Novels by Reyna Sterling

The eviction notice was taped to the door at eye level, so Marisol Vega would not miss it.As if she could miss it. As if the last five months had not already told her, one unanswered email at a time, that this was coming.She peeled it off carefully, like the paper itself might still change its mind, and let herself into the apartment she was no longer allowed to call hers past the end of the month. Boxes everywhere. Half her life folded into cardboard, the other half still pinned to the wall above her desk, because some part of her had refused to believe it would actually come to this. Sketches of staircases. A bridge for a competition she had not won. She was wrapping her grandmother's pots in newspaper when her phone rang.Unknown number. Chicago area code. She almost let it go to voicemail.She answered because rent did not pay itself, and neither did pride.---"Is this Marisol Vega?""Speaking.""My name is Priya Malhotra. I'm calling from Cross Industries."Marisol set down th

She unlocked the door at half past five in the morning, a year and four months after the last rib went up, and stood alone inside the finished building with her keys in her hand.Nobody had told her what it would be like. She had drawn it so many times, in so many versions, on trace and in model board and in the dark behind her own eyelids, that she had half expected it to feel like a thing she already knew. It did not. The air was cool and smelled of pine and fresh plaster and, faintly, of the bread already rising next door. A long low room opened before her under the timber ribs, which rose pale gold into the early light and ran the whole length of the ceiling like the bones of a ship. The south glass was just beginning to turn from gray to rose. Rows of low shelves stood empty, waiting. At the far end, a rain garden lay quiet beyond the north windows, its stones still wet from the night.She walked slowly down the center of the room, and her footsteps made a small sound she had nev

There were no chandeliers.Ivy noticed it first, standing at the window of the studio at six o'clock on the last Saturday in June, looking down at Eighteenth Street. The neighbors had closed it to traffic with a pair of sawhorses and a hand lettered sign. Someone had strung lights from lamppost to lamppost, plain white bulbs on a long orange cord, and in the golden slant of evening they swung gently, like a necklace being fastened across the sky. Down the middle of the road ran a single long table made of eleven different tables, none of them matching, laid end to end under tablecloths of every color, and already people were sitting at it who had not yet been told it was time to sit.An accordion had started somewhere. It belonged to Mrs. Wozniak's nephew, who was nineteen and played with great seriousness and a pair of enormous headphones around his neck that he had forgotten to remove.She had stood in a ballroom with chandeliers, once, in a red dress, and been told that the world d

The last rib went up at ten past four on the twelfth of June, and the whole street came out to watch.It rose slowly against a sky the color of washed linen, a single great curve of pale laminated timber, turning gently on the crane's cable with a man at each end holding a guide rope. The crew stood in a loose ring along the slab. Mrs. Wozniak had closed the bakery for an hour, an event without precedent, and stood at the fence with a basket on her hip and her arms folded, daring anyone to remark on it. Professor Okonkwo wore her green coat and had brought a folding chair. Grace Odom stood beside Priya in a hard hat, which she insisted was professional courtesy, and Whitmore, who had come on his lunch hour, held a clipboard he plainly did not need.Ivy stood at the foot of the frame with her hands pressed flat against her ribs, because her heart seemed to have moved there."Easy," said Delgado, into his radio. "Easy. Little more. Hold."The rib settled into its seat with a deep, soft

He wrote it at five in the morning, in the same office where, a year ago, he had hired a stranger to pretend to love him.Damien sat on the sofa, not at the desk. He had stopped using the desk for anything that mattered, somewhere around the autumn, without quite deciding to, and the room had rearranged itself around the change. The door stood open. The three glass walls held the city in a pale spring light, cold and clean, and the tablet lay face down on the cushion beside him, where it had been left on purpose.He had a legal pad on his knee and a pen in his hand. He had been staring at the pad for forty minutes.He had written one page. He read it over, and winced, and read it over again.---Priya arrived at eight with two coffees and a very suspicious expression."You asked me in before eight," she said, from the doorway. "You never ask anyone before eight. You think it's barbaric. What has happened?""I need your help," said Damien. "And I need you not to laugh.""I make no prom

# Chapter Eighty-Three: What Comes NextThey walked to the lot on a Tuesday, at dusk, because it was Tuesday and nothing was on fire.It had become a habit. After dinner, once the plates were washed and the ugly lamp turned low, they would go down the narrow stairs past the bakery, where the ovens were already warming for tomorrow, and walk the two blocks to Eighteenth and Loomis, and stand at the chain link fence looking at nothing in particular. The weeds had gone brown for winter. The old rusted sign had come down in the autumn. In its place, bolted to the fence, hung a new one, white and plain. LOOMIS STREET READING ROOM. COMING NEXT SPRING. DESIGN ARCHITECT, IVY REYES.She still could not read the last line without a small, private lurch."The permit cleared," said Damien, beside her. "I heard from Osei's office this afternoon. Nobody told me. I happened to be passing the desk when it came in.""You happened to be passing.""I did not ask," he said gravely. "I want that noted."-