Illuminate: A Gilded Wings Novel, Book One Page 20

  Like someone was doing right now.

  I whipped around in my chair and found Lucian in the doorway, in another slim-cut suit, with my folded uniform in one hand, the one I’d last seen balled up on the floor of Aurelia’s closet.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” he said, inviting himself in, leaning against the corner of the desk. So close. I bored into those gray eyes for any clue he might be looking at me differently today—like we’d crossed some threshold and entered a new zone in which it would be perfectly acceptable, for example, to seize another mind-blowing kiss for no reason and with no warning.

  “Hey.” I tried to imagine myself looking as I had the night before. Act like a girl who flirted—successfully—with this guy less than twenty-four hours ago. “I get it.” I nodded toward the uniform, which I suspected he forgot was in his hand. “You’re jealous you don’t have a uniform of your own, am I right? You can have that one. I’ve got more, but I think the cut will be all wrong for you.”

  He smiled. “This,” he said, handing it over, “is for you from Aurelia. She said you left it there.” He set it down on the desk. “But I’m afraid I should have come bearing gifts.” His eyes cast down for a moment, looking shamed. “I think I’ll start by saying that’s not how that was supposed to go at all. Last night.”

  I couldn’t tell whether he regretted his disappearing act or kissing me in the first place. I didn’t say anything, hoping instead for further enlightenment. Which he provided. “My abrupt exit.”

  “Oh, that.” Phew. “No problem, I just figured the Vault had sort of a Bermuda Triangle effect. I knew you’d turn up again, and . . . here you are.” It came out breezily, as I’d hoped. More than anything I felt relieved that his sense of regret was properly assigned.

  “Bermuda Triangle, exactly.” He laughed. “Needless to say, I got a little thrown off by the change in lighting.”

  “Totally understandable.”

  “So if you were a night at the Vault right now, you wouldn’t be wrath?”

  I returned the laugh. “No, definitely not.” And it was true.

  “Good, because I thought we’d give this another try—I feel like I’m always apologizing to you for something.” He said this last part almost to himself; I loved it. “So, tonight.” It was a statement and not a question.

  “Tonight.”

  “I know that one”—he pointed in the direction out the door, toward Aurelia’s office—“has you stuck playing paparazzo again, yes?”

  “Yes.” I let the disappointment creep in just a little.

  “Well, let’s be honest, that scene won’t get going till nearly midnight; there’s plenty of time before that. You’re going to have to have dinner at some point tonight. Right?”

  “Right again.”

  “So, dinner tonight. Pick you up at seven?”

  “Pick me up?”

  “I know where you live.”

  “Seven then.”

  The deal set, he took a few steps toward the doorway and craned his neck. “Yep, here he comes. I sent him to get the supplies.”

  “Supplies?”

  “For your excursion. I had to give him something to do to get him outta the way,” he said.

  “Clever.”

  “I know. See you at seven.”

  With that—and one last playful parting grin to seal our flirty scene—he slipped out. I heard him pass Lance and thank him for something. Within seconds, my fellow intern appeared, his arms stacked with slim red boxes, at least twenty of them. Looped around both arms were small glossy gift bags to match and sheets of tissue paper poking up out of one of them.

  “So, apparently,” he started, setting them down on the desk in front of me, all four of our hands flying up to secure the two teetering towers, “we’re delivering these.”

  “What are—” I pulled one box near me. The lid had an artist’s watercolor rendering of the hotel, a painting we had on the gallery walls. All had gold ribbons tied around them except for one. I lifted that lid and almost a dozen perfectly formed cubes of chocolate, each with that ubiquitous Lexington insignia—in red on dark chocolate—stared back. “Ooooh.”

  “Chocolates.”

  “So we’re like high-class candygrams today.”

  “For some reason it sounds seedy when you put it that way.”

  “Um, what happened here?” I tilted the box, with eleven candies and one conspicuous empty groove toward him.

  “Guilty. That one’s for us though. Dante hooked us up.”

  “Thank you, Dante.” I picked out one of the bite-size morsels and popped it in my mouth. The filling was a chocolate ganache, soft and creamy and just a little bitter as the expensive stuff always is. Lance took another.

  “They’re really good,” he said with his mouth full. “And I’m usually more a salty type but—”

  “Yeah, you’re very salty,” I said.

  “Yep, I get that all the time.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “No, but these are, like, incredible. I don’t know what kind of magic they’re doing in that kitchen.” He took another. “So where are we going with these?”

  16. You’re That Girl

  Lance and I divided the list ten each, but it didn’t much matter. Most of the locations were pretty near each other, so we decided to roam together. It was such a novelty getting to be outside the hotel. Neither of us had left since that dreaded day of the drugstore scene. But this excursion more than made up for lost time: our travels took us all along the Chicago River, where the water was still and nearly frozen and the boats for the architectural tour were left docked and empty for another few months; along the Magnificent Mile, as bundled-up shoppers ducked in and out of posh stores undeterred by the bitter wind that ripped through us; and up into the offices of the John Hancock Center and the Sears Tower.

  The recipients of our deliveries were universally happy to see us. Since we looked, of course, young and unthreatening and so proper in our uniforms, we managed to talk our way into the actual offices we sought, bypassing those impersonal messenger centers where someone sat scowling at a window and took whatever you had brought without even looking at you. Just before we left, Aurelia had instructed us with that stern tone and those pursed, glossy lips not to leave these gifts with anyone other than the person whose name was on the envelope: “I want the effect of you walking in with your uniforms and this gift, taking them out of their day for a moment and serving as a visual reminder of the enchanting evening they just had and the need to have another one like it again soon.” After gaining entry into the offices, we were supposed to communicate all of this to the recipient with no more than a smile and our carefully scripted line: “Good afternoon. Compliments of the Lexington Hotel.”

  “Leave them wanting more,” Aurelia had urged us. This, it seemed, was her general mantra. It was a good one, I had to admit. One it would probably do me well to employ, if I could figure out how.

  So we clomped all over the city. My high heels were digging into my feet so sharply I thought for sure that they had sliced clean through my stockings. I kept looking down at my feet, perpetually shocked that everything was still in one piece. But Aurelia had been right again—infiltrating these offices, with unhappy people hunched over ugly desks, it struck me how spoiled I’d become. I worked in this beautiful palace, a fantasyland, with people who appeared so perfect, so much on top of the world, that their work didn’t even look like work—or reality—at all. I wondered if Lance thought the same thing.

  He and I barely spoke the whole day beginning to end, no running our mouths off meaninglessly to fill the dead air. But we didn’t have to. That was the thing about us. Our silences were never awkward, like they usually are with most people. Maybe each of us was so generally awkward that we canceled each other out. It was oddly comforting.

  Our next stop was the student magazine of the School of the Art Institute, which was located in the museum itself. They had given the gallery a ton of coverage on
line and apparently, according to the website, planned to devote several pages to it in their next issue. It was Lance’s turn to deliver so I tagged along with him to the front desk to get our passes. As we bypassed that crisscrossing central staircase, heading to the elevators that would take us to the office, the memory of our last visit gnawed at me so much that I couldn’t resist.

  “Hey, would you mind—I mean, you’ve probably got this covered okay on your own, right? Would you mind if I caught up with you back at the entrance?”

  “Uh, sure.” He looked confused. The elevator arrived, and after a beat, he stepped in alone.

  “Just wanted to see something real quick.”

  “Sure, see you out front,” he said as the doors closed.

  I couldn’t resist. I went back for another look at La Jeune Martyre.

  The whipping wind assaulted us, knocking the air from our lungs, as Lance and I made our way to the Monroe Street L station for our final delivery. We went through the turnstiles side by side, synchronized, our gloved hands fumbling to zap our fare cards, and took a place on the platform. Why did a city this cold build most of its public transit system elevated outside instead of underground? I had always wondered and would never understand.

  Lance was still hung up on why I had needed to see that painting again.

  “What is it with you and that thing?” he asked, leaning forward, staring into the tunnel as a burst of wind whooshed through, signaling the train nearing. The headlights grew closer and then with a deafening roar it pulled in. I waited until it stopped to begin talking again, since I couldn’t possibly be heard over it. We found seats in the back and the doors closed.

  “Don’t you ever get that way about anything? Just obsessed and you can’t get it out of your head?”

  “Sure. I just give you a hard time to try to mask the fact that I’m obsessed with science and math and architecture and engineering, for god’s sake, all way less cool than art. So, chill.”

  “Point taken. No, but it felt . . . this is going to sound crazy, but,” I had to say it, “kind of . . . familiar.”

  “How do you mean?”

  The train rattled through the tunnels, soaring and shaking. I thought about how much I wanted to say and decided: why not?

  “Well, she had been left in this strange place, beat up . . . And that’s kind of what happened to me, I guess, when I was little.”

  “Wait.” He looked at me now, a flicker of fear. “You’re that girl?”

  I must’ve given him a look that said, What do you mean by that?

  “No.” He shook his head—it had come out wrong. “No, I mean, growing up we always heard that story of the girl who was our age and was found abandoned in the woods. But I never knew it was you.”

  “Yeah, I guess it was kind of a big deal at one point. But now not many people really know. Joan took me in and we sort of made a deal not to say anything about it. When I started school, they kept it quiet, and it eventually all died down.”

  His brown eyes raced side to side, taking me in, as though they were bubbling up with questions and couldn’t sort out which line of interrogation to pursue first.

  “Is that how you got—you know.” He put his hand up to the place above his heart, where my scars were.

  “I don’t know. I had them when they found me, so, I guess.” I pulled the zipper up farther on my coat without thinking, then a quick shudder shook my body. What had I been thinking showing him that last night? Wearing that dress and those jewels and all the makeup and having my hair done just right, I had been a bolder me. I was a different person within the walls of that hotel.

  “Well,” he continued, picking at something on the back of the seat in front of ours. “For the record . . . I think they’re pretty badass.”

  “Thanks.” I blushed. It was the strangest compliment I’d ever received and yet one of the best too. “Yours too.” I gestured with my gloved hand toward his eye.

  He just nodded, a flash of a tiny smile. We were quiet the rest of the ride.

  Our last visit was a bit far-flung, a blogger in an office building over on Grand Avenue near Navy Pier, that strip of amusement park rides and shops and general touristy hubbub jutting out like a spear into Lake Michigan. After we dropped off the final package, our hands free at last and our load lightened, we allowed ourselves to wander a few blocks out of our way.

  Being out of the hotel and suddenly reminded of the world that existed beyond that revolving door and red carpet and insignia-emblazoned awning, I could feel my mind start to clear. I wanted more time away, more time like this, set free in the city when everyone else I knew was trapped in a classroom within the fortress of a suburban school somewhere. Once I stepped back, took my head out of it for a moment and could set aside the parts of my new life that didn’t make sense—or that terrified me at times—I could feel the thrill of this new world rising to my head. I could tell Lance felt this way too, because, despite the length of time we’d been gone and the bitterness of that cold, he certainly hadn’t objected to taking the long route back to the L.

  The rides of Navy Pier grew closer on the horizon now, the Ferris wheel creeping up into the white winter sky.

  “I feel like we’re playing hooky,” I said.

  “I know. Good for us, right?”

  “No kidding.” I still reveled in every slightly rebellious act, since we just weren’t the kind to ever deviate from a rule.

  “Hey, is that still going?” He pointed up to the Ferris wheel in the distance. “Even in this weather?”

  “Sure, three hundred and sixty-three—I think—days a year. I’m pretty sure it’s only closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

  “Huh.” He stared off, thinking, gloved hands plunged deep in his pockets.

  “I haven’t been on that thing in years.” Though I didn’t like roller coasters, I had no objections to the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier because you weren’t just hanging out with your limbs wiggling in the air. It was a more civilized affair—you were tucked away in a nice little, nearly all-enclosed compartment, like old-fashioned train travel, or a carriage that could’ve been pulled by horses. It felt more insulated, safe. A contained pod, inching up into the heavens. And it moved incredibly slowly, which was about my speed.

  “I’ve never been on it,” he said, a little embarrassed.

  “How is that possible? You grew up here, right?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “That’s unacceptable then. C’mon, it’s, like, seven minutes.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  He shrugged, which I took as a yes, and, sure enough, our bodies just kept walking along Grand Avenue, even though they should’ve made a U-turn and gone back. The pier wasn’t quite as bustling in the middle of the winter as it would have been at the height of summer, but it was still surprisingly populated with people who seemed insistent upon pretending it wasn’t below freezing, eating hot dogs and digging their faces into clouds of cotton candy. The Ferris wheel never stopped turning—which always struck me as a nice metaphor for something, maybe life in general? The idea that change or opportunity was always on the horizon because this thing kept going, an endless stream of people stepping on and off. I wondered if this was what others thought about as they waited for a little compartment to pull up. Other people were probably more in the moment, enjoying their day at the park. I was hardly ever fully in any moment, it seemed. My head always sped off in so many directions. I could be exhausting.

  Finally the car that would be ours swooped toward us smoothly, becoming level with our platform. I stepped on first, settling into the wooden bench seat, then Lance, sitting opposite me. The doors swung closed and up we went, inching along, up and up and up, the icy breeze wafting in above the doorway. I watched outside the Plexiglas the ground and people and things shrinking down to dollhouse-size.

  “So, seven minutes?” he asked.

  “Yep, should we synchronize our watches?” I was kid
ding.

  “And it’s what, about a hundred and fifty feet up?”

  “I think that’s right.”

  “So.” His eyes were focused off in the sky somewhere. This was his thinking face, I had come to realize. “Seven minutes for one revolution and a diameter of 150 feet, that would mean we’re traveling at a speed of—”

  “No,” I said firmly. “No math allowed. You’re missing the whole view. Go. Look.” I pointed to the city outside our window. He did as he was told. We both watched quietly as the city passed by, so many of the sights we had visited today. This, all of it, was so much better than school. And there was a lot I liked about school.

  “So how did you grow up here and avoid coming here?”

  “I don’t know. We came here but we went to, like, the Children’s Museum.” He pointed to it below, a sprawling complex adjacent to the pier. “There were always too many of us and the line for this thing would be too long for everyone to wait.”

  “Too many? So you have a big family?”

  “Sort of. I grew up in that orphanage, you know, over on Lake Street?”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, but the woman who ran the place liked me—I guess I just never cried, like even when I was a baby. I was quiet and stuff, you know. So she and her husband adopted me themselves.”

  “Wow. I never knew any of that.”

  “Yeah, I mean, why would you, right?”

  “Did you ever go looking for your parents?” I wondered if he knew more about his than I did about mine.

  “I thought about it but I haven’t tried. I feel like the people who raised me are my real parents, you know? And where would I look anyway? They got me from some fire station, where I guess I’d been left.”