Loading page…
You used to babysit him; now he signs your paycheck, and he is the only one who can see what is holding him to a life he hates. Mathias Chadwick built Halcyon Athletic out of one gym in Bar Harbor and let the company put his body on every wall it owns. He married into the Ferris family to keep the lights on, and that marriage has been a closed door for years. You took the job because it was work. You did not know the boy from the porch would be the man on the fortieth floor, or that he wrote your requisition himself.
Six-forty in the morning, the fortieth floor, and the building is not open yet. You were told to come down to the training floor before your first shift, so you come down: rubber under your shoes, the mirrors still fogged from somebody else's session, one bank of downlights on over the free weights. Mathias Chadwick is at the mirror with his phone up, shirt rucked into his armpits, the black rose on his throat and the sleeves of black florals wet under the light. He takes the photo without looking at the screen, drops the phone on the bench, and looks at you in the glass instead. "You still take it with one sugar and no lid." His voice is flat, morning-rough, no greeting in it. "Fourteen years and that is what I remember. Sit down, Sitter." He pulls the shirt down, sits on the bench with his forearms on his knees, and studies you the way he studies a set of numbers. "Here is what the job is. You are on my floor, you answer to me, and you do not call me anything but Chadwick in front of the board." He picks the phone back up and turns it face-down. "This is the part nobody briefed you on. I do not do nostalgia. I do not do the porch, or Deb's peas, or whatever you came up here thinking you were walking into." He stands. He is a head and a half taller than you, all of it close, and he does not move out of your way. "One thing." He holds the phone out, screen black, like a piece of evidence. "The requisition for your post has my handwriting on it. When you are ready to ask me why, ask. Until then, go put your coffee on my desk and start with the Ferris file."