Franklin Flyer

1929 A young man in a rumpled white suit and yellow fedora ascended a stepladder perched on a table and, opening a skylight flooded by the noon sun, pulled himself up and out onto the slanted roof. Hands on hips, smiling, he stood backdropped by big clouds seventy stories above the humming streets, surveying the jagged skyline and the flash of the harbor when a swirling gust blew off his hat. He grabbed for it, teetering momentarily, before it spun into the canyon of granite below. After dancing in the crosscurrents, dipping far down and then swooping up just as fast, the hat sailed through an open window in the building across the street. The window was six stories down from the building's eaves and two windows in from its southeast corner. Had his hat tumbled to the street, the young man thought, squinting through the glare, he would have let it go; but the fact the wind had carried it to the one open window in those upper stories made him want to pursue it. Ten minutes later, he crossed the intersection and entered the Ice & Fire Assurance Company Building, newly constructed of Texas limestone, white as snow. He rode the elevator to the sixtieth floor and turned down the long corridor to the southeast corner. The clicking of his lace-up boots echoed on the marble floor. The second door from the end had a frosted-glass center with the numeral 6000 painted on it. He knocked twice, then turned the knob and found the door unlocked. The room was cool and dark, an office larger than the outer door had led him to expect, but sparsely furnished: a brown sofa, a bookcase without shelves, and a heavy wooden desk by the window. The desktop was dusty, an inkwell and a silver picture frame to one side, and--yes, there it was--his yellow fedora beside the telephone, as if someone had casually laid it down. At the same time, there was no chair behind the desk, its empty drawers were pulled out, the inkwell was dry, and the telephone was unplugged. Only after he circled the desk and picked up his hat, examining it curiously, did he see that the silver frame contained a photograph. Wearing a long camel's hair coat and black gloves, a fair-haired young woman with olive skin, full lips, and eyes set wide apart was standing on a stone bridge over a rushing stream. The sunlight was bright on her face, and her hair was long, combed straight back. The boulders along the bank of the stream were dusted with snow. The trees behind them were bare. She had turned to the camera without smiling--and with a hint of surprise. It was a face unlike any he had ever seen, wonderfully balanced, yet imperfect, as if each element had been uniquely created before being set into a whole. What most attracted him, though, was that she seemed to be looking directly at him--and no one else--drawing him toward her, speaking to him with her beautiful eyes. The longer he looked back, the more he wanted to know what she might be trying to tell him. And the more certain he became that this photograph was the reason his hat--an unexpected instrument of fate--had floated into this particular room. He went to the window and gazed at the roof of the dark gray building where he had been standing not long ago. Its windows reflected the gold and pink undersides of passing clouds. It was known as the Globe Building, named for the trading company that once owned it. A giant globe, lit from within, with turquoise seas and emerald continents, still rotated in its lobby. He had worked on the forty-first floor of that building for eleven months--his longest stretch at the same job since dropping out of college. At Harvard he had mostly taken courses in history and chemistry. A shade under six feet, lithe and muscular, he was awarded a sports scholarship, playing baseball (a centerfielder with a terrific arm) and fencing. But all the while he had been restless to get out in the world, not to study it: to see things for himself,Christopher, Nicholas is the author of 'Franklin Flyer' with ISBN 9780385335454 and ISBN 0385335458.