floor was one long room of drafting tables and window light.

A woman stood at the end of it with her back to me, reading something on a clipboard.

She turned when the elevator opened.

Margot Tornquist was about my age, a little older, with dark auburn hair pinned up and a gray jacket with the sleeves pushed to her elbows.

She looked at me for a full second before she spoke, and I had the feeling I had already been measured.

"Mr. Boyle. You brought a pencil."

"You said to."

"Most people bring a portfolio."

"I brought that too."

She almost smiled.

The conference room had six chairs and four people.

Next to her sat a big man with a white mustache and reading glasses on a cord. He had a sandwich in one hand and didn't put it down to shake mine.

"Gus Brannigan," he said. "Don't take it personally. She's told me you either draw or you leave."

"I told him no such thing," Margot said.

"You told me with your eyes."

Two senior designers sat across from them with laptops open and faces that said they had been told to keep them closed.

"Hearthline's CEO called our office yesterday," Margot said. "Ms. Corliss was very warm. She said a disgruntled former employee might contact us and claim the work."

My stomach dropped and came back up.

"I haven't contacted anyone at your firm," I said. "You wrote to me."

"Yes. I found it interesting that she was already warning me."

"What did you tell her?"

"That I'd look forward to meeting him."

She slid a paper napkin across the table, white, from the tray of coffee.

Then a pen beside it, a plain black one.

"The unit plan in the deck. Draw it for me, from memory, here. Then tell me what's wrong with it."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Mr. Clery's version has something wrong. If it's your drawing, you'll see it. If it isn't, you'll tell me it's perfect."

The senior designers looked at their hands.

Gus leaned back and chewed.

I picked up the pen.

I drew the outer walls first, because everything else hangs on them.

The kitchen. The bath stack. The second bedroom, with the closet wall that carried the shelf run.

I drew the window on the north side and heard nobody breathe.

Then I stopped.

"There," I said, and put the point of the pen on the bath.

"The plumbing wall in the deck is eight inches to the left of where I drew it. The stack won't line up with the unit above. Someone moved it after I left the file."

"Why would someone move it?"

"To make the second bath bigger on the render. It looks better. It doesn't work."

"You're sure it's eight."

"I measured it on a Tuesday. I remember because the elevator was broken."

Gus coughed, and then it was a laugh, a big one.

"Margot," he said. "That's the one."

"I heard him, Gus."

She was holding the napkin up to the window light, and I saw her left hand.

She wore no ring. A thin pale line of skin crossed the base of her ring finger, where a ring would sit.

I looked away. It was none of my business.

"I'm the director of residential design," Margot said. "Project director, residential, is the level under me. It's the job I'd give you."

"The job under yours."

"It's the job for the man who drew a stack to the inch on a broken-elevator day."

One of the senior designers actually smiled.

"I have conditions," I said.

"Say them."

"My name goes on everything I draw. In my hand. Not a firm credit line."

"Tornquist signs what it hires."

"Then it signs my name."

Gus raised his eyebrows at her.

"Done," Margot said. She wrote it on the clipboard. "Anything else?"

"Why me? You could hire anyone you liked."

She put the napkin down and squared it on the table.

"Because Hearthline pitches us a week from Friday," she said. "Mr. Clery will present these plans as his, in this room, to me."

"And you want me there."

"I want you at the head of the table when he walks in."

Gus stopped chewing.

"Start Monday," Margot said. "Don't tell Hearthline."

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