Brothers of Paradise Series

“You’ve done this before?”

“Yes. I think it’s this door… no, this one.” He stops at a wooden door. There’s a large, red sign on it. Staff only.

He walks straight up to it and tries the handle. It swings open, revealing a narrow iron staircase. “Bingo.”

“Umm… have you suddenly become illiterate?”

Henry snorts. “No. But sometimes you have to break the rules. Come on.”

Surprised, shocked, and more than a little intrigued, I follow him up the narrow staircase. This is not at all what I expected from him-straitlaced, businesslike, take-no-prisoners Henry Marchand. Although, a small voice says inside me, for men like him there are no consequences to breaking the rules. He’s the same as Elliot Ferris in that way.

I push the thought away. They’re both privileged, but that’s where the comparison ends.

There’s an iron door at the top of the staircase. Henry pauses in front of it. “Please be unlocked,” he murmurs.

And lo and behold… the door swings open when he turns the handle. We’re greeted to a gust of warm, New York air. It’s hot for late May, summer approaching faster by each day.

“Et voila,” he says quietly. We’re on the roof of the museum. Around us, the city’s spires rise in dizzying heights, reaching for the dark, starless sky. Central Park stretches out to the side, a vast expanse of darkness.

“This is gorgeous.”

“Wait till you see this.” I follow Henry across the roof, to the cupola of glass in the middle. Through the glass, we can see the mingling guests below and the exhibitions.

“If you stand right here, and you look through the glass…” He shows me where to place my feet. “Look through this specific pane of glass. Right here.”

As I do, my vision changes. The world below is much closer-I can see the people below with startling clarity. “What is this? A magnifying glass?” I lean back and look at the pane. It looks warped, the glass thicker than the rest.

Henry nods. “It was the architect’s own little joke, inserting a windowpane up here that doubles as binoculars. Made for spying.”

I can’t help but grin. “That’s… wicked.”

“And something that could only be done a century ago. Can you imagine the lawsuit if this was done today?”

“Astronomical.” I look through the glass again. I don’t recognize the people directly beneath it, but that doesn’t matter. These are the kind of oddities that make old buildings come alive. We’re using a function that was designed in secret, by someone very different from us, in a bygone era. The architect is gone but this lives on, brought back to life tonight.

“How did you learn about this?”

Henry rocks back on his heels. “One of my old architecture professors from Yale is a good friend of mine now. When I first started out in New York, in one of those firms-similar to Ferris’s-he took me out for coffee, and then he brought me here.”

“He knew about this.”

“His great-grandfather was the architect.”

“That’s impossible.”

“That architects have children?” Henry’s eyes glitter with amusement. “No, that’s entirely too possible.”

I roll my eyes at him, but inside, I’m awash with awe and envy. My college had been amazing, and I’d been lucky to get the partial ride that I did. But none of my teachers had connections or ancestry like that.

I’m also intrigued. Henry has never spoken about himself, and yet, tonight I’ve learned more things about him than I ever thought I would.

“Why do you think he showed you this?”

Henry leans back against a low plinth. His face turns thoughtful, gaze drifting from me to the skyline. The lights of the city glitter around us like stars. “I think he wanted to remind me of why we do this. Why we design and why we build.”

I wrap my arms around myself, despite not being cold at all. I shouldn’t push him-we’re not friends-but I can’t stop myself. “Did he think you were in any danger of forgetting that?”

Henry doesn’t answer for a long time. He’s still looking out over the city, a million miles away. “You worked for a firm like Ferris Properties. You know how it is.”

I nod, thinking of the constant pressure to profit. To squeeze the most out of every possible project-to occasionally deliver substandard results to clients and builders alike. It was something I’d hated, and most of the other architects with me. A race against the clock and the budget and Elliot Ferris’s ambitions.

“Dollars and cents.”Têxt © NôvelDrama.Org.

He cocks his head. “What really happened at your last job?”

I close my eyes and try to ignore the memories. Working until midnight every night without overtime. Being forced to compete for projects, sometimes with deadlines just a few hours away. The shame of Elliot tearing your project apart in front of the entire staff. He liked doing that. It wasn’t unusual for some of the junior architects to flee in tears after one of his teardowns.

They were usually let go the next day.

I’d survived three teardowns without shedding a tear. You want this, I had repeated in my head as he criticized everything from the floor plans to the material choice. You’re good at this.

And the Century Dome…

The sound of an ambulance on the street below us rushes past, the sirens wailing. “He rules by fear,” I say. “And not the good, inspiring kind. It’s the one that makes everybody unsure if they’ll have a job tomorrow if they make an arbitrary mistake.”

Henry nods, as if he didn’t expect anything else. “He doesn’t seem like a particularly adept boss.”

“No, he’s not.” More memories come rushing in. I know I should stop talking, that Henry doesn’t need to know this. This is my new job and my opportunity at a renewed career. But he’d asked.

And I haven’t spoken to anyone about this beside Jessie.

“He’d won the Century Dome project before I started. It was just about to go into construction, but he wasn’t happy with it. So I redesigned it. I was so happy to be there-to be working with this-that I did it without his knowledge.”

“I can’t imagine that went down well.”

“It didn’t, at first. Except he loved my designs. Overnight, they were incorporated into the dome. It was mediocre before my changes. And when I say changes, they were considerable. It looked completely different before.”

His lip curves slightly, but his eyes are serious. “I have no doubt about that.”

“And I was running point. Promoted. It was a dream job, despite the frequent scoldings, the last-minutes changes, his temper. All Ferris cares about is prestige and money. Being the best, even if it’s a sham.”

Henry nods. “He’s not particularly well-respected amongst architects.”

“In the end I was probably too much of a liability. The Century Dome was unveiled, and I knew too much. I’d been involved but gotten no credit. He couldn’t have me talking, and offense is the best defense,” I say. “I was fired without a letter of recommendation and discredited amongst my co-workers.”

Henry’s jaw is clenched tight, but he doesn’t ask for more details. He just shakes his head. “The man is a disgrace to the profession.”

“Yes.”