Page 1 of Below the Shadow of the City

CHAPTER 1

FRIDAY, LATE AUGUST

T here’s a massive snag in my tights. I only notice this once I’m walking out of my bedroom and catch a glimpse of the back of my leg in my mirror. I’m already on the verge of being late. It’s 8:10, I need to be standing on a train by 8:20 if I have any chance of arriving on time. I’m tempting fate today, and what little professionalism I have left is unfortunately sacrificed as I rush out the door.

It’s raining. Again. This summer has been plagued with so much cloying humidity and heavy skies that I practically expect the showers at this point. Everyone idealizes visions of crystal blue skies and picnics in Central Park, but those days are truly a rarity. Either we’re left to deal with suffocating mugginess, or sticky, disgusting rain. Today, the clouds offer one of those mists that makes everything feel perpetually damp, a horrible purgatory between the worst weather the season has to offer. I hold far more respect for true rainstorms. At least they can commit to being something.

Cheerfully chatting tourists snake around the corner of a local bakery to get a cronut or some similarly viral snack despite the weather. My stomach growls as I rush past the line on the sidewalk and dodge flailing arms taking selfies. I’ll rustle up something in the break room later, it’ll fill the void just as well as any Instagrammable snack could.

Layers of black clothes I’ve held onto since my early twenties and a thrifted leather bag are barely enough to make me passable as corporate. I blend in seamlessly with the stiff suit jackets crossing the street in synchronization. Walking down into the subway station I surrender myself to the weather and attempt to hastily put my hair up. It’s day two or three of it being unwashed, I’ve lost track. Probably best for all involved that I’ve wrangled it into a claw clip the best I can.

Other damp commuters are pressed up against each other in the muggy greenhouse of the L train. My glasses fog up. I attempt to wipe them off while dodging shoulders and stabilizing myself as the train begins moving. 8:19. Just under the wire. I smile smugly to myself as I put in my headphones. I’m greasy, sloppy, sweaty, and now a little wet, but at least I’m not late.

My day has hardly started and it feels like a complete mess already. A more optimistic person would say it can only go up from here but optimism has avoided me for the last seven months.

My mornings move in rhythms. Each garbled announcement and dinging door is a countdown to my stop. When it arrives, I slide off the train then follow the flow of everyone else who superficially appears to have their life together up the stairs into fresh air. Once I emerge from underground, I follow the same steps I do each day. Three blocks to my office, up eight floors, thirty three steps to the front desk, say hi to Marta the front desk administrator, sixty two steps to the coffee maker, make Ralph’s coffee, twenty steps to his desk, drop it off, fifteen steps to my desk. It’s a waltz, there’s timing and pacing that I must follow.

My damp bag hangs on the hook in my cubicle and I quickly attempt a redo of my hair to get it looking more presentable. Only Marta has seen me thus far today, and she’d never tell me I look like hell. The blurry compact mirror I fish out of my bag tells me that instead. I scowl a bit at my reflection, wondering if everyone’s late twenties look this rough.

My monitor tells me it’s 8:58. Ralph will walk past in three, two…

“Good morning, Sigrid!” He flashes his very expensive Ken-doll smile. $25,000 veneers, $2,000 suit jacket, $500 selvedge denim jeans, $350 shoes. Probably some filler now and then judging by the fullness of his plasticine cheeks and from how abnormally young he looks for someone in his late 40’s. His casual Friday outfit is more than one of my paychecks.

“Happy Friday, Ralph,” I match his cheery tone but dial down the aggressive enthusiasm. With my choice of collared dress and ever present resting bitch face, I’m a fully grown Wednesday Addams. He and I face off in direct contrast with one another, until he breaks the tension with another Hollywood-esque smile and a flick of blonde hair.

I hand him the printed paper with his neatly organized agenda for the day. During my first week of employment it was drilled into me that he prefers to do things “old school.” Which for me, means a lot of printing out of agendas. He insists that being a man who respects analog forms of communication doesn’t make him any less of a “progressive visionary.” He’s a bizarre caricature of what one would imagine a tech start-up CTO would be. Some days I search for cameras to see if I’ve stumbled onto the set of NBC’s newest workplace sitcom.

“Sigrid, you’re a real champ, see you at ten for the all-hands,” he exclaims without an ounce of irony or condescension. He stays perfectly on script, then heads into his glass cube of an office.

Hours tick by and I feel the snag in my tights building into something more noticeable. Lunch is near, I can run to Duane Reade and find a replacement pair. I cross my legs when anyone comes by to talk to me, stretching the already straining threads across my calf.

There’s a metaphor somewhere in here, I’m convinced.

Margo, best friend, Creative Director of Holonatech, and the reason I have this job, slides up to my desk right before I can make a break for it. She saunters up with the energy of someone’s wine drunk aunt at Christmas. With her pussy-bow blouse and pastel skirt and tights, her outfit contradicts her straight black hair and the tattoos that cover nearly every free inch of skin between her collarbones and ankles.

“So, how pumped are you for tomorrow night?” She asks with a wink.

“…Tomorrow night?” I run through my mental calendar, my only set plans for the weekend were to watch old horror movies and order Chinese food. Just like every other weekend. It’s a wonderful, if not slightly mundane existence.

“Don’t tell me you forgot again,” she shakes her head in frustration at my blank stare, “the barista? I set you guys up? Pink hair? Plays bass?”

“Right, right, her,” I say absentmindedly. I was a different person when I’d agreed to this date, I’m pretty sure I had multiple margaritas coursing through my veins.

“The enthusiasm is oozing from every pore. You’re acting like I scheduled you for a lobotomy.” She’s trying on my behalf, harder than I certainly have been. Usually you have to actually want to date in order for dating to be a successful endeavor.

I shrug. “You know how dating has been.”

It’s been endless first meetings with people I have nothing in common with that fizzle out after twenty minutes. There was Jared, the jewelry maker who hated my joke about the irony of his name with his choice of profession. There was Aubrey, a woman so threateningly hot I fumbled every word and ran off scared. There was also Sebastian, Lola, Alex, and others who have all but faded away into the abyss that is the New York dating pool.

Despite disappointing Margo with my complete disinterest in the blind date she lovingly served up for me, she invites me along to her lunch plans, which always includes a cocktail or three. And one of her booze-laden lunches is precisely how I found myself saddled with a date with the pink-haired barista tomorrow night. I hold a grudge over the past version of myself and vow to never forgive her for taking away my sweet solitude.

“I gotta run an errand,” I say, then flash her the laddering nylon on the back of my leg.

“Very grunge,” she eyes the tear and laughs. “Want me to pick you up some sushi? Spicy crab roll?” My stomach grumbles. The break room only provided me with a singular granola bar that crumbled into honey-wheat flavored dust when I opened the wrapper.

“Rain check on that, I’ll scavenge the exec team’s leftovers.” I’ve gotten in the habit of ordering a little extra without anyone noticing. Maybe it’s a middle finger to capitalism, or maybe it’s a lazy way for me to save a few bucks. Who’s to say.

The pharmacy is two blocks from the office, and if I time things right I’ll get back just in time. Exec team food delivery is at 12:30 on the dot, and I glance down at my off-brand oxfords and beg them to let me run down the wet sidewalks to the pharmacy and back to the office without falling.

Despite being stuck in a painfully long line behind senior citizens and frazzled nannies wrangling Upper West Side toddlers, I manage to slip back into the office bathroom at 12:24 and stuff my wrecked tights in the minuscule metal trash can. The stall is absurdly narrow, like the architects purposely wanted to prevent anything but efficiency. After body slamming the walls a few times I manage to make it out and fake a saunter into the conference room at 12:29. I’m superficially perfectly coordinated and scheduled while I’m mentally barely hanging on by a thread. It’s an art form.

I linger until the plates are cleared and scavenge for remnants of pricey lunches I can claim for myself. There’s a packaged salad with a mystery dressing, and half a sandwich that will likely turn too soggy to eat if it sits any longer. Once I check the coast is clear before the cleaners come in, I swipe my treasure and hurry back to my desk.

As the hours creep towards the late afternoon, I’m merely killing time before my day and week are over. I type up notes from a meeting, refresh my calendar, doodle a bit on the notepad on my desk. After completing every mundane task I’d been putting off for the week, I take a breather and check my personal email. Usually it’s sales promotions from brands I can’t afford or the occasional recruiter telling me what a great fit I’d be for an entry level job that’s definitely underpaid. But there’s a new message in my inbox that looks strange. And oddly, promising?

Hi Sigrid,

I’m Billie Gustafson, one of the editors at Gingham Books. I’m not sure if you know of us, but we’re one of New York’s oldest publishers of lifestyle and cookbooks. We’re in the process of putting together a collaboration between various New York-based baking Instagrammers (currently untitled). One of the members of our Public Relations team had been a fan of your account, and I wanted to reach out and invite you to provide a submission.

We ask that you submit eight self-produced recipes, and we will select up to six of them. If this is something you’re interested in, please let me know by October 1st. We’d require all recipes to be submitted by December 1st. I understand this is a tight timeline, but you are welcome to reuse recipes you’ve previously posted on your account, so long as they haven’t been published elsewhere.

If this is something of interest to you, I’ll have our legal team send over our contract for you to review and sign. I look forward to hearing from you!

All the best,

Billie Gustafson (She/Her)

Senior Editor, Home & Lifestyle

Gingham Books

I hunch over and reread the message over and over again. My face gets progressively closer and closer to the screen as I track each word. I verify five, maybe six times, that Billie Gustafson is real. Google pulls up photos of a sweet looking Black woman in her forties with a pixie cut and almost two decades of publishing experience. She’s definitely real. And the opportunity is very real, and despite my baking account having been dormant for months, I must have done something right.

My last post on the account Billie used as a way to find me, a clementine tart with Italian meringue, sits dormant in a time capsule from January. Four days before Perrie and I split. Each time I get a notification from someone liking or commenting on an old post it dredges up the dull ache of what I used to be.

That’s not to say I haven’t tried .

I’ve stood at the farmers market and stared at perfectly ripe strawberries and imagined them transformed into a compote with basil. I’d fantasized about making a panna cotta or ice cream from scratch to top with a hypothetical herbaceous and sweet sauce. I’ve gotten so incredibly close to making something, but a black tornado swirls around my heart and rips up the delicate scaffolding I set up.

Using my mixer and oven after months of ignoring them feels akin to climbing Mount Everest in sandals. But this would change everything. I might actually make real money doing what I love. I could feel like I’ve done something with my nearly thirty years of life. For the first time in a very, very long time, I think I feel excitement. There’s little time before anxiety and imposter syndrome crash over me in dark churning waves.

I need backup, encouragement, maybe a slap in the face. A flash of black hair sways across the room and I perk my head up like a meerkat. I need my best friend. ASAP.

“Margo!” I whisper-yell to not disturb the people with jobs of importance who sit around me. A few developers shift in their seats and glance up at me. They all already harbor a thinly veiled resentment for Margo and I and our constant chatting, thankfully most of them don headphones. Most of them started to once they’d realized how chatty I was. “Sorry,” I utter uncomfortably. Margo spins on her heel, her hair fluttering behind her, and crosses the office to me. I’m struggling to explain what the opportunity is, so with a shaky finger I just point at my computer monitor. She narrows her deep brown eyes at me and then turns to the screen to flash them back and forth over the text, a few times, exactly like I did.

“Sigrid,” she starts, sincerity gripping her normally sarcastic tone. “That’s unreal. That’s like, the biggest opportunity you could imagine.”

“I know, I’m terrified. ”

“You need to say yes, as your best friend I implore you to say yes.” She’s buzzing with as much excitement as I am.

“I haven’t baked since…” I trail off. I shouldn’t be so haunted, and we both know it.

Margo looks at me with pity in her eyes. “You need to find a reason to again. That old Kitchenaid of yours used to be an extension of your body. Say yes, you owe that much to yourself.” And like some tattooed fairy godmother, she gives me a wink and continues back to her desk.

This opportunity would be the perfect reason to get back into the only hobby I’ve ever stuck with. I’d floated from knitting, to guitar, to watercolors, but nothing ever stuck. I’d get bored, quickly. But then I was asked to bring a dessert to a Friendsgiving, and all the pies had been covered. Desperate, I begged my mom for her chocolate chip cookie recipe.

I had no clue what I was doing. I had thought I’d burned the butter I was melting until I realized I’d perfectly browned it. And when the store was out of chocolate chips, I bought a few chocolate bars and chopped them into rough pieces. I’d seen enough Ina Garten to know to sprinkle some flaky salt on top and the end result was cookies that were allegedly the best my friends had ever tasted. After that, I was hooked. A year later, after using my coworkers as willing subjects I’d started my Instagram. A year after that I had ten thousand followers, a number that had steadily grown until I abandoned the account altogether.

Margo’s right, my Kitchenaid mixer really used to be an extension of myself. Logistically, it’s possible. There’s a little over a month to commit, and two months after that to develop eight recipes. Difficult, for sure, but not impossible. It’s just that committing to something like this is…a lot. Committing to anything these days feels like I’m ripping myself open and wandering around entirely vulnerable for the world to destroy. Ignoring the itchy feeling I’m getting from stress hives, I close the email. I fill the rest of my day wi th every menial task I can conjure to keep my mind off of the looming opportunity.

Five o’clock hits and the rhythms begin again. Ralph steps out of his office, and gives a canned quip about having a great weekend. “But not too great.”

He laughs at his own joke as if I haven’t heard it hundreds of times before. Oh to be so amused by such things. I’ve already called a car to pick him up out front. It’ll arrive precisely as he steps out the front door. He has a penthouse and trophy wife in SoHo to return to, after all.

A few moments later, ready for this day and week to be over, I follow suit. The mist of the morning has cleared and the day has dried out enough to not be dense with humidity. I consider such things a microscopic win. Couples are arm in arm zigzagging on the sidewalk heading out to their dates. Lost tourists are attempting to find their way to Times Square. And I’m ready to leave midtown and not return until Monday at 8:40.