“Be right down.”
He emerges from a doorway between shops, across the street from me, on Forty-fifth. His eyes narrow when he sees who’s with me. He glances both ways, then jogs across to me, eyeing Len warily.
“You didn’t say anything about Len being with you,” he points out.
“I didn’t know he was. I was almost run over by a police horse, and Len saved me.”
“Orders from the boss,” Len says.
“Well, she’s safe now.” Logan reaches for me, and I take his hand.
Len just nods. “I’ll be seeing you.” Turns, walks away.
Logan watches as Len vanishes into the crowds. “‘I’ll be seeing you?’” he repeats. “That’s not ominous or anything.”
“Len is an ominous sort of man,” I say.
“No kidding.” Logan’s eyes find me, compassion fills his gaze. “You’re about done in, aren’t you?”
I can only nod. I am holding it together by a string.
Logan leads me across the street, his arm around my waist. I lean into him, inhale his scent. He is chewing cinnamon gum, but I notice the outline of a pack of cigarettes in the right hip pocket of his tight blue jeans. I notice odd details, as he leads me to his office. His shoes, old, worn Adidas sneakers, faded, scuffed, the fabric worn nearly through near the toe of one shoe. Why would a wealthy man like Logan wear such old shoes? I notice a watch on his wrist, a huge black rubber thing that looks like it could take a bullet and not suffer any harm—the only watch I’ve ever seen him wear. His hair, pulled back in a ponytail, low on his nape. With his hair pulled back, his looks change. Sleeker, a little older. I notice wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, from smiling, and from squinting in the sun.
I remember that he spent time fighting in the desert overseas.
I notice graffiti on the wall, on a mailbox. A homeless man huddled in a doorway, watching everything but somehow seeing nothing.
I notice Logan’s T-shirt, black and tight-fitting, with a white skull painted on the front, the jaw depicted as four vertical lines extending down to the hem, the eye holes made into angry slits.
Looking at him, it isn’t readily obvious that Logan is a multimillionaire. Which, I suppose, is the point. He keeps things simple.
He leads me up three flights of narrow stairs and through a door. On the other side is mayhem. It was once a large apartment, but the interior walls have all been removed, leaving the room open. The desks are tall, and none of the employees are sitting, because there are no chairs at any of the desks, so everyone at a desk is doing his or her work standing up. Instead, there are beanbags scattered here and there, thickly padded leather couches filling spaces between desks along the walls. The apartment is a large rectangle with desks lining the walls on the two longest sides. One of the short sides is composed of bathrooms, a break room, a printer/copier/office supplies room, and a conference room, and the opposite end is a giant bank of televisions, each playing something different. One TV shows music videos, with the sound on low, something driving and heavy, the band members flailing long hair and hunched over guitars. Others show sports highlights, news clips, and stock tickers, an old sitcom on mute. There is a white game console on the floor, wires trailing up to one of the TVs, with handheld controllers in the hands of two young men intently focused on their game, which involves shooting some kind of dead creatures.
This is not what I imagined when I thought of Logan’s office.
The office is in chaos. Four people speak loudly into phones, six more are sitting in a circle on some beanbags and a couch, passing documents back and forth and conducting at least three different conversations at once. The young men playing the video game are shouting at each other, cursing and laughing.
A young woman approaches Logan. Short, curvy, wearing a sleeveless V-neck dress, baring skin completely covered in tattoos, so there is virtually no blank space visible anywhere, not even on generously visible cleavage. “Logan, Ahmed is on the phone. He’s got an addition to paragraph two of clause four-A.”
A young man shouts from across the room: “Logan! The intellectual property rider is totally fucked, man. We’d be allowing them almost total control over future projects if we leave it as is.”
Logan addresses the young woman. “Tell Ahmed I’ll take a look and call him back. Get me a printout, and your thoughts on his additions.” He points at the man across the room. “So fucking fix it, Chris! What the fuck am I paying you for?” He then glances at me, and for the first time I see a hint of stress in his eyes. “Sorry, X—I mean Isabel. Things are whacked out right now. This acquisition landed in our laps on Monday morning, and I’m trying to get it ironed out before the weekend.”
“It is the weekend, Logan,” I point out. “It’s after nine on a Friday night.”
“Exactly. But the company we’re acquiring is in California, so it’s only six there.”