The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [40]
13
Spiderland
NEW YORK CITY, 2001. Martin entered his office building with enough time to buy and then drink a double espresso from the coffee shop in the lobby, and then—because the first went down so well—a second, along with a chocolate-chip muffin that unfortunately looked much better than it tasted and—because he was trying to eat less junk—a banana and an apple. While this breakfast vanquished all remnants of his hangover, he considered the hordes of the nine o’clock rush with less enthusiasm as he tried to remember what had prompted him to agree to a conference call at this ridiculous hour, especially on his birthday. After easing himself back into the lobby—and perhaps there was a god—he spied not one but two empty elevators, the closer of which he ran to catch in the hope of avoiding a clump of office workers chattering away not far behind him. He reached it at the same time as a tall, excessively thin woman in a business suit whom Martin recognized from another firm. She pressed the Close Door button so that the doors clunked shut only millimeters beyond the zebra-striped fingernails of a secretary attempting to trigger the sensor. “Oops,” she said to Martin as she extracted her cell phone from her bag and flipped it open. “Wrong button.” He smiled benignly at her but felt queasy as he observed her dark hose, closed-toe leather heels, thin pinstripes, and network-anchor hair; while they rode up in silence, he could not shake the feeling that she might turn on him with some sort of perfectly constructed opening statement that would expose him as woefully unprepared for the day ahead.
He was reminded of his ex-wife, Amanda, whose appeal had been similarly imperious and unreal. Before they met, during Martin’s junior year in high school, Cranbrook had offered Martin everything he—and his parents—could have wanted (except for his actual presence, in Jane’s case): as a sophomore, he had made the dean’s list and the varsity hockey team, and as a junior, he was well positioned to be the starting goalie. Living away from home had also made him more forgiving toward Hank and Jane; as his roommate, Jay Wellings, pointed out, there wasn’t much point in rebellion when your parents lived three hundred miles away. But for all that was good, he could not escape a longing for something more than schoolwork and hockey, or even getting high, listening to cool bands with Jay, or messing around with girls, all of which he had done with varying degrees of success and satisfaction. After considering the problem, he concluded that it might have something to do with having a more “serious” girlfriend; while the thought of becoming a drooling, love-struck dimwit held no appeal, he began to scan the crowd more earnestly, with the hope of finding the perfect girl staring back.
He first noticed Amanda in his second-semester pottery elective, where he was intrigued by her thin shoulders, boyish hips, and long, slender neck, and over the course of a few weeks, he grew more entranced as it became clear that she was a goddess of the ceramic studio, able to transform mountains of clay into spinning beehives and then one perfectly formed cylinder after the next, which in turn were followed by massive pitchers, urns, and vases. While he often allowed his eyes to linger on her, she seemed oblivious; there were no accidental glances or nods hello, just an inscrutable gaze with her sleep-deprived eyes that sent twin shivers of adrenaline through him, one at the thought that she wanted nothing to do with him or anyone else, the other at the prospect of doing something—anything—to ingratiate himself with her.
He turned for advice to Jay, who assessed the situation: “For you and many others in this warped environment, her appeal lies in her aura of decadence,” his roommate said. “You understand that, right? That for someone like you—varsity hockey, dean’s list—she represents the underlying fatigue you feel for your superficial displays of perfection.”
“Who says I’m fatigued?”
“My point exactly,” Jay rejoined. “Nevertheless, your plight