Chapter Eight:
(Please read the author's note I don't write them just for fun. Are we all ready to meet Zelena's soulmate? Ok, let's go)
Nathanial entered the Lake Shore drive rush with a sigh, bracing for the sweat of harried businessmen and the perfume of receptionists. Just average rush hour in the city. As he reached the intersection and his already large crowd joined another at the corner he spotted movement among the group.
A young woman on her cell phone was walking through a narrow opening in the people, holding what appeared to be an agitated and nervous conversation. Looking closer he also noticed she was holding her phone upside down, still high enough that the speaker reached her ear but unmistakably incorrect. This fixating detail retained his attention long enough to see her walk out into the street, right towards oncoming traffic.
In a split second he processed the disinterested faces of the bystanders and realized they would be of no help. He then rushed forward, shoving others aside and, finding no free arms to grab onto, wrapped his arms around the woman's waist, yanking her backward onto the sidewalk.
He hit his back hard and had to suppress a moan of pain. The woman crawled forward a pace or two, picked up her phone, then flipped red curls out of her eyes to lock gazes with him.
He was instantly transfixed. Not by her flaming hair, adorable pink lips, and quaint green earrings, those details would register later. His attention was claimed by her eyes. They were all at once indescribable and immediately describable. They were the color of sunlight when he woke up in the morning, the curtains closed, but a ray of impossible blue light shining through the crack between the window sill and the curtain.
He was also struck by the depth of emotions he could see. There were surface emotions: shock, pain, relief, followed by poorly hidden undertones of indirect hatred, shame, and, was that recognition? The hidden emotions were then blanketed by a desperate fear he only saw for a millisecond until she stood up and offered him her hand, relief being the only surface emotion now visible.
Accepting help from others led them to believe they had power over you. He took her hand and stood, self-consciously straightening his dress shirt. Putting on a weak smile, he looked up to meet her eyes again only to notice she was barely looking at him.
Her hair covered most of her face and she already had her phone up to her ear. Flipping just a couple strands back, she muttered, "Thank you. You saved my life."
The words rung very hollow, as though she knew what to say but didn't have the energy or ability to put the emotion behind it. Unlike him.
"You are most welcome."
Only the most gentlemanly words for a beautiful lady. He was going to continue, perhaps send a small passing remark her way in order to end the conversation but she beat him to the punch, rather rudely turning away and continuing across the street, the crosswalk having become open afterward they fell.
Slight dropping of the eyebrows, parted lips, forward posture. The picture of a slightly offended Samaritan. Nathanial now performed for the crowd around him rather than the single woman but it didn't matter. He'd played his part to perfection, responding the way a normal human was expected to.
The crowd's sympathy rolled over him in familiar waves, inducing great satisfaction. He gave his audience a parting smile then continued down the street, his mysterious partner already out of sight.
The rest of the walk home was uneventful. His lived in a reasonably sized apartment on the tenth floor of a building that appeared a lot more fancy on the outside than it was on the inside. The façade sported twin white columns and a lot of dark gray brickwork which turned even darker when it rained.
Nathanial tipped his hat to the front door, a signal he was tired and would rather not talk to the proprietor. Generally a landlord would have seen that as misbehavior but Nathanial and he had become fast friends. In fact the landlord didn't quite understand how he came to accept the man's idiosyncrasies when he'd really only known Nathanial for a couple months. The man had come with a recommendation from where he'd previously lived but the room had been on a bottom floor and had flooded, leaving Nathanial looking for different accommodations.
The man himself climbed the ten floors worth of stairs with difficulty, feeling the bruising on his back. The pain reminded him of the woman he'd saved. Normally he'd shake off a rude person no matter how he'd been associated with them but for some reason those eyes just kept running through his head. He tried to recall her face and was only able to come up with a picture of certain features. Hair, lips, earrings, and a pink suit. Adding the eyes to his mental image still left much of her face blurry. Nathanial sighed, shaking her from his mind.
He'd saved someone's life. She'd been very pretty. She hadn't responded the way he expected she would. So what? Nathanial prided himself on being extraordinarily skilled at reading people but even his instincts could be wrong. Why did he feel like she'd thrown off all his calculations? And now that he put some effort into it, why was he still even thinking about her?
He opened the door to his room with another sigh. A small mew greeted his entrance. Nathanial crouched down and anticipated the entrance of his Bombay cat, Michi. The animal took its time in entering the room, quiet paws approaching her owner. She stared at him imperiously for a moment then nudged his hand, signaling him to pet her. He obliged but she was easily bored and left after two minutes.
Shaking hair off his clothes, Nathanial washed his hands and set his shoulder bag on a chair. He pulled out leftovers from the dinner he'd made the night before and began to reheat the Fettuccine Alfredo. He put Michi's food out as well and the two ate together. Michi went willingly to her bed and fell asleep, but her human still had work to do before he could sleep.
Nathanial took a quick shower, brushed his teeth, then threw on a pair of long fluffy pajama pants. The blanket on his bed would suffice for his upper body but his legs had an intense sensitivity to cold, even just summer breezes. It was around ten when he finally fell asleep, a book collapsed on his chest.
The next morning dawned bright and early with the soft pop music of his alarm. Nathanial sat up groggily, almost brushing the book onto the floor with the motion. He turned off the alarm and went for a cold morning shower before heading to his closet. He picked out a plain baby blue button down with a black jacket and black slacks. The tie was also black but he knew it'd be off by the end of the day as he didn't care for ties that much. They always felt suffocating.
He took the same route to work he'd taken back the previous day. As he passed the Lake Shore Drive intersection, once again he remembered the woman. Where was she now? The suit made it seem like she was coming home from work so she must be somewhere in the city. Why did he care? He'd have to reevaluate his own thought process later.
His place of work approached all too soon, the building looming fifty stories above. The front entrance sported tall neon white letters spelling out the company name.
Marie Christine Domestic Products.
Nathanial's office was on the fifteenth floor, the middle of the marketing division which encompassed floors ten through twenty. He couldn't see the aquamarine of his windows from here as the architect had for some reason build tortilla colored waves into the building, overlapping and rippling across the front, each stretching no further than three feet out. One such undulation peaked right underneath his office, blocking the view.
Nathanial spotted a coworker walking towards the double doors from the opposite direction and hailed the man.
"Vincent, how good to see you here. How's the baby?"
The man, Vincent, shook daffodil tresses away from his face, revealing the dark bags under his eyes and did not deign to answer. Nathanial chuckled.
"That bad huh?" He patted Vincent on the back and entered in front of him.
As he entered, he gave the front desk an unusually flirty wave, causing the girl there, Margaret, to giggle and return the gesture.
"Hey girl hey!" He simpered, adding a slight swing to his step as he approached her.
He laid his arm on the desk and with a lazy circle of his wrist picked up a pen and signed himself in on the clipboard Margaret had turned automatically towards him.
"What's up Nathanial? I haven't seen you in like forever."
He clasped a hand over his heart in injury. "I come in everyday! I would never mess up my perfect attendance record."
Margaret nodded seriously. Nathanial gave her one last smile and slipped into the elevator that was just closing. He asked the woman standing next to him to hit the button for fifteen and she did so. He thanked her profusely, complaining about how many floors up he worked and how hard it would be to climb the stairs. She was in toy design which convened on floors thirty to forty so she sympathized entirely. They made more small talk until his floor came up and Nathanial stepped off into his world, the marketing division.
A deep breath to steel himself, then two hand claps to get everyone's attention. His team looked up from their scattered gray cubicles. After some discussion and a meeting where he had secured the loyalty of them all, the team had decided to cut the cubicle walls down to three feet and to place them randomly throughout the floor.
All credit was shared and the team members often would get up to help or completely take over the other person's project. Nathanial was not exempt from this and was notorious among the department for having the best relationship with his team.
There were no ceiling lights just desk lamps and floor to ceiling windows. The entire floor belonged to Nathanial and his team who had installed the windows around the entire area. Rarely was there a shadowed corner during the work day. The higher-ups had protested until Nathanial had found the natural light promoted positivity and productivity, a discovery he conveyed persuasively in a report. The windows got the go ahead the next day.
"Alright friends. I have good news. Our previous campaign for the baby toys was a hit!"
He waved a sheaf of papers in the air he'd withdrawn from his shoulder bag. The papers contained several promotion offers and general accolades. Without even asking, he knew his team would decline the promotions because they felt their jobs were a source of fun not pain. Since his installment as their leader, no one had left.
Now the entire building knew of the Viziers and their leader's perfect interpersonal skills. The nickname had come from the statement posted on the wall of every floor, "The Customer is King." After Nathanial's team spearheaded twenty incredibly lucrative campaigns, the head of the marketing department, Mr. Logan, nicknamed them "The Viziers" at an afterparty. Several others repeated it and the name stuck. Someone then attempted to call Nathanial himself Grand Vizier but he expressed his dislike for the name and it never took flight.
This campaign for the baby toys was their thirty fifth in their long line of campaigns. The whole room broke into cheers and claps at their newest success. Nathanial waited until they finished then raised another sheaf of paper, this one significantly larger and barely held together with a red clip.
"Thus, we have a new project!"
Some of the younger members of the team gave so far in to their excitement that they could be seen rubbing their hands together. Nathanial walked up a table set up just a couple meters from the door. This table was the only one in the office without a cubicle around it.
As he always did before a new project, Nathanial opened the file and laid out several packets of paper. He'd gone through the file himself when he got it and had gathered the papers that pertained to different aspects of the advertising process together via color coding. He also put markings on sheets that pertained to multiple different aspects so the team members would know who to pass their information onto or work with.
They all stood now and approached the table, squabbling good-naturedly over the jobs. Once all but one had been taken, Nathanial himself picked up the last packet. This time it appeared he was on internet publicity. Well, this would require a bit more creativity than his previous work.
The team was walking back to their desks when he clapped his hands twice again. They all turned back to him, interested to see what else he needed to tell them.
"Gentlemen and gentlewomen, this project is special. We are opening up into a new branch of production. The bosses want the advertising pre-prepared for after they announce our new branch, however, this announcement is going to be a surprise. Therefore, we can't tell anyone about the new division until the announcement is made. That means no surveys, no talking to people in the street, and no studies. This makes our job a little harder, but I believe we can do it. Just remember your college psychology classes friends! We are appealing to the entire public not a demographic."
The team's faces creased with confusion, but the old hands merely nodded to Nathanial and went back to their desks to read the file. The new members eventually followed their example. About half an hour into the work, one of Nathanial's new members approached his desk.
"Ah Timothy, do you have an idea to help with my theme?"
Timothy fidgeted, "No, actually I wanted to apologize for a typo I made on a poster in the last campaign. It went around everywhere and I couldn't fix it. Sorry."
Nathanial shot the college grad a smile and a wave of his hand.
"Not to worry. Everyone makes mistakes."
Author's Note:
Kyaaaa! I was so, so excited to write this chapter. I just hope you all love Nathanial as much as I do. He is my first official OC and I am very proud of how he turned out. Please R&R. I grow as a writer when other people tell me what I do well and what I need to work on. Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, followed, and favorited thus far, you make my day and are my inspiration. Also, feel free to PM me if you just want to talk about the story but don't really want to leave your comments in a review. Thank you!
-Ragingstillness
P.S. Nathanial's house does not exist and his place of work is a building I do not know the exact name of but took a picture of when I was in Chicago. Maybe I'll know by the next chapter.