The Project - Courtney Summers Page 0,5
be the sunrise to Arthur’s gloaming and it makes it painfully uncomfortable to look at them both.
“Art,” Paul says, his forehead creasing. “Hey.”
Arthur loses himself in Paul’s tenderness, reaching his hands out to his old friend. It becomes a scene: Paul folds Arthur into his arms, acting as a shield between him and everyone else in the office who can’t seem to turn away. Arthur sobs, and the spectacle of him makes my stomach turn. Paul is easy about it, though, because Paul is easy about everything. He begins guiding Arthur into his office and then his eyes meet mine over the top of Arthur’s head. He asks me to pick them up lunch.
* * *
SVO shares the building with a bar and it’s possible Paul meant something liquid when he said lunch, but I head across the street to this trashy diner, Betty’s Kitchen, and pay for two to-go bowls of bacon mac because it’s the most comforting sounding thing on the menu and maybe Arthur needs something like that, if he can eat at all. The place is busier than it usually is; people seeking refuge from the weather for the cost of a dollar pop. I wait for my order by the door, leaning against the noticeboard on the wall with my eyes shut, flyers fluttering against my shoulder with the arrival of each new customer. Forks and knives against plates. Murmured conversations happening over them. The television in the corner plays Days of Our Lives, which makes me think of Patty, who missed more church than episodes even though there was no one she loved more than Jesus.
“Mommy, her face.”
I open my eyes.
“Mommy, what’s on her face?”
The tiny, inquisitive voice comes from my left, and I turn to it and find a young girl—maybe four or so—staring up at me from the table she’s seated at with her mother. She has wild, curly hair pulled into tight pigtails that look like pom-poms on either side of her head.
“Mommy,” she says again, while looking right at me. “What’s on her face?”
Her mother finally looks up from her phone. “What, baby?” Then she follows her daughter’s gaze to mine, her expression immediately desperate, begging me for an out. She wants me to pretend I didn’t hear it or, barring that, explain it kindly to her daughter for both their sakes. I look to the little girl and her eyes widen. My undivided attention and its absence of warmth unsettles her to the point her lower lip trembles and she starts to cry.
“Thirteen,” the woman at the counter calls. My order. “Lucky thirteen.”
* * *
When I get back to the office, Jeff stops me at the door. Jeff is cool. It’s Jeff’s job to be cool. He’s tall and striking, with deep black skin and medium-length dreads tied into a ponytail. His job at SVO is social media manager—which sounds like a nightmare to me—but he looks every part an influencer with his phone permanently attached to his hand.
“Wouldn’t go over there if I were you,” he tells me.
I look toward Paul’s office and before I can ask, I hear it: Paul and Arthur shouting over each other through the closed door. It’s a shocking sound and despite Jeff’s warning, I follow it until I’m standing at my desk watching Paul’s and Arthur’s silhouettes through frosted glass. Arthur’s moves back and forth, agitated.
“You’re not fucking listening—you haven’t been listening—”
“Art, I’ve done what I can—”
“Bullshit! They murdered my son!”
There’s a brief hush through the entire office.
Conversations stop, fingers hover over keyboards, still.
Paul’s door flies open and Arthur stands in the center of it and something about his anger makes him look whole. He storms out of the office. Paul’s door swings slowly back and forth in the aftermath and if it’s anyone’s job to close it, it’s mine, so I move to do just that. His office has a good view, probably the best on our floor. This side of SVO is turned away from Morel’s downtown core, a series of ugly old buildings, and faces the Hudson River, which looks gorgeous in the summertime, sunlight shimmering over its reflected blue sky. Morel is a small town of about ten thousand—just beyond Peekskill, about an hour from NYC by train. Sometimes it feels like a place at the end of the world and sometimes it feels like it’s not far enough from it. Today, the Hudson River is a moody, frothy black, the raging current accepting the downpour into itself.