I love the New York in high summer. The heat, the humidity, the stench of civilized society, everything. The trees are green, the subways are crowded, and everyone streaks from one air-conditioned zone to another as fast as they can, sometimes stopping to shed heat in a coffee shop or a diner.
In the morning, a few hours before my shift, I like to find a shaded spot near a lot of foot traffic and squat with my sketchpad. I do detail studies of the buildings, and draw in hints of the people I see walking past. I try to catch a sense of the speed and movement of the human river, never quite the same twice.
I have no illusions about making money with my art, but I'm young, and I don't have any ties or responsibilities to anyone else beyond a semi-casual fling I've been having with a barista-slash-performance artist who lives in my building. I just like to draw, and I love people watching.
For the last couple of weeks I've been setting up in various corners of the East Village, which definitely has a different flow than my normal spots in Brooklyn. Most of the people who move through Manhattan during the day don't live there, of course. A month's rent at one of the apartments around here is probably more than my net worth. So most of the people I'm drawing are probably here to work, or tourists. I've spotted some locals, of course, coming and going out of their buildings. Most of them dress down, but money is money, and it's pretty apparent who has it on this street and who doesn't.
I've spent the last few days here doing a detail of a particularly intricate facade. The bottom floor is some sort of office that opens onto the street, no sign. The upper floors are clearly apartments or condos and I've come to recognize a few of the residents as the come and go, moving about on business of their own. The facade itself is weathered grey stone, in contrast to the newer buildings abutting it on either side. Large, regular blocks, clearly shaped and placed by a master mason some time early last century. Weathered geometric patterns are carved across the lower rows, transitioning to varied ledges and crenelations and even a decorative gargoyle or two as you move up the floors.
It's a neat old building, and I've just about finished rendering it. I started putting the people in yesterday, mostly blurs with hints of detail as I watch them pass and look for interesting bits of them to draw. The swirl of a patterned dress here, an immaculate suit collar with a bright lapel pin there, et cetera. As a result, I end up paying pretty close attention to people, and to what they're wearing. Which is why I notice when I see a woman walk out of the ground floor office wearing precisely the same outfit she was wearing yesterday.
Generally not really a big deal, just someone doing the walk of shame after a late night, right? Not so much. The clothes this woman is wearing are easily worth high four figures. The bag alone is probably a couple grand. She's white, maybe early 30's. She moves like she's got money, rather than moving like she's
spent
money. She's not one of the residents of the building, I think I've seen them all by now. So why would she spend the night in a ground floor office? I've seen a few people move in and out of it, including a girl I'm pretty sure is a receptionist of some flavor and a guy in a reasonably expensive suit who is probably the principle of the place. I figured him for a lawyer or an accountant. I saw both of them arrive today, and more, I remember the receptionist unlocking the door, which means the woman in the expensive clothes was in there the whole time, ever since yesterday.
She disappears around the far block corner in the direction of Union Square, and I turn back to the building. I don't know why she bothers me so much, but she does. Oh well.
I begin watching the flow of people again when I spot a pretty young Latina in jeans, a t-shirt and big, chunky bracelets walking by. Her look is interesting, so I begin sketching her into the drawing, focusing on those clanking bracelets. She passes by the front of the building, on her way to wherever, and moves perhaps another twenty feet before she abruptly stops. She turns around, expressionless, walks back to the front of the building and lets herself into the office the other woman had exited a few minutes before.
At this point I'm a little bit too invested to not find out what the story here is. I pack up my supplies and squeeze between the cars parked on the side of the street to make my way across. Approaching the door, it's fairly nondescript frosted glass with a 'No Soliciting' sign, just as it appeared across the street. It opens at a push, and I don't hear any sort of a chime announcing me as a visitor.
I step into a tastefully decorated reception area. Presiding over a large mahogany desk is the receptionist herself, just as I'd assumed. She's reading what looks like a trashy romance novel which she puts down when she sees me. "Can I help you?"
"Hi, ah, yeah." I put on my friendliest smile. "Can you tell me what you guys do here?"
She looks at me for a moment with a bland, if pleasant, expression on her face, and says "Why do you ask?"
That makes me pause for a minute, as I'd expected her to simply tell me and thus solve the mystery. "Oh, um, well, I've been doing some drawing," I pause to pull out the latest draft of the building and show her, "and I kinda pay attention to people and stuff, and I saw some of your... uh, customers, I guess, as they were coming and going. I just got curious because I couldn't figure out what you guys do."
"Please have a seat."
"I don't want to be any trouble, if you can't say, it's cool, I'll leave you alone..." is what I intended to say. Instead, I quietly walk over to a couch running along one wall and sit down.
The receptionist gets up and walks through a door leading further back into the building. After a moment, she returns to her desk and picks up her book without saying anything.
For some reason, neither do I. I feel content simply to stare at the wall opposite as the time passes. A lot of time. There is no clock on the wall, and I can't bring myself to check the time on my phone, but the slant of the sunlight through the windows tells me that hours are passing. I know I should be bothered, or at least just get up and leave, but I can't motivate myself to do either. Thinking in general seems difficult, beyond simple observations about the office.
For instance, not only were there no clocks, there don't seem to be any outlets. The receptionist desk has no computer, nor even a phone. Watching the sunbeams streaming in convinces me there is no dust, either. In a detached sort of way, I realized I am terrified. I manage, with a monumental effort of will, to turn my head so I ccan watch the receptionist, but she just reads her book. Well, looks at her book. She never turns any of the pages. I'm not sure she blinks.
The door through which she'd disappeared earlier opens, and a short black woman emerges. She looks fairly young, wearing a sort of business ensemble with a skirt, and has her hair pulled back into a neat bun. She acknowledges neither myself nor the receptionist, and the receptionist doesn't even look up from the novel. The black woman closes the door, walks across the room, and lets herself out of the entrance back onto the street. After a moment the front door finishes pulling itself closed with a thunk.
Suddenly, I get to my feet. The receptionist continues to ignore me as I make my way over to the door she'd used earlier and let myself through. I enter an enormous office that must consume the rest of the floor. The decor is very masculine, a lot of dark wood and leather, a sideboard with a crystal decanter of amber liquid sitting next to what appeared to be a very nice humidor. There are bulbs here, set in brass sconces on the wall, and a hardwood floor mostly covered by an enormous rug stitched with stylized hunting scenes.
The man I'd taken for a lawyer is sitting in a chair next to a small table, upon which rest two glasses, each holding a finger of dark liquid.
"Have a seat." He waves towards the twin to his chair, on the other side of the table, and I move to join him. Without really intending to, I take one of the drinks. He takes the other, and with a lift of our glasses and a bob of our heads, we each take a sip.
Resting his half-emptied glass back on the table, he asks "Have you mentioned your curiosity about this office to anyone else?"
