Chapter 18: Fire Stairs

On Thursday at 6:10 the twenty-second floor was empty except for Deb and me.

She was packing her bag with the grim face of a woman going to a funeral.

"The chair's people came by," she said. "They took the stage script off the shared drive and put a new one in."

"A new script."

"It's four pages. It says ninety-nine over and over."

"Does Winston know?"

"Winston got a copy at five." Deb zipped the bag. "Phyllis texted me. She said, 'Tell Daria nothing, and tell her to eat.'"

"That's two things."

"She's Phyllis. Eat something."

I didn't.

I went to the stairwell, because my hands were shaking and I wanted to stand in a concrete box and breathe.

The fire stairs at Lodestar are gray, bare and cold, with a yellow stripe along each landing and a heavy door on every floor.

Nobody takes them.

Between the twenty-second floor and the twenty-third, I stopped and put my forehead against the wall.

Above me a door opened and closed, and footsteps came down fast, and then slowed.

"Daria."

He stood on the landing above me in his navy suit with his jacket over one arm.

His face was tight with strain.

"You read the script?"

"I read it twice. It's a lie, and it's a very good lie." He came down three steps. "I'm not going to say it."

"I know."

"They'll try to stop me."

"I know."

"Daria, tomorrow I'll lose the board."

"Maybe."

"I might lose the company."

"Maybe." I turned around and looked up at him. "Come here."

"Here?"

"Here. Now."

"There are cameras on every floor."

"Not in the stairwell. I come down here to cry."

"You cry in a stairwell?"

"It has good acoustics."

He laughed, helplessly, and came down the last steps and stopped in front of me.

I took his lapels in both hands.

"I need you to stop thinking," I said. "For ten minutes."

"Yes."

"Put your jacket down."

He dropped it on the step.

I pushed him back against the cinderblock wall and went up on my toes, and kissed him.

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