Not from fear, not from hesitation. He sat because he needed to be alone with the building for a moment before he walked into it differently than he had ever walked into it before. Eight months of service entrances and mechanical rooms and basement corridors. And now he was about to use the front door. He thought about what that meant.
He thought about Calvin Briggs, who would have already been inside and probably making someone laugh. He got out of the truck at 8:39 a.m. And walked through the front entrance of Hayes Global Logistics for the first time in 8 months of working in its walls. The lobby was different from 12:23 a.m. On a storm night obviously, but it was also different more specific way.
The way a place is different when you are entering it as yourself rather than as a function. The security desk where Gerald had looked up at him with relief on his face a week ago was staffed by a different guard this morning. A young man who looked up and said, "Can I help you, Darius Coleman? " He said, "I have a 9:00 with Victoria Hayes. " The guard checked his screen, nodded, picked up a phone. 30 seconds later, he was handing Darius a visitor badge, not a contractor badge. A visitor badge, the kind that said guest, in clean type, and directing him to the main elevator bank.
Darius looked at the elevators. The guard was already back to his screen. Darius stood in front of the elevator doors for a moment. The same bank, different morning. The emergency lighting was off.
The regular lighting fully restored everything clean and ordinary and functioning exactly as it was designed to function. He pressed the button. The doors opened immediately. Empty car, bright interior, the soft sound of lobby music that someone had decided was appropriate for a Monday morning. He got in, pressed 38.
The elevator moved smoothly, steadily, floor by floor, and Darius Coleman rode it with his hands loose at his sides and his eyes on the floor indicator and let the building take him up. Victoria's assistant, a composed woman in her 40s named Patricia, who had the particular energy of someone who had been managing an executive possible schedule long enough that nothing surprised her, met him when the doors opened on Lob, 38, and led him through a corridor that was all glass and clean lines and the particular quality of air that expensive buildings had, like it had been filtered of anything inconvenient. Patricia stopped outside a door. "She's expecting you," she said. "Can I get you anything? " "Coffee. " "I'm okay, thank you. " Patricia opened the door.
Victoria was standing at the window, not sitting behind the desk. Standing at the window that looked out over the city, her arms crossed loosely over her chest, and she turned when he came in, and the expression on her face was something he had not seen in any of the versions of her he'd encountered so far. Not the CEO in the elevator, not the woman in the security office, not the composed voice on the phone. This was something quieter, something that hadn't been arranged for him, something that was simply there because this was a real moment between two real people, and she wasn't performing anything. You took the elevator, she said.
I did. How fine? He said it was an elevator. Something moved across her face. Relief maybe or recognition.
I took it this morning too for the first time since. She paused. It was fine. Good. She uncrossed her arms, moved toward the desk, but didn't sit behind it.