by JB Dutton
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The rest of the day flew by, and as I walked out the gates and back into the Manhattan hubbub, my brain was buzzing with new surroundings, new information and new faces. I texted Mom that I was heading straight home. She said she felt like going out for supper, and I smiled at the thought of exploring the local eateries.
The walk back to my new home was a swift twenty minutes, made even swifter by Instagramming my Wisconsin friends. I sent a few LOLs, smileys, OMGs and WTFs back in their direction, then turned the corner onto West 23rd Street. The Warrington building loomed into view. An entire city block, thirty floors high, built almost a century ago and housing, according to my estimate, about 13,500 people. Okay, so I’m a bit of a geek – I blame Mom – but the first time I saw the building (which was the day we moved in, only a week beforehand) I couldn’t help performing the calculation in my head: thirty floors, approximately a hundred and fifty apartments per floor, an average of three people per apartment, for a total of 13,500.
We apparently had one of the smaller units, but it was bigger than either of the two houses I’d ever lived in – a mini-maze with storage closets and garbage chutes around every corner. I’d fallen in love with my room instantly. It had a view of the enormous, leafy inner courtyard, a walk-in closet, and a nook where I imagined myself curling up with a good book and my cell-phone on rainy afternoons like this one.
Mom had visited the apartment when she came for her job interview. It turned out she was a shoe-in. The headhunter eventually admitted that the human resources people at ToT hadn’t even bothered to call any of the other candidates. They were so sure that she would accept the position that they had even rented the apartment in advance. Thinking back, knowing what I know now, perhaps we should have wondered why it was all so easy.
As I crossed the street, a tiny voice in my head said, Look to the right! I must have seen them in my peripheral vision: two women standing under the awning outside one of the Warrington’s many entrances. They were facing each other, holding hands in the exact same way Noon and the man in the black suit were doing when I’d entered the classroom that morning. I squinted in their direction. Like Noon and the man, the women weren’t talking. They weren’t even moving. Just holding hands, staring straight into each other’s eyes. I reached the sidewalk and hesitated. Should I get a closer look? Should I just go home? It was probably some kind of New York body language that I wasn’t used to, like air-kissing or hailing a cab. But deep down inside I knew that there was more to it. Half a minute had gone by and they still hadn’t moved a muscle. So I headed toward them. But I was disappointed when they broke off their handholding only a couple of seconds later.
One of the women entered the building, the other started to walk in my direction. I could hardly stop and turn back now, so I continued, trying not to make it too obvious that I was checking her out. As she approached me, I realized that she was incredibly beautiful. Her short, neat black hair and astonishingly perfect features culminated in two dark eyes that shone like polished jet above her pristine white pants suit. She strode confidently forward, eyes fixed on some imaginary distant horizon like a runway model. I was transfixed. As I drew level with her, she became aware of my presence and, without breaking stride, turned her head slowly to face me. It was the same movement I had seen from Noon and the older man. A shudder rippled right down to my bones and I quickly lowered my eyes to the sidewalk.
I stopped under the awning and realized that I wasn’t even breathing any more. I spun around, half expecting the woman in white to still be looking at me, but she just kept walking. I exhaled and looked at the grand double doors that the other woman had entered. This entrance to the building was located at 222, 9th Avenue and there was a discreet brass plaque attached to one of the carved stone pillars that read: Temple of Truth – Head Office #2222.
I stopped breathing again.
This was the organization also known as the ToT, Mom’s new employers. I had seen their logo on an email she printed out – an unmistakable symbol consisting of the two T’s joined at the top with the small, perfectly circular ‘o’ housed in the space under them like a temple with columns protecting something precious. Or like two arms reaching out...
