Wish I Were Here

Chapter 5

T oday I take the stairs. It’s not only because the elevator is on the fritz again, although it is. Or because I’m wearing brand-new work clothes, although I am. And it’s not because I’m carrying a travel mug and I’ve learned my lesson about coffee stains.

Although I have.

It’s because today is my orientation for my new job, and I am determined to be one hundred percent in control of this day. This means leaving absolutely nothing to chance, or the whims of bus schedules, or irresponsible doormen.

Especially irresponsible doormen.

With any luck, I won’t even have to see him in the lobby. It’s a little before seven in the morning, and Luca doesn’t start work until eight. I plan to be sitting in the human resources department, calmly waiting for my meeting, before he even parks the Lincoln Town Car in front of the DeGreco building for the day. And just in case anything should go awry, I’ve built in a comfortable cushion of over two hours before my orientation starts at nine.

As I descend from the eighth floor to the seventh, I hear someone shuffling up the staircase beneath me. I round the bend and come face-to-face with Sal. He’s holding on to the railing, hand shaking slightly, and slowly pulling himself upward, step by slow and laborious step.

“Sal!” I exclaim. “Are you okay? You look exhausted.” I swear under my breath, damning Luca for not getting the elevator fixed correctly when it broke a few weeks ago. It’s gone out twice since then. This is a building full of older people. What was he thinking letting it go on like this?

“You shouldn’t have to take the stairs. I’m going to give Luca a call right now and demand he get Dante in here to fix the elevator today.” I sigh. “ Again. ” So much for not having to deal with irresponsible doormen this morning. But I’m so angry that I don’t even mind that this is disrupting my carefully scheduled morning. This sort of thing is exactly why I built in a cushion in the first place.

But before I can pull out my phone, Sal waves a dismissive hand. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“Of course I’m worried about you. What floor do you live on?”

“The eighth,” Sal says, pulling himself up another step. “But I enjoy walking. It keeps me young.”

The eighth is my floor, too, a level above the one we’re standing on. I turn around, taking Sal’s arm and helping him up the next step. “At least let me walk with you.”

Sal chuckles. “I’m not going to say no to a pretty girl offering to take me out for a stroll.” He gives me a wink. “And lucky me, I get to hold her hand and everything.”

We inch our way up the flight of steps, and soon, we’re standing in the hallway flanked by a row of apartment doors. “We must be neighbors.” I point to my door. “That one’s me.”

“Yep,” Sal says with a nod, like he already knew that. I guess people talk. Or maybe he’s seen me around, though he didn’t look familiar when I met him a couple weeks ago in Luca’s car.

“Let me just make sure you get into your place okay.”

Sal waves me off again. “No, no. I’m fine. You’ve got an important meeting to get to.”

I blink. “How did you know that?”

Sal hitches his chin in my direction. “Why else would you be all gussied up this early in the morning?”

I glance down at my outfit. I’m wearing a black-and-white-patterned top tucked into a black pencil skirt with the hopes that if anything should drip, spill, or splatter, it won’t show stains. Plus, I have a spare outfit in my bag, just in case. I probably should get going, especially because now I’ll need to stop in the lobby to call Luca and give him a piece of my mind about the elevator. “If you’re sure you’re okay.”

Sal reaches into his pocket and pulls out a butterscotch candy. “For luck,” he says with a wink.

I can’t help but smile. Just like Mrs. Goodwin wishing me luck before my big meeting a few weeks ago, I’m happy to know someone’s rooting for me, even just a little bit. I was so busy going to school and working for the past decade that I never had a lot of time to make friends. When the students in my program were going to parties or meeting for coffee after class, I was headed to my job. And I don’t have any other family except for Dad. We had dinner two days ago, like we do every week, but we were still brainstorming how to find him a new job, and mine never came up. Or, well, to be more accurate, I was brainstorming how to find him a job, and he was busy changing the subject. And anyway, mathematics is not really something that interests him.

My face heats at the memory of his algae-bra joke.

I take Sal’s candy and tuck it into my bag. “Hopefully, I’ll see you around, neighbor.” And I realize it’s not just something you say to be polite. I really do hope I’ll see him around. Just not while we’re climbing the stairs because the elevator is broken.

And with that, I remember I need to have a chat with my doorman.

I head downstairs, pushing open the door to the lobby that’s quiet and dark except for the emergency lights over the stairs and the sun just beginning to slant in through the glass transom. Leaning against the front desk, I pull my phone from my bag and search my contacts for Luca’s number. He gave it to me when I signed my lease in case I needed to get ahold of him in the event of a building emergency. Well, this elevator situation constitutes a building emergency.

I hit the button to call him, pressing the phone to my ear. Luca’s phone rings on the other end, and then strangely, right in tune, the front desk starts buzzing along with it. What? I lean over the upper counter to look at the desk beneath and find a phone with my name sliding across the screen. Did Luca leave his phone here?

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, a colorful arm appears, grabs the phone, and disappears into the depths of the desk like some sort of tattooed boa constrictor catching its prey. I jump when a sleepy male voice mumbles “Hello?” from under the desk, and faintly, at a slight delay, through my phone, too. I hit the red button to hang up the phone and charge around the desk. On the floor is Luca, lounging on a nest of blankets, his head propped on a pillow.

“What are you doing?” I demand.

His eyes widen and he sits up abruptly when he spots me towering over him. “Hey, Catherine.” He runs a hand through his rumpled hair and gives me a smile like we’ve just run into each other at the coffee shop down the street instead of over his nap on the floor. “What’s going on?”

“Did you sleep here?”

“Um.” Luca clambers to his feet, and my gaze sweeps from his wrinkled black doorman’s uniform to his dark hair sticking up in peaks. “I definitely laid here for a while. But this pillow Mrs. Esposito in 6D gave me is pretty lumpy. So I wouldn’t call it the best night of sleep of my life.”

“Do you sleep here… often?”

“Occasionally.” He shrugs and offers no more explanation than that.

“I—” I’m so confused by this that the next thing just pops out of my mouth. “You know that’s against the building’s rules and regulations, don’t you?”

“Eh.” He shrugs. “Might be.”

“Why don’t you go home?” And then something dawns on me, followed by a heavy weight on my chest. “Do you have a home?” Maybe Luca is homeless. We live in Pittsburgh, a very affordable city. What kind of poverty wages must they be paying him if he needs to sleep on the floor of the lobby? I’m definitely going to take this up with the building’s owners. They can increase my rent if that’s what it takes to pay Luca properly.

But then another weight drops on my chest.

Once Dad finds a new job, that is. Otherwise, I might not be able to afford my own rent.

But Luca just grins. “Of course I have a home. I live upstairs.”

“Then why are you…” I hold up a hand and remember the clock is ticking and I need to get to the bus. “You know what? I really don’t want to know.” I square my shoulders. “I’m here to talk to you about the elevator. It’s not right that the building’s older residents have to walk up the stairs because you can’t be bothered to get the elevator fixed.”

Luca’s eye twitches. Is that annoyance flickering across his face? But I must have imagined it because in the next second, he’s pulling his stool up to the desk and plopping down on it. “Is the elevator broken again?” He gazes at the spot over the door that’s supposed to be lit up with numbers, as unconcerned as ever. “Huh. Guess I need to call Dante again.”

“Yes, I guess you do,” I say. “I found an older gentleman climbing the stairs near the seventh floor a few minutes ago. I’m sure it took him ages to get there from the lobby, and he had another floor to go.”

He squints at me. “An older man came through the lobby and took the stairs? Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

Luca’s face goes back to neutral. “I guess I did fall asleep,” he says with a shrug. “I’ll have to tell Mrs. Esposito that her pillow isn’t so bad after all.”

I sigh in exasperation. “Can you just call Dante—whoever that is—to fix the thing once and for all?”

“Sure.”

That one word is so maddening and tells me exactly nothing. When is Luca going to call Dante? And when will the elevator be fixed? Anxiety fills my chest, and I can feel sweat beading up on my forehead.

Luca reaches under the desk and hands me a rag. “You look like you could use this.”

With a slight feeling of déjà vu, I take the rag from his palm. I can’t believe I’ve let Luca hold me up again. Swiping at my forehead with one hand, I stuff my phone in my bag with the other. “I’ve got to go. I don’t want to be late.”

“Another big day at work?” Luca asks, his gaze sweeping down to my feet and back up.

“I have my orientation for new faculty members today.”

“It’s awfully, early, no?” Luca clicks on his phone to check the time and then he looks back up at me. “What time does it start?”

“It starts…” I mumble, knowing he’s going to judge me for this. “It starts at nine o’clock.”

His dark eyebrows shoot up against his bronze forehead. “You know it’s not even seven right now, don’t you?”

“Of course I know.”

“Of course you do. And you probably also know that the university is eight minutes from here.”

“I like to leave early. It gives me plenty of time to get organized.” I don’t mention that it’s his fault I’m so afraid to be late because it almost happened last time. I know he won’t agree with that assessment. Luca probably thinks that if you show up on the same day as the meeting, you’re showing up on time.

“You didn’t think leaving at six would be better?” he asks with a smirk. “Just to see the sunrise?”

I cross my arms over my chest.

He cocks his head and gives me a grin so wide it practically reaches all the way to his ears. “You thought about leaving at six, didn’t you? Come on. Admit it.”

I huff, but don’t answer.

“You did.”

Fine. I did think about it.

“Listen, if you need a ride, I can take you.”

“No. That’s really not necessary.” I narrow my eyes. “Besides, you need to stay here and get the elevator fixed.” Has he forgotten about it already?

“It’s no trouble. It will actually work out because I can swing by Dante’s house on the way back to drag him out of bed.”

“Maybe you should stay here and call Dante instead.” I shake my head, remembering Sal huffing up the stairs. “I can take the bus. My app says it will be here in five minutes.”

Luca shrugs like he doesn’t care one way or the other. “Suit yourself.” And then he reaches down to fluff the pillow that Mrs. Esposito in 6D gave him. Is he going to take another nap?

I remind myself that I have other things to think about and head out the door.

The bus comes right on time, and in fifteen minutes, I’m sitting in the lobby of the university’s human resources building. In order to kill time before my orientation starts, I pull out my laptop and get started on my research paper that I’m collaborating on with Dr. Gupta. Except that Dr. Gupta has yet to really collaborate with me. I emailed him a couple of questions last week, and he directed me to his graduate assistant. So I’m pretty much on my own.

Eventually, a number of other faculty members file into the lobby for the orientation, taking the chairs around me. At precisely eight fifty-five, an attractive middle-aged white woman in a stylish black suit enters the waiting area.

“Hello, all!” she says, her voice projecting around the room. “I’m Helen Hardy, and I’m your human resources representative for today’s orientation. Welcome to the university!” Helen has a blend of competence and enthusiasm mixed with a dash of goody-two-shoes-iness that leaves me no doubt she was her high school class president and college dorm resident advisor before she segued seamlessly into human resources. I like her immediately.

A few of the other new faculty members murmur, “Hello,” but most just nod and sip their coffees as if they’re not up for exclamation points this early in the morning. I guess these are the professors who will be teaching the evening classes.

I sit up straight and give Helen a wave. “Hi, Helen. It’s nice to be here.” I’ve been up since five, after all. I hate to leave her hanging.

She directs her wide smile in my direction and keeps talking. “We want to make sure that we stick to our schedule today”— Yay. I love sticking to a schedule—“so we’ll head into the conference room in a moment. But first, I just want to point out that we have an incredibly diverse group of new faculty members from departments all over the university joining us here today.” Helen glances down at her clipboard. “Medicine, social work, biology, English literature, communications, computer science, nursing, chemistry…” She gasps. “My goodness, so much brainpower in one room.”

I raise a palm to point out that she accidentally missed mathematics. My department. But I remember the schedule, so I drop my hand back into my lap. I can mention it to her at the break.

Helen begins calling out the names on her clipboard. As each person stands, she checks it off on the paper and directs them into the conference room behind her. Slowly, each faculty member filters out of the waiting area until I’m the only person who remains seated in the chairs.

“And… that’s it for today.” Helen peeks at her clipboard and then back at me.

“What about me?” I nod at her clipboard. “You didn’t call my name.”

Her eyebrows knit together, and she stares at the paper now, tapping her pen next to each name. “I believe I got everyone on my list. What’s your name?”

I tell her, and she checks the clipboard one more time, muttering under her breath as she scans the page. After a moment she looks up, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t have you listed as an attendee at the orientation today.”

My mouth drops open. “But… I signed up weeks ago. I—” Holding up a finger on one hand, I fumble in my bag with the other. “I have the email confirmation right here.” I pull out my phone and open my brand-new university email, scrolling past announcements about back-to-school sales at the bookstore and the mathematics faculty luncheon Dr. Gupta is hosting at the University Club later this afternoon. Finally, I find the email confirming that I did , in fact, sign up for orientation today and stating that human resources will begin processing my paperwork shortly. “It’s right here.” I wave the phone at her.

“Hmmmm.” Helen taps her lip with her pen. “It does confirm that you signed up. However, that’s a form email that’s automatically generated when you submit your information in the portal. I wonder if you didn’t make the list for the program today because there was a problem with your paperwork.”

“A problem? With my paperwork?” My heart stutters because my love for sticking to schedules is only eclipsed in intensity by my hatred for problems with paperwork. “What sort of problem?”

Helen waves her hand. “Oh, it could be anything. Maybe you didn’t submit a form that you needed to, for example.”

“I’m certain I submitted everything.” My words are loud, echoing in the empty room. I clear my throat. “I mean”—I lower my voice—“is there a way to check?” I say it, but deep down I know it’s just a formality. As soon as she opens her file, she’ll see it’s all there. My tax forms, copies of my driver’s license and birth certificate, bank information for direct deposit. I’m positive I submitted everything on the day I got the email. Just like I always do.

“Sure. Let’s…” She glances at her watch and then into the orientation room. “Let’s quickly pop into my office.” I feel a surge of empathy for her. It’s five after nine, and the program was supposed to start five minutes ago. This delay is throwing off this poor woman’s entire schedule. It would leave me flustered. But she gives me a reassuring smile, and I appreciate her kindness.

I follow her down the hallway into a small office, where she leans over the desk and taps on a keyboard. “Catherine Lipton,” she mutters, typing something into the field on the top of her screen. “Hmmmm,” she says again, with that same ambiguous murmur from earlier that has my nerves buzzing. I lean forward to get a better look, but she’s moving too quickly, clicking from form to form, and I can’t decipher what I’m seeing.

“It’s all there, right? ID? Social Security number? Tax forms?”

“Well,” Helen says, clicking between forms again. “I can see you did submit the forms on the day you registered for orientation.”

Of course I did. I beam at her, grateful we cleared that up. “Wonderful. Should I take my seat in the orientation room?” If we hurry, maybe we can get this meeting back on track. She seems like the type of capable and efficient person who would have built in extra time for contingencies.

“Actually…”

I stand up straighter. “What’s the problem now?”

“Well, I can see that you submitted the paperwork, but it appears that the system rejected it.”

“ Rejected it? ” Why on earth would the system reject it? I gave them exactly what they asked for.

But then my spine stiffens as I remember standing out on the lawn with Dr. Gupta and Dad a couple of weeks ago. I’ve gone over and over that day in my head ever since, and I’ve managed to convince myself that Dr. Gupta didn’t find the interaction as strange as I suspected he did. Maybe he barely even registered it at all. Dr. Gupta meets hundreds of new people every fall: all the new students coming in, visiting professors, support staff. My dad is wacky, but this is a university. There are a lot of unusual characters. In the last few days, I’d managed to put the entire interaction out of my head and focus on all the work I have to do.

But now, as I stand here in this office, paperwork rejected, I can’t help but wonder if maybe Dr. Gupta really was more put off by Dad than I imagined. What if he was the one who rejected my paperwork because my family is too strange? What if he thinks I won’t be a proper representative of the mathematics department? He did send me to his graduate assistant instead of answering my questions himself.

My heart taps like Helen’s fingers on the keyboard.

What if he’s decided that he no longer wants me as a member of the mathematics faculty?

Can he do that? Can he simply reject me based on a five-minute conversation with my father on the lawn? My stomach churns. Dad might be wacky, but he was perfectly nice to Dr. Gupta, and I don’t deserve this. By now I’m shaking, clutching the desk chair so hard my fingers have gone white. “Does it say the reason for the rejection?”

Oblivious to my distress, Helen clicks around with her mouse, muttering that same “Hmmmm.”

The sound is a fire alarm to me now. All it means is that something has gone terribly wrong.

“Will you excuse me a moment?” Helen hurries out into the hall, and I hear her whispering to another person. The person whispers back. I strain to hear what she’s saying, but I can’t decipher it. A moment later, she’s back.

“Ms. Lipton—”

“Doctor.” I correct her automatically.

She blinks. “Yes. Of course. Dr. Lipton,” she agrees, but the warmth in her voice is gone, replaced by a deep skepticism. “You did submit your paperwork correctly and on time. However, when we tried to connect it with your government records for tax purposes and to run our standard background checks, it seems there’s no evidence of you in the system.”

I press my hands to my temples. “Of course there’s no evidence of me in the university’s system.” I say it slowly, as if that might help her to understand. “I’ve never worked here before.” Maybe she’s not as competent as I initially thought. After all, isn’t it her job to put me in the system?

“No.” Helen shakes her head. “Not the university’s system. There’s no record of you in the government’s system.” Her eyes slide to mine, cold and detached. “There’s no record that you exist at all.”