The Gift (4 page)

The only thing that was static out there was Gabe, tucked away in a doorway near the building entrance, wrapped up on the ground and watching the shoes march by, the opportunities for him not quite as hopeful. Though only slightly bigger than a dot on the pavement thirteen floors down, Lou could see Gabe’s arm rise and fall as he sipped from his cup, making every mouthful last, even if by now the coffee was surely cold.

Gabe intrigued Lou. Not least because of his talent for recanting every pair of shoes that belonged in the building, as if he had a photographic memory, but, more alarmingly, because the person behind those crystal-blue eyes was remarkably familiar. In fact, Gabe reminded Lou of himself. The two men were similar in age, and, given the right grooming, Gabe could very easily have been mistaken for Lou. He seemed a personable, friendly, capable man. Yet how different their lives were.

At that very instant, as though feeling Lou’s eyes on him, Gabe looked up. Thirteen floors up and Lou felt like Gabe was staring straight at his soul, his eyes searing into him.

This confused Lou. He knew that the glass on the outside of the building was reflective, knew beyond any reasonable doubt Gabe couldn’t possibly have been able to see Lou. But there he stood staring up, his chin to the air, with a hand across his forehead to block out the light, in almost a kind of salute. He was probably looking at a reflection of something, Lou reasoned; a bird perhaps had swooped by and caught his eye. That’s right, a reflection was all it could be. But so intent was Gabe’s gaze, which reached up the full thirteen floors to Lou’s office window and all the way into Lou’s eyes, that it made Lou wonder. Before he knew it he lifted up his hand, smiled tightly, and gave a small salute to the man below. But before he could wait for a reaction, he wheeled his chair away from the window and spun around, his pulse rate quickening as though he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

The phone rang. It was Alison, and she didn’t sound happy.

“Before I tell you what I’m about to tell you, I just want to remind you that I qualified from UCD with a business degree.”

“Congratulations,” Lou said.

She cleared her throat. “Here you go. Alfred wears size eight brown loafers. Apparently he’s got ten pairs of
the same shoes and he wears them every day, so I don’t think the idea of another pair as a Christmas gift would go down too well.” She took a breath. “As for the shoes with the red soles, Melissa bought a new pair and wore them last week, but they cut into her ankle so she went to return them, but the shop wouldn’t take them back because it was obvious she’d worn them because the red sole had begun to wear off.”

“Who’s Melissa?”

“Mr. Patterson’s secretary.”

“I’ll need you to find out from her who she left work with every day last week.”

“No way, that’s not in my job description!”

“You can leave work early if you find out for me.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you for cracking under such pressure.”

“No problem, it means I can get started on my Christmas shopping.”

“Don’t forget my list.”

So Gabe had been right about the shoes and wasn’t a lunatic, as Lou had secretly suspected. He remembered Gabe asking if Lou needed an observant eye around the building, and right then and there he rethought his earlier decision.

“And can you get me Harry from the mailroom on the phone. I’m going to cure his little short-staffing problem. Then take my spare shirt, tie, and trousers downstairs to the guy sitting at the entrance. Take him to the men’s room first, make sure he’s tidied up, and
then show him down to the mailroom. Harry will be expecting him. His name is Gabe.”

“What?”

“Gabe. It’s short for Gabriel. But call him Gabe.”

“No, I meant—”

“Just do it. Oh, and Alison?”

“What?”

“I really enjoyed our kiss last week, and I look forward to screwing your brains out in the future.”

He heard a light laugh slip from her throat before the phone went dead.

He’d done it again. While in the process of telling the truth, he told a total and utter lie. Almost an admirable quality, really. And through helping Gabe, Lou was also helping himself; a good deed was indeed a triumph for the soul. But Lou also knew that somewhere beneath his plotting and soul saving there lay another plot, a saving of a very different kind. That of his own skin. And even deeper down in this onion man’s complexities, he knew that this outreach was prompted by fear. Not just by the very fear that—had all reason and luck failed him—Lou could so easily be in Gabe’s position at this very moment. In a layer so deeply buried from the surface, there lay the fear of a reported crack—a blip in the fine engineering of Lou’s career. As much as he wanted to ignore it, it niggled. The fear was there; it was there all the time, but it was merely disguised as something else for others to see.

Just like the thirteenth floor.

W
HEN
L
OU’S MEETING WITH
M
R
. Brennan—about the thankfully not rare but still problematic slugs on the development site in County Cork—was close to being wrapped up, Alison appeared at his office door, looking anxious, and with the pile of clothes for Gabe still draped in her outstretched arms.

“Sorry, Barry, we’ll have to wrap it up now,” Lou said in a rush. “I have to run. I’ve two places to be right now, both of them across town, and you know what traffic is like.” And just like that, with a porcelain smile and a firm warm handshake, Mr. Brennan found himself suddenly back in the elevator, descending to the ground floor, his winter coat draped over one arm and his paperwork stuffed into his briefcase and tucked under the other. Yet, at the same time, it had been a pleasant meeting.

“Did Gabe say no?” Lou asked Alison.

“There was no one there.” She looked confused. “I stood at reception calling and calling his name—God, it was so embarrassing—and nobody came. Was this part
of a joke, Lou? I can’t believe, after you made me show the Romanian rose seller into Alfred’s office, that I’d fall for this again.”

“It’s not a joke.” He took her arm and dragged her over to his window.

“But there was no man there,” she said with exasperation.

He looked out the window and saw Gabe still in the same place on the ground. A light rain was starting to fall, spitting against the window at first and then quickly making a tapping sound as it turned heavier. Gabe pushed himself back farther into the doorway, tucking his feet in closer to his chest and away from the wet ground. He lifted the hood from his sweater over his head and pulled the drawstrings tightly, which from all the way up on the thirteenth floor seemed to be attached to Lou’s heartstrings.

“Is that not a man?” he asked, pointing out the window.

Alison squinted and moved her nose closer to the glass. “Yes, but—”

He grabbed the clothes from her arms. “I’ll do it myself,” he said.

A
S SOON AS
L
OU STEPPED
through the lobby’s revolving doors, the icy air whipped at his face. His breath was momentarily taken away by a great gush, and the rain alone felt like ice cubes hitting his skin. Gabe was
concentrating intently on the shoes that passed him, no doubt trying to ignore the elements that were thrashing around him. In his mind he was elsewhere, anywhere but there. On a beach where it was warm, where the sand was like velvet and the Liffey before him was the endless sea. While in this other world he felt a kind of bliss that a man in his position shouldn’t.

His face, however, didn’t reflect all this. Gone was the look of warm contentment from that morning. His blue eyes were colder as they followed Lou’s shoes from the revolving doors all the way to the edge of his blanket.

As Gabe watched the shoes, he was imagining them to be the feet of a local man working at the beach he was currently lounging on. The local was approaching him with a cocktail balanced dangerously in the center of a tray, the tray held out high and away from his body like the arms of a candelabra. Gabe had ordered this drink quite some time ago, but he’d allowed the man this small delay. It was a hotter day than usual. The sand was crammed with glistening, coconut-scented bodies, and the muggy air was slowing everybody down. The flip-flop-clad feet that approached him now sprayed him with grains of sand with each step. As they neared him, the grains became splashes of raindrops, and the flip-flops became a familiar pair of shiny shoes. Gabe looked up, hoping to see a multicolored cocktail filled with fruit and tiny paper umbrellas on a tray. Instead, he saw Lou, with a pile of clothes over his arm, and it took him a moment to adjust once again to the cold, the noise of
the traffic, and the hustle and bustle that had replaced his tropical paradise.

Lou also didn’t look like he had this morning. His hair had lost its Cary Grant–like sheen and neatly combed forelock, and his shoulders appeared to be covered in dandruff as the drops falling from the sky nested in his expensive suit, leaving dark patches on the fabric. He was uncharacteristically windswept, and his usually relaxed shoulders were instead hunched high in an effort to shield his ears from the cold. His body trembled, missing his cashmere coat like a sheep who’d just been sheared and now stood knobbly-kneed and naked.

“You want a job?” Lou asked confidently, but it came out quiet and meek, as half his volume was taken away by the wind.

Gabe simply smiled. “You’re sure?”

Confused by his reaction, Lou nodded. He wasn’t expecting a hug and a kiss, but his offer seemed almost
expected
. This he didn’t like. He was more atuned to a song and a dance, an ooh and an aah, a thank-you and a declaration of indebtedness. But he didn’t get this from Gabe. What he did get was a quiet smile, and, after Gabe had thrown off the blanket from his body and raised himself to his full height, a firm, thankful—and, in spite of the temperature, surprisingly warm—handshake. It was as though they were already sealing a deal Lou couldn’t recall negotiating.

Standing at exactly the same height, they gazed directly into each other’s blue eyes, Gabe’s from under the
hood that was pulled down low over his eyes, monk-like, boring into Lou’s with such intensity that Lou had to blink and look away. At the same time, a doubt entered Lou’s mind, now that the mere thought of a good deed was becoming a reality. The doubt came breezing through like a stubborn guest through a hotel lobby with no reservation, and Lou stood there, confused at what to do next. Where to put this doubt. Keep it or turn it away. He had many questions to ask Gabe, many questions he probably should have asked before offering the job, but there was only one that he needed to ask right then.

“Can I trust you?” Lou asked.

He had wanted to be convinced, for his mind to be put at ease, but he did not count on receiving the kind of response he was about to hear.

Gabe barely blinked. “With your life.”

The Presidential Suite for the gentleman and his word.

G
ABE AND
L
OU LEFT THE
icy air outside and entered the warmth of the marble lobby. Suddenly surrounded by walls, floors, and pillars of granite covered by swirls of creams, caramels, and Cadbury-chocolate colors, Gabe was tempted to lick the surfaces. He had known he was cold, but until he felt this warmth he’d had no idea just how cold.

Lou felt all eyes on him as he led the rugged-looking man through reception and into the men’s room on the ground floor. Not quite sure why, Lou took it upon himself to check each toilet cubicle before talking.

“Here, I brought you these.” Lou handed Gabe the pile of clothes, which were slightly damp now. “You can keep them.”

He turned to face the mirror to comb his hair back into its perfect position, wiped away the raindrops from his shoulders, and tried his best to return to normality—physically and mentally—as Gabe slowly sifted through the pile. Gray Gucci trousers, a white shirt, a gray-and-
white-striped tie. He fingered them all delicately, as though a single touch would reduce them to shreds.

After Gabe discarded his blanket in the sink and went into one of the stalls to dress, Lou paced up and down past the urinals, responding to phone calls and e-mails on his BlackBerry. He was so busy with his work that when he looked up at one point, he didn’t recognize the man standing before him and returned his attention to his device. But then he slowly reared his head again, realizing with a start that it was Gabe.

The only thing that showed this was the same man was the dirty pair of Doc Martens beneath the Gucci trousers. Everything else fitted perfectly, and Gabe stood before the mirror, looking himself up and down as though in a trance. The woolen hat that had covered Gabe’s head had been discarded, revealing a thick head of black hair similar to Lou’s, though far more tousled. The warmth had replaced the coldness in his body, making his lips full and red and his cheeks nicely rosy instead of the frozen, pallid color of before.

Lou didn’t quite know what to say, so, sensing a moment that was far deeper than he was comfortable with, he splashed around in the shallow end instead.

“That stuff you told me about the shoes, earlier?”

Gabe nodded.

“That was good. I wouldn’t mind if you kept your eyes open for more of that kind of thing. Let me know now and then about what you see.”

Gabe nodded.

“Have you somewhere to stay?”

“Yes.” Gabe looked back at his reflection in the mirror. His voice was quiet.

“So you’ve an address to give Harry? He’ll be your boss.”

“You won’t be my boss?”

“No.” Lou took his BlackBerry again and began scrolling for nothing in particular. “No, you’ll be in another…department.”

“Oh, of course.” Gabe straightened up, seeming a little embarrassed for thinking otherwise. “Right. Great. Thanks so much, Lou, really.”

Lou nodded it off, feeling embarrassed, too. “Here.” He handed Gabe his comb from his pocket while looking the other way.

“Thanks.” Gabe took it, held the comb under the tap, and began to shape his messy hair. Then Lou hurried him on and led him back out of the men’s room and through the marble lobby to the elevators.

Gabe offered the comb back to Lou as they walked.

Lou shook his head and waved his hand dismissively looking around to make sure nobody waiting by the elevators had seen the gesture. “Keep it. You have an employer number, social security number, things like that?” he rattled off at Gabe.

Gabe shook his head, looking concerned. His fingers ran up and down the silk tie, as though he was afraid it would run off.

“Don’t worry, we’ll sort that out. Okay,” Lou started
to move away as his phone began ringing, “I’d better run.”

“Of course. Thanks again. Where do I go?”

“Down a floor. The mailroom,” he said quickly, before answering his phone.

Gabe looked surprised at first, and then his pleasant face returned, and he smiled at Lou.

Lou knew that offering Gabe a job was a great gesture and that there was nothing wrong with the mailroom, but somehow he felt that it wasn’t enough, that the young man standing before him was not only capable but expectant of much more. There was no reasonable explanation for why on Earth he felt this—Gabe was as warm, friendly, and appreciative as he had been the very first moment Lou had met him—but there was something about the way he looked, standing there. There was just…something.

“Do you want to meet for lunch or anything?” Gabe asked hopefully as soon as Lou snapped his phone shut.

“No can do,” Lou replied, his phone starting to ring again. “I’ve such a busy day ahead, you know…” He trailed off as the elevator doors opened and people began filing in. Gabe moved to step in with Lou.

“This one’s going up,” Lou said quietly, his words a barrier to Gabe’s entrance.

“Oh, okay.” Gabe took a few steps back. Before the doors closed and a few last people scurried in, Gabe asked, “Why are you doing this for me?”

Lou swallowed hard and shoved his hands deep into
his pockets. “Consider it a gift.” And the doors closed.

When Lou reached the fourteenth floor a minute later, he was more than surprised as he headed to his office to see Gabe pushing a mail cart around the floor, depositing packages and envelopes on people’s desks. At the same time as his mouth tried to formulate words, his mind ran through how long it must have taken Gabe to get from the basement to this floor. It was simply impossible. He stared at Gabe, openmouthed.

Gabe looked around and back at Lou with uncertainty, smoothing down the new tie he’d been given and checking to make sure he hadn’t dirtied it. “This is the thirteenth floor, isn’t it?” he asked.

“It’s the fourteenth,” Lou replied breathlessly, speaking the words more out of habit and barely noticing what he was saying. He held his hand to his forehead, which was hot. “You got here so quickly…How did you, I mean…”

Gabe looked at him and waited for the rest of the sentence, his face perfectly expressionless, giving away nothing.

“Lou,” Alison hissed. “Your sister’s on the phone. Again.”

Lou didn’t respond, unable to tear his eyes away from Gabe’s.

“Lou?” Alison said a little more urgently. “It’s Marcia. About your dad’s seventieth party.”

Finally Lou managed to speak but still stood cemented to the floor. “Tell her I’m out.”

“But what about the party?”

“Tell her I’ll organize it. Or at least you will,” he said distractedly, finally able to move his eyes away. He reached for his coat. “Make sure you find out the date.”

“It’s the twenty-first. Same date as the office holiday party,” she whispered loudly, covering the handset.

“Change it then,” he said as he went into his office to pick up his briefcase, then walked back out while wrapping his scarf tightly around his neck.

“The office party?”

“No,” he said, wrinkling his nose up in disgust. “My father’s party.”

He caught Gabe’s eye and saw a judging, accusing look. Once again it stopped him in his tracks. “No, actually, don’t,” he backtracked quickly to Alison. “I’ll figure it out.”

Gabe gave him a curious smile at that.

“Okay, I’m off.” He finally broke his gaze with Gabe and power walked to the elevator, phone to his ear. Lou held Gabe’s cool stare as the doors closed and the elevator slowly descended. A few seconds later it reached the ground level, and as the doors opened Lou caused a jam as he froze at the sight before him. While irritated people trying to get off snapped at him to move, eventually pushing passed him, Lou didn’t even notice. He just stood there, staring at Gabe, who was a few feet in front of him.

Even as the elevator crowd cleared and headed out into the cold of the city, Lou remained alone in the ele
vator, his heart skipping a few beats as he watched Gabe standing by the security desk, the mail cart beside him.

Before the elevator doors closed again, trapping Lou inside, he slowly disembarked and made his way toward Gabe.

“I forgot to give this to you upstairs,” Gabe said, handing Lou a thin envelope. “It was hidden beneath someone else’s stack.”

Lou took the envelope and didn’t even look at it before crushing it into his coat pocket.

“Is something wrong?” Gabe asked.

“No. Nothing’s wrong.” Lou didn’t move his eyes away from Gabe’s face. “How did you get down here so quickly?”

“Here?” Gabe pointed at the floor.

“Yeah, here,” Lou said sarcastically. “The ground level. You were just on the thirteenth floor. Just less than thirty seconds ago.”

“I thought there was no thirteenth floor,” Gabe responded coolly.

“Fourteenth, I meant,” Lou corrected himself, frustrated by his gaffe.

“You were there, too, Lou.” Gabe frowned.

“And?”

“And…” Gabe stalled. “I guess I just got here quicker than you.” He shrugged, then unlatched the brake at the wheel of the cart with his foot and prepared to move. “You’d better run,” Gabe said, moving away, echoing Lou’s words from the morning. “Things to see, people
to do.” Then he flashed his porcelain smile, but this time it didn’t give Lou the warm fuzzy feeling it had earlier. Instead, it sent torpedoes of fear and worry right to his heart and straight into his gut. Those two places. Right at the same time.