Page 72 of Return Billionaire to Sender

“The project cannot and will not be stopped,” I tell her. “People have offered to buy the building and I’ve already said no. Think of something else.”

“Why can’t you stop the project, or at least, redesign it, sparing the building?”

“Why do you care?”

She sits up straight. “That is the program that I created,” she says. “You were mandated to undergo a program designed by an accredited coach—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say. “So if I promise to not knock down the building, you’ll graduate me? You’ll tick off all of the boxes on the form? No more video?”

She stills right here, seems to consider her words carefully. “Yes. If you spare the building, I would consider you to have completed the course successfully.”

“What kind of program outcome is that?”

“My program is for you to have empathy. Saving the building would demonstrate to me that you have empathy for those people in the video, and that would be a…sufficient leveling up of emotional intelligence. I don’t see what’s so stunning about it all. This is the outcome I have set my mind to.”

“But what if I spared the building because I hate the videos?” I say. “What do you want more? The empathy or the building?”

She frowns. “You need to stop asking questions about my methodology. I just told you how you graduate from my program.”

“Why ask for something impossible?”

“Nothing’s impossible,” she says.

“This ask of yours is impossible,” I say. “The 341 building is coming down. I own most of the block that’s bordered by Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Streets and Eighth and Ninth Avenues. I’m planning a massive redevelopment and 341 sits right at the center. If we didn’t knock it down, we’d have to redesign the complex to curl around the building on three sides, creating a chockablock look, and the hotel would have to be entirely redesigned and expanded on the side.”

“So youcoulddesign around it,” Elle says, “but you’d rather not redesign the complex.”

“I could redesign it, yes. I could also get a Hello Kitty facial tattoo as well. Neither thing will be happening. The redesign you’re proposing would be wrong on every level. It would be excruciatingly wrong.”

“It’s their home, Malcolm,” she says.

“Things need to die for new life to appear,” I say. “It’s the circle of life.”

“It’s not my circle of life,” she says hotly.

I lean in. “It’s called progress. It’s why New York City isn’t full of rickety, three-story death traps. When you really think about it, I’m the one with empathy, and you are truly without pity.”

She frowns. “The point is, the project could be completed without the destruction of their homes…”

“I’ll watch the videos before I allow this brilliant project to become visually incoherent.”

She looks crestfallen.

Why does she care? I find myself wondering again: does she know them somehow? Does she have some stake in the building?

But even if she did know the people, it’s a million dollars. Who passes up a million dollars? Even if that had been her own actual home, it still wouldn’t explain passing up a million dollars to stay living in a shitty building like that. She could buy something beautiful with that money. Several beautiful things.

“What do you really want?” I ask.

“For you to spare 341.”

“No—341 is just some random building to you. But for whatever reason you’re fixated on me seeing it enough to what? Love it? And if I love it enough, will I spare it? What does it mean if I spare it? What does it mean to you? Tell me that much.”

“What would be meaningful to me is if you would put yourself into Maisey’s shoes and think how Maisey feels. How about if you do that?”

“You want me to put myself into Maisey’s shoes? Fine. Maisey doesn’t want the building—not really. Maisey doesn’t care about a decrepit pile of bricks. None of those people do—not really. For every one of them, it’s something else. Love. Security. Happiness. Feeling successful. Being enough. For some, it’s about overcoming some sort of fear. It’s the old man’s desire to be free of that horrible memory that gets him in the pit of his stomach. The black-haired dancer—it’s escaping that dread of the future that haunts her while she’s waiting in a line at the bank or whatever. The thing that comes to her before she can push it away. What people want—it’s never truly an object.”

She looks impressed; she shouldn’t be. What people want makes them vulnerable. It’s my stock in trade.

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