Page 122 of Return Billionaire to Sender

I can’t tell her mood from her stride—I don’t know why I thought I would.

She stops to talk to a shopkeeper, talking and smiling and backing up, trying to keep the conversation short while trying to be so polite. Comfortable in a uniform.

I think about the butterfly tie. I never did get to pull it loose. Probably for the best.

I thought that we had time. I imagined that once she wasn’t my coach anymore, we could officially date. I imagined finding a place to set down my chopper near her home in Jersey—that’s how we’d have shortened the distance at first, until I prevailed upon her to move into the city. But what do you know? She’s already living here—at 341 West 45th.

Is this kind of post-mortem helpful to me? No.

Yet somehow I keep on.

A thorough post mortem is the excuse that I give myself when I order my accountant to send me a fully detailed itemization of her per diem. What was she spending her money on? The accountant I talk to tells me he’ll get the message to the per diem accountant. Apparently my corporation employs one accountant who deals exclusively with per diems.

There’s no real reason for it but my car naturally goes past her place when I’m en route to certain destinations—my driver has a whole rubric of shortcuts that sometimes involve 45th Street. I make a point to neither stop nor encourage his driving past her place.

But when he does drive past her place, it’s only natural that I look at it. Though I have to admit that I find it a bit maddening that I don’t know specifically which window is hers. I’m already looking at her building, why prevent myself from knowing this last detail?

So I have somebody on my real estate team bird-dog that information—apartment number and window location.

It turns out that knowing which set of windows belongs to her and her roommate, Francine, is not in any way helpful. In fact it only leads to more questions. When the windows are dark, I wonder if they’ve moved out, or are they just out for the night? And if so, what are they getting up to?

When the windows are lit up, I wonder if it’s her alone up there, and what exactly is she doing? Is she with some guy? Showing him hedgehog things?

Now and then I see people out front with boxes. I suppose it’s only natural; last week they thought they had ninety days to vacate the premises; now they have less than a month. No doubt my acceleration of the timetable has them scrambling, putting down deposits on whatever shitty flophouses they can find.

I try not to think too hard about that. Or to wonder where John and Maisey might end up.

Elle—or rather, Noelle—begged me not to punish the rest of the people in her building, and it’s exactly what I did.

In my initial rage I assumed they were all in on making this stupid film for me, and I hated the idea of it, but upon rewatching the few videos that I’d had to download on my machine, it’s clear that these people aren’t acting, that they’re regular people in a documentary most likely created to commemorate their stupid little building.

Were they angry with Noelle when they learned that she had that contract for saving their homes in her hands? That they would’ve been home free but for her fit of conscience?

One evening, sitting alone in my penthouse in front of the spread my chef has left me with, I start entertaining the idea of restoring their ninety days. Moving up the demolition date was a rash, overly emotional decision; the project doesn’t need to kick off that quickly.

I decide I’ll do just that in the morning, first thing when I get to the office. It feels like the right decision, and I eat with a kind of gusto I haven’t felt for a long time. It’s not just for John and Maisey—there are those first-floor twin boys who love their school. Mia, the cat suit one. Antonio.

I wake up some hours later and think about sparing the entire building. Just keep it as a rental property, if nothing else. The idea gets my heart pounding dangerously hard. I’m imagining the relief and happiness that they would all feel. The relief and happiness that Noelle would feel.

My delusions of saviordom fizzle out the next day in my office when I open up my inbox to find an email from my accounting team, getting back to me on Noelle’s per diem itemization. It turns out that she was using the $150 daily stipend to buy Amazon gift cards and sending them to a man named Allen Junior who lives in New Jersey.

My blood boils at this news. I can barely see straight, barely think straight. She was taking the money that my firm was providing her for her daily living expenses and sending it to some guy?

I grit my teeth. Is this her boyfriend, then? From his picture he’s quite the looker. Was he in on the whole thing? Questions spin wildly through my mind. I can’t do my work with all of these angry questions, so I get my private investigator on the phone and set him on Allen Junior, because I just need to know.

31

Noelle

I repeatmy story up and down the hall. My friends are supportive of my decision to tell him the truth, even though…ouch! And also there’s the stunning revelation of my fling with the big bad Malcolm Blackberg. How could I be with somebody like that? People are angry at Malcolm, and though they don’t say it, a few of the people I don’t know as well are frustrated with me.

Maisey, the person who might just have the most to lose, turns out to be the most understanding.

I’m telling her about what happened, explaining in my usual way which amounts to me saying that I couldn’t do that to him. I’m practically begging her to forgive me, when she stops me cold. “A building is just a collection of bricks,” she says. “It would’ve been wrong to keep the building through deceit. You have to look at yourself in the mirror. We all have to look ourselves in the mirror each day.”

“It’s not really even like him to kick us all out,” I say. “I saw his beautiful heart. And then I whack-a-moled it right back into its hiding place.”

“You still believe in him,” she observes.

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