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Every surface reflected every other surface until the whole atrium turned into one enormous mirror complimenting itself. Nothing broke the pattern. Nothing gave the eye a reason to stop moving. Even the restaurant had a discreet gold plaque reading CURATED, which read like the universe personally confirming every suspicion she’d already formed from the website.
The scaffolding rose along the east wall, three stories of it, already assembled for the installation crew and not yet cleared for anyone to stand on. Nobody had given Romily explicit permission to climb it. Nobody had told her not to, either, and she’d learned a long time ago that permission was a door people only noticed you hadn’t knocked on if you asked first.
She was four rungs up before Elena finished a sentence about insurance liability.
“Ms. Devlin, that scaffolding hasn’t been cleared for—”
“I have really good balance.” Which was true, and also not remotely the point Elena was making, and also the fastest way Romily knew to end a conversation she didn’t want to keep having.
“Ms. Devlin, I really must insist—”
“Insist away. I’m listening with my whole body, from up here.”
“That’s not how insisting works.”
“It’s exactly how insisting works when the person you’re insisting at is forty feet in the air and rather busy.”
She climbed higher, notebook tucked against her hip, one hand finding the next brace by feel while her eyes stayed on the ceiling’s light rig, mapping where the sun would move across the atrium floor by four o’clock. This was the part of the job nobody photographed for a portfolio — the unglamorous math of angles and hours, done three stories up with her boots on scaffolding that smelled like fresh paint and somebody else’s overtime.
Three meters up, deep in the math, her boot found the edge of a brace a half-second before her brain caught up to the mistake. She slipped, caught the rail on reflex, and kept writing numbers in her notebook like nothing had happened, because stopping to acknowledge a near-fall cost more time than not falling did, and time was the one thing on this schedule she didn’t have to spare.
Below her, she heard Elena inhale sharply enough to be audible from three stories up.
“I’m fine,” Romily called down, not looking down. “This happens.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It’s also not untrue.” She finished the row of numbers and started down, boots finding the braces from memory now, the climb down always faster than the climb up. “I’ve only fallen twice. Actually fallen. That wasn’t one of them. Also, if I fall, it says something worse about your safety compliance than it does about my balance, so really, we’re both invested in this going well.”
“That is a deeply unhinged way to offer reassurance.”
“It’s the only kind I’ve got, and it’s free.”
“I’ve updated my resignation letter twice this week,” Elena said, to no one, watching Romily’s boots hit marble again. “I keep not sending it. I don’t know what that says about either of us.”
By the time Romily’s notebook was full of numbers Elena hadn’t asked for and measurements the installation plan would need, a woman with a tablet and a well-practiced smile had appeared at Elena’s elbow.
“Jen Solis.” A woman in a neat cardigan, badge clipped precisely at her waistband, extended a hand, brisk and warm in equal measure, the kind of handshake that had clearly been offered a few thousand times before and hadn’t fumbled yet. “Senior operations coordinator. I pulled the access schedule you’ll need for the service corridors, plus a credential keyed to the loading dock hours.” She held out a lanyard, already prepared, already correct, like she’d known what Romily would need before Romily had finished needing it.
“That’s fast.”
“Twelve years in this building. You learn its moods.” Jen’s smile was easy and practiced, the kind you’d forget five minutes after seeing it, which read less like an insult and more like a professional skill she’d sharpened on purpose. “Let me know if you need anything else. Anything at all.”
Elena took the tablet from Jen without needing to look at her, the reflexive ease of two people who’d worked the same building long enough to stop making eye contact about the handoff. “Thank you, Jen.”
“Whatever you need.” Jen was already turning, tablet tucked under one arm, off toward her next task, gone before Romily thought to ask how long she’d been standing there.
Romily glanced at the lanyard in her hand — laminated, precise, her name spelled correctly on the printed credential — and marked Jen down as helpful and didn’t think about her again for the rest of the day.
Across the lobby, a woman old enough to have opinions about everyone in it sat in a wingback chair with a mostly finished scarf in her lap and the settled attention of someone with nowhere else she needed to be. She’d been watching since the scaffolding. Romily had clocked her the way she clocked anyone who watched too long — noted, not flattered.
“That’s the artist.” The woman said it to the man beside her, making no effort to lower her voice. “She climbed the scaffolding. Nobody told her she could.”
The man made a noncommittal noise into his newspaper, long practiced at surviving these monologues without needing to contribute to them.
“He never smiles.” The woman nodded toward the mezzanine without breaking stride in her own monologue. “That one. Up there. I’ve been coming to this lobby for eleven years. That man has never smiled. Not once.”
She patted the man’s knee, satisfied, like she’d been building toward this verdict for weeks and had finally gotten to deliver it out loud.
