The Sign In Sidney Brustein's Window Novels & Stories

CRYSTAL I stepped into his office a minute later,my breath unsteady,the door shut behind me. He was standing by the floor- to- ceiling window, back turned, gazing out like something out there got his attention. I cleared my throat, “You called me,Sir.” My voice managed to be steady. He left the window side and reached into the drawer beside his desk without looking up. He brought something out and tossed it onto the sleek glass surface with a soft thud.

Selena stood by the windows of Bruce’s penthouse office, holding a slim black folder in her hands. The lights of the city burned below, cold and distant. She didn’t turn when Bruce entered.. she just kept staring at the glass, calm and still. “You called me,” he said. “This better be worth my time.” She turned slowly, expression unreadable. “It is.” Bruce walked to his desk, loosened his tie, and sat. “I have three meetings in the morning. This isn’t the night for games.”

As the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. When the doors opened, I stepped into a quiet hallway. There was only one door. A large wooden door with gold letters: SYLVESTER BRIAN, PRIVATE OFFICE. I knocked before I could lose my nerve. "Come in," his voice called. I opened the door and stepped inside. The office was huge. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the city. Expensive furniture. Bookshelves filled with law books. And Sylvester, sitting behind his desk, looking at me.

I picked up her glass and I carried it into the kitchen and I washed it by hand and I dried it with the small cloth Faraz used and I put it back in the cupboard. I left my glass on the coffee table. I went to the front window. ── The street was empty. The lights along the river were the same lights I had been looking at from this window for seven years, the small steady chain of yellow and white that ran along the Brooklyn shore and across the East River and up the eastern edge of Manhattan and I stood at the window with my hands in the pockets of dark slacks and I let myself, for the only time in the entire evening, have a feeling.

Across the city, Bridget sat by her window, sipping wine, a sly smile playing at the corner of her lips. The game had begun.

I threw off the covers, went to the window, and shoved the heavy curtain aside. A black SUV sat directly across the street with dark windows, its engine idling as a faint cloud of exhaust rose into the freezing air. I stared at it, telling myself it was a coincidence and telling myself to breathe. Then the passenger window rolled down. Sebastian Wolfe leaned one massive arm out into the night and looked straight up at my apartment, straight at me, certain, like a man who had been waiting long enough and had no intention of waiting anymore. He lifted two fingers in a slow, lazy salute and smiled.

But what caught his attention wasn’t the stares — it was the new plaque above his office door. BRYAN BLACKWOOD — CHAIRMAN. He stared at it for a moment, then walked in. Inside, his office gleamed — minimalist, cold, yet powerful. The massive glass window behind his desk stretched across the skyline, the city sprawled beneath him like something he owned. Bryan dropped into his chair, loosening his tie slightly. The silence that filled the room was thick but peaceful. He began to work quietly through files — a lot needed his signature. But every few minutes, Bryan’s eyes drifted to the door, expecting his princess.

He replied and bent to scratch at Kenell’s head. “Rhoda.” It was Bryan who answered and Cedric stiffened in response, not believing his ears. “You don’t say…” he walked toward the window, searching for her, only to turn to them, a confused look written all over his face. “I don’t see her.” Aine walked over to him and turned him to the window once again. It was those tinted kinds where you could see what was happening on the outside, but those on the outside could not see within.

A few minutes later, we found ourselves outside Astarte . I couldn't believe I was back in this store for the second time in a week. The skeptical scientist in me silently rebelled against the crystals and dreamcatchers hanging in the window, though I had to smile at the sign by the door that read, “Tried Yoga Once, Thought It Was A Little Overdone.”

Vincent at the Window Vincent Marino stood in silence at the wide window of his office. The city stretched before him, a constellation of light and shadow. Garden Metro glittered as though it were unshaken, but he knew better. He could feel the tremor in its rhythm, the tension in its heartbeat. Cassidy’s poison had seeped into every crevice, and now the whole city carried the taste of suspicion.