Burning Midnight

by Will McIntosh

  “Why don’t you call her?”

  “Because I like her. When I like a girl I get nervous calling. My voice shakes and my mind goes blank. I sound like a moron.” The Copper hit the floor again.

  From the other room, Sully’s mom called, “Whatever you’re doing in there, stop it. You promised you were going to do homework. You’re not going anywhere until you finish yours, David.”

  “Sorry, Mom. I will.” Sully swept his phone off the night table. “Fine, I’ll call her. But if I do, she’s going to think I’m the one who likes her.”

  Dom hesitated, studied Sully. “You don’t like her, do you?”

  “We’ve gone over this already.” Sully did think Mandy was interesting, but he couldn’t say he felt that spark. Since he and Laurie had broken up, Sully hadn’t met anyone who lit that spark in him.

  Hunter’s face appeared in his mind. Maybe that wasn’t completely accurate. How could he not be drawn to a girl who climbed into abandoned mine shafts? She was Catwoman. His feelings were complicated, though. He liked her, but he doubted he would like going out with her, assuming she even liked him. He believed what she said: she was all business. It wasn’t that she was out of Sully’s league, she was playing a whole different game.

  Still, he had to admit he couldn’t wait to see her on Christmas Eve. He’d always found Christmas carols cloying, but this year they filled him with warmth. The days left between Sully and Christmas felt like impositions, like annoying relatives parked on the couch yammering when it was clearly time for them to go.

  “Great. Give her a call,” Dom said.

  For a second Sully thought Dom meant Hunter, then he remembered they were talking about Mandy. He hit Mandy’s number and put the phone to his ear. She answered on the first ring.

  “It’s Sully. From the brawl.”

  Mandy sounded sniffly as she laughed. “I remember you. The knee-kicker.”

  “Hey, anything goes in a street fight. He was a big guy. You okay?” It was pretty obvious she’d been crying.

  “I always cry before Christmas. Kind of a tradition with me.”

  Dom was watching him, eyebrows raised.

  “You interested in being cheered up? Dom and I are going Christmas shopping. We’re taking the train into Manhattan.”

  “No,” she said immediately. “I appreciate you thinking of me, but I’m not going to be good company tonight.”

  “Come out with us. You’ll feel better.”

  “Some other time I’d love to.”

  Sully looked at Dom, shook his head. “You sure? We’re not particularly skilled fighters, but we’re good at cheering people up.”

  Dom surged forward, hand out. “Let me talk to her.”

  “Dom wants to talk to you.” He handed Dom the phone.

  “Mandy. What’s going on? You having a bad day?” Dom stuck a finger in his ear, turned toward the window. “Come out with us.” Pause. “Well, look at it from our side. We can’t leave you alone and miserable four days before Christmas. What kind of people would we be if we did?” Dom waved his free hand. “So bring us down. We don’t care.” Another pause. Dom pumped his fist. “Half an hour. Where do you live?”

  Dom jotted down her address, said goodbye, handed the phone to Sully. “Piece of cake.”

  “I thought you got too nervous to talk.”

  Dom shrugged. “I didn’t have time to get nervous.”

  —

  “She broke up with her boyfriend. That’s got to be it,” Dom said as they climbed down the steps to the ground floor of Sully’s building. A bitter wind hit Sully as he pushed open the door. It was below freezing, and would get even colder as the sun set.

  “It could be a lot of things,” Sully said.

  “Like what?”

  “Maybe her mother’s sick. Or her cat died.”

  They crossed the parking lot to Dom’s car, their heads down.

  “If it was something like that, she would have told us right up front. ‘I don’t feel like going out. My cat died.’ ” Dom raised a gloved finger. “But if you’re talking to people you don’t know well, you wouldn’t say, ‘I don’t feel like going out, because my boyfriend dumped me.’ It’s too personal.”

  He had a point. “We just got our fall grades,” Sully said. “Maybe she flunked something.”

  Dom burst out laughing. “She’s a brain. She probably got straight As.”

  As they pulled out, Sully said, “You’re probably right, then. She just broke up with her genius boyfriend.” Dom had pulled a C-plus, two Cs, and a D. To his surprise, Sully had managed all Bs except for a C in algebra. Pretty solid. No one on either side of his family had gone to college; he came from a line of mechanics, secretaries, and factory workers. Further back, to his great-grandparents’ generation, it was farmers and coal miners.

  Mandy lived in Scarsdale, six or seven miles away, but a thousand miles removed from Yonkers. Houses there were mansions, with lawns like golf courses.

  “There she is,” Dom said.

  Mandy was waiting at the end of her driveway wearing a big blue parka with fake fur lining the hood, and heeled boots that made her look freakishly tall. She seemed all legs. Her nostrils were red around the rims, her eyes bloodshot.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, responding to their questioning looks as she climbed into the front passenger seat. “Let’s just have a good time.”

  As Dom headed for the Metro-North train station, Mandy looked back at Sully. “Who are you guys shopping for?”

  “I need to get something for a friend,” Sully said. “My sphere-hunting partner.”

  “Who Sully happens to be madly in love with,” Dom said. It was so obviously intended to signal that Sully was not available that Sully almost laughed.

  “Oh, really?” Mandy said. “Maybe I can help you pick something out.”

  “That’d be great. Although I don’t think she’s a jewelry or clothes person. Not your typical girlie girl.”

  Mandy tilted her head, gave him a look. “And I am?”

  “True.” Mandy was wearing a little mascara, but no other makeup. Her parka was something Sully could see Hunter wearing. “Yeah, you might be the perfect consultant for Hunter.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, given that you’re madly in love with her.”

  Sully started to say he wasn’t in love with her, but decided it wasn’t worth it. He was in something with her.

  On the train, Dom peppered Mandy with questions about where she hung out (at home, mostly), what music she liked (obscure indie stuff Sully had never heard of; she was hard-core organic—refused to listen to any singer who’d burned Slate Grays, which ruled out pretty much all Top 40 music). Sully was happy to let Dom carry the conversation as snow flurries melted against the train’s windows. He passed the time thinking about Christmas, imagining conversations he might have with Hunter while they relaxed on the couch.

  “What’s your last name?” Mandy asked Dom. “You sound like you’re Italian.”

  The question pulled Sully out of his reverie.

  “Cucuzza.” Dom said it with a well-practiced lightness. Sully knew that inside, he was dying.

  “Any relation to, you know?” Mandy asked.

  To the infamous Tony Cucuzza, she meant. Destroyer of 276 priceless works of art at the Met.

  “Nope,” Dom said, his tone still light.

  “So your family is Italian?” Mandy asked.

  “Yup. Third-generation American. My great-grandparents made the boat ride.”

  “I’m first generation. My parents were both kids when my grandparents brought them here from Korea.”

  Sully tuned out. He’d been trying to think of a gift for Hunter since he’d invited her for Christmas. He wanted something that couldn’t be construed as romantic, yet wasn’t impersonal. Something between a gift certificate and earrings.

  —

  There was a little extra bounce in Dom’s step, his arms held farther from his
body than required even by his impressive muscles, as they climbed the steps leading from the subway to Fifth Avenue. When he was around women, Dom seemed to turn up his tough-guy persona a few notches.

  “Tell me what she was wearing the last time you saw her,” Mandy said as they breezed into Lord and Taylor, passing women in white lab coats manning fragrance counters. The air was filled with a light, flowery scent that made Sully long for springtime.

  “Jeans, combat boots, a gray sweatshirt, black gloves with the fingers cut off.”

  Mandy pointed at him. “Gloves. Perfect. Intimate, but not too intimate.” She raised her head and, gazing into the far reaches of the store, picked up her pace, so Sully and Dom had to push to keep up with her long strides.

  She led them to a stretch of counters offering an elaborate array of gloves, crossed her arms, considering. “What kind of gloves does she have?”

  Sully tried to picture them. “Just typical fabric gloves. You can see loose threads where she cut the fingers off.”

  “Good, then she doesn’t have leather. If you give her leather gloves, you’re giving her something you know she’ll use, only nicer than what she already has.”

  “Anything would be nicer than the ones she has. They’ve pretty much had it.”

  “Perfect.” Mandy chose a pair of fingerless black leather gloves, pulled one on, held out her hand.

  “Nice,” Dom said.

  “Yeah,” Sully agreed. They were formfitting, simple, the leather thin and supple, the fingers ending just below Mandy’s first knuckle.

  “This is what I’d choose, if I was getting them for myself. If her taste leans toward androgynous, I don’t think you can go wrong with these.”

  They were also forty bucks. If not for the Hot Pink sitting in a safe-deposit box at the Hudson Valley Bank, they’d be out of the question. Sully took the gloves to the register, trying to suppress the idiot grin that kept forming. He couldn’t wait for Hunter to see them; they were exactly right.

  They made a bathroom stop after that. As Dom and Sully approached the urinals, leaving one between them, Dom said, “I’m gonna ask her out. You think I should?”

  Sully smiled. As if this was a surprising revelation. “Never hurts to ask.”

  “I feel so comfortable around her.”

  “She’s terrific.”

  “Okay.” Dom took a big, huffing breath. “If I give you a look, back off so I have some room to work.”

  “You got it.”

  Mandy wanted to get a gift certificate to the Apple Store for her sister, so they left Lord and Taylor and headed out into the cold.

  Across Fifth Avenue from the Apple Store, the black marble monolith that was the flagship Holliday’s store loomed. Thick at the bottom and tapering to a slender pinnacle ten stories up, it was bathed in white spotlights. It stood out from the buildings around it like a Persian palace among hot dog stands.

  “God, I hate that slimebag,” Mandy said, looking up at the store.

  Dom nudged Sully. “Let’s go see what a Hot Pink is selling for.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why Hot Pink?” Mandy asked.

  “Sully and Hunter found one in the wild last week,” Dom said.

  Mandy spun to face Sully. “Really?”

  Sully nodded, unable to suppress the same huge, dumb grin he’d had while buying Hunter’s gloves.

  “That’s a serious stone.” Mandy shook her long, straight hair out of her face. “You want to check out the price?”

  He was curious. Holliday’s did not publish prices for the higher-end spheres online; they were way too exclusive and sophisticated for that. But even stepping inside would feel like he was acknowledging the store’s right to exist.

  “Come on,” Dom said. “Let’s go in.”

  Sully eyed the store. The prices changed almost daily, mostly pushing ever higher. It would be useful to know what the biggest player in the business thought a Hot Pink was worth these days. Plus, Dom and Mandy both looked like they wanted to go in. He didn’t want to rain on their fun.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  They hurried across the snow-covered street and headed into Holliday’s.

  The ground floor was packed with holiday shoppers, which wasn’t surprising, since the common spheres—the rarity level ones—were displayed there.

  Most of the space inside Holliday’s was utterly wasted. The center was hollowed out, so each floor from two and up was nothing but a catwalk with elegant railings, the spheres displayed in cases set into the walls. Sully craned his neck to peer up at the tenth floor. No one was up there except a solitary salesperson in Holliday’s signature metallic silver garb, standing motionless, legs apart, arms folded behind her back.

  They headed for the elevator.

  “Floor, please?” a tall, thin man with a crew cut asked as they stepped in.

  “Five,” Sully said.

  “I’m sorry,” the elevator operator said. He remained facing the column of buttons, their glow reflecting off his glasses. “There’s a minimum credit score required for admittance to the upper floors during the holiday season. I’d be happy to take you to floors two through four, or you could sign up for a tour of the upper floors, although there’s a three-month wait right now.”

  Sully exchanged looks with Dom and Mandy. This place got more obnoxious every time Sully visited, although admittedly that wasn’t often.

  “How could you possibly know our credit scores?” Mandy asked.

  “People’s basic financial profiles are publicly available information.”

  Sully couldn’t help laughing. “Yes, but you don’t know who we are.”

  The elevator door slid closed, but the elevator didn’t move. Still facing the buttons, the operator turned just his head to look at Sully. “Actually, Mr. Sullivan, we do. All of our stores are equipped with facial recognition software that identifies you as you enter.” He smiled tightly. “If we couldn’t tell our rarity eight customers from those who can’t afford a two, we’d waste a great deal of time, wouldn’t we?” The operator tilted his head, touched his earlobe. Sully spotted a tiny transceiver wedged in his ear.

  He turned to face Sully and his friends for the first time. “I apologize. You’ve been issued a waiver.” He pressed the button for the fifth floor.

  “Who issued the waiver?” Sully asked.

  “Mr. Holliday.” Although his expression hadn’t changed, the operator’s face was flushed. His Adam’s apple bobbed as the door slid open. “Mr. Sullivan. Mr. Cucuzza. Ms. Toko. Enjoy your shopping.”

  Sully stepped out of the elevator, regretting setting foot in the building. He didn’t like that Alex Holliday knew Sully was visiting one of his stores. And why, exactly, would Holliday issue them, of all people, a waiver? Probably for the same reason he’d sent Sully the VIP invitation to the Yonkers store opening—to gloat.

  A saleswoman was waiting, arms behind her back. “Welcome to the fifth floor. My name is Anna, and I’ll be assisting you. What can I show you today?”

  “We’d like to see something in a Hot Pink,” Mandy said.

  Anna bowed her head, smiling ever so slightly to acknowledge Mandy’s joke. “Right this way, Ms. Toko, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Cucuzza.”

  It was nothing new that salespeople dealing with high-priced items treated customers with more deference than those who shopped at Walmart, but it was bizarre to see that difference so obvious inside one store. The salespeople on the ground floor were polite, but there was no bowing, no Right this way, Mr. Sullivan.

  As they walked Anna manipulated a handheld device that looked like a slim TV remote. The glass separating them from the Hot Pink on display slid out of sight as they approached. Using both hands, the saleswoman lifted the sphere from a pedestal shaped like a silver goblet and offered it to Mandy.

  “Current population estimates for Hot Pink are one per one hundred eighty-five thousand people, actually making it closer to a rarity five point five.”

 
“How much is it?” Dom asked. Sully was grateful his friend had blurted out the crass question up there in the rarefied air of the fifth floor, so Sully didn’t have to.

  “At the moment it’s…” Manipulating her remote, Anna looked up, as if the answer was on the floor above. Sully realized she was consulting some sort of virtual display in her glasses. “…sixteen thousand, six hundred.”

  Sully nodded.

  Dom looked at him. “Nice.”

  Ignoring the comment, Anna accepted the Hot Pink from Mandy, restored it to its pedestal. “What else may I show you today?”

  “That’s the only one we wanted to see. Thank you for your time, Anna.” Sully wanted to get out of there. That Alex Holliday knew he was there gave him the creeps.

  “My pleasure, Mr. Sullivan.” She winked at him, spun, and led them to the elevator.

  The elevator doors slid open as they approached. The operator gave them a broad smile.

  As the door slid closed behind them, the operator pressed the button for the tenth floor. Sully exchanged a confused glance with Dom and Mandy. Dom shrugged. Evidently they were picking up other customers before heading back to the ground floor.

  The door slid open. “Right this way,” the operator said, gesturing toward a waiting saleswoman.

  “What?” Sully said. “No, we’re done.”

  “Mr. Holliday instructed us to give you a private viewing of the Midnight Blue.” The elevator operator gave them an intent look, raised one eyebrow. “You’d be stunned at some of the people who’ve asked to come up here and been turned down.” He gestured again. “Please.”

  Sully stepped off the elevator. The waiting saleswoman (although that title wasn’t quite right, because the Midnight Blue was not for sale) extended her hand. In a delightful French accent, she said, “Cosette Amiot. How do you do, Mr. Sullivan?” Evidently the employees on the tenth floor got to keep their last names.

  As they followed Cosette along the catwalk, which looked to be made of marble bordered with gold, Sully wondered what this was about. Maybe it was Alex Holliday’s way of saying, I see you. I know you’re here. He guessed they wouldn’t be up here if not for Dom’s outburst at Holliday’s talk. That had gotten Holliday’s attention, because it embarrassed him.