The Don's Wife Never Looks Back novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Desk

Her old firm turns her away on Santino's word, and her old rival Nathaniel Adler hands her a desk at his studio out of pure spite, until Santino walks in with Livia behind him.

I put the note in my wallet, behind my architect's license.

The license was the only card in there that had my own name on it.

On Monday I took the Orange Line to the Loop with forty dollars of Marisa's money.

The firm was on the thirty-first floor of a black glass tower on Wacker.

I'd worked there for three years before I married.

I'd designed half of a library there, and a fire station, and a parking garage I was secretly proud of.

The receptionist was new.

"Do you have an appointment?"

"I used to work here. Mira Sartori. I'd like to see the managing partner."

She called back.

I stood by the model of the river walk and tried not to touch it.

The partner came out himself, which should have warned me.

He was sixty, silver-haired, in his good shoes.

He'd once told me I had the best hand for a section drawing he'd seen in ten years.

He didn't shake my hand now.

"Mira. I heard about your mother. I'm very sorry."

"Thank you. I want to come back. I'll take any desk. I'll start as a junior again."

He glanced at the open floor behind him.

Twenty people at long white tables had stopped pretending to work.

"I'm afraid we're not hiring."

"You posted two associate jobs last week. I saw them on my phone."

His smile thinned.

"Mira. I had a call on Saturday."

"From who?"

He didn't say it.

He didn't need to.

The Corsi concrete company poured every foundation this firm drew.

"You understand," he said. "I have forty people on payroll."

"I understand you're letting him decide who works here."

"Lower your voice."

"No."

Behind me, someone laughed.

It was a dry, familiar laugh, and I knew it before I turned around.

Nathaniel Adler was leaning against the reception desk with a big foam-core model under one arm.

He looked exactly the same.

Tall, too thin, sandy hair that had never met a comb, wire glasses sliding down his nose.

There was ink on his fingers.

There was always ink on his fingers.

"Sartori," he said. "You're back."

"Adler. I thought they fired you."

"I quit. It's different. I stole a client on the way out." He lifted the model. "I'm here collecting my stuff. They held it hostage for two years."

The partner stiffened. "Nathaniel."

"Don't worry, I'm leaving." Nathaniel looked at me over his glasses. "Do you still draw a stair the way you used to? With the stupid little handrail detail nobody asked for?"

"It's not stupid. It's code."

"It's beautiful and it's stupid." He turned to the partner. "I'll take her."

"Excuse me?" I said.

"I have a desk. It's by the window. It's the corner desk, actually." He grinned at me. "You remember the corner desk."

I remembered the corner desk.

We'd fought over it for eight months when I was twenty-three.

I'd won it by coming in at six in the morning for a week.

He'd put a cactus on it out of spite.

"I'm not a charity case," I said.

"Good. I can't afford a charity. I can barely afford a draftsman." He shifted the model. "I've got a city job and a deadline and a junior who draws doors that open into walls. Come do the work, and I'll pay you badly."

The whole floor was listening.

The partner's face had gone a little pink.

"Nathaniel, you know who her husband is."

"Sure. A guy who pours concrete." Nathaniel held the door open with his foot. "Sartori. Are you coming? This thing's heavy."

I walked out with him.

Nobody stopped us.

In the elevator, I said, "You did that to annoy him."

"Mostly." He watched the numbers go down. "Also I was sorry about your mom. She hemmed my interview pants once. Remember? I split the seam at the Christmas party."

"She said you had a flat behind."

"She was right."

I laughed.

It came out of me, rusty and surprised.

It was the first time since the clinic.

Adler Studio was in an old bakery in Pilsen with the name still painted in faded red over the door.

Inside it smelled like coffee and pencil shavings and, faintly, bread.

There were four desks, a plan chest, and a huge gray dog sleeping under it.

The dog had three legs.

"That's Tripod," Nathaniel said.

"That's a cruel name."

"He picked it. He won't answer to anything else."

Tripod opened one eye, saw me, and thumped his tail twice on the floor.

The corner desk was by the front window.

There was a cactus on it.

"You kept the cactus," I said.

"It's a different cactus. The first one died of loneliness when you got married."

I sat down.

The chair was bad. The light was perfect.

He dropped a roll of drawings in front of me, a branch library for the South Side, and a mug of coffee that tasted like it had been brewed on Friday.

By four o'clock I'd fixed the junior's doors and redrawn the main stair.

I put the stupid little handrail detail back in.

Nathaniel looked over my shoulder and didn't say anything.

He just tapped the drawing twice with an inky finger, the way he used to when he lost an argument.

At five, the bell over the bakery door rang.

Tripod lifted his head and growled, low.

I looked up.

Santino stood inside the door in his camel coat, holding my old leather drafting case.

Livia stood behind him, with her tablet held to her chest.

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