1. PAUL

It was not just New York City that opened before me as I stepped out of my apartment block on 125th Street. It was Harlem, where I had been living for several years in a run-down building. The morning sun cast long shadows down the buzzing streets, commuters were running to catch their trains, and boys who hadn’t been to bed yet were playing hip-hop out of their car windows.

I was on my way to work Downtown. My journey to Spring Street in SoHo was an all- too-familiar routine by now: the slog through the heart of New York City at rush hour.

I made my way to the subway station. The sound of honking horns and blaring sirens filled the air, a constant reminder of the city’s enormousness and drive. From open stall fronts, the smells of freshly brewed coffee and hot pretzels drifted on the air, but I would wait till I was Downtown to get something to eat.

I had to rush. I was almost late. I looked at my phone to check the transport app to see which subway line was going to be quicker today: the 6 or the 4.

Going down to the platforms, I faced the familiar choice between the two. Today, I opted for the 6 train, but it was so heavy with bodies, elbows in your ribs, someone’s oversized bag hitting your back.

The train roared through the cavernous tunnels as it hurtled along the spine of Manhattan. Inside, a mosaic of distracted faces was staring at phones, and now and then, different languages could be heard; this was the fabric of the metropolitan city.

Emerging at the other end of my route, I found myself coming out into the smarter atmosphere of Spring Street, the heart of SoHo. The area was Downtown at both its hippest and sleekest. The cobblestone streets echoed a rhythm of footsteps and crisp conversations on cellphones. The streets were solid with gleaming black SUVs. I don’t know much about cars, but those looked more like tanks, only driven by socialites.

Storefronts were adorned with colorful displays of artwork and high fashion. Tall, slim women in coats that looked like they cost more than my monthly rent perused the windows while waiting for a friend to go for coffee. All around, people in both business suits and arty outfits talked on cell phones in loud and confident voices.

Maybe I wasn’t that much like those people, even though I worked here, too. I am one of those guys who works around there, not shops around there…

My office building was ahead, a sleek parade of windows shimmering in the morning sunlight in a red-brick facade. It was very SoHo – it couldn’t have been more SoHo. Friendly receptionists and discreet security guards flanked its entrance. The media offices inside did not want any unruly intruders. It all tried to feel very cool, but it was also very secure.

The elevator doors opened straight into a modern media office: open-concept workspaces, minimalist decor, Apple Macs on every desk, and state-of-the-art technology discreetly everywhere. Glass-walled breakout rooms dotted the space, and already in the early part of the workday, people hung around in groups with Starbucks cups, discussing evenings just past and days now ahead.

The air hummed with the low murmur of conversation. More of my colleagues were arriving for another workday. Working from home wasn’t so much of a thing anymore. The city had come back to life. I didn’t mind that. Sitting in my tiny Harlem apartment all day, every day hadn’t been my dream!

I was well-liked at work, but I was not the center of things here. We worked in AI, where ambition and confidence is everything, and I wasn’t so sure I was that person. I am good at my job, but I don’t talk myself up a lot. That’s my problem, most probably.

I made my way through the bustling office, exchanging greetings with colleagues. I reached my desk, where I kept almost nothing personal. I got out my laptop and let it fire up. As I did so, I glanced around the office.

On one level, I loved my job – the projects, the excitement, the sense that you were at the cutting edge of the future. Yet, despite my dedication and hard work, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my career had hit a block – or maybe I had hit a block.

Mine was a midlevel designer role with a mastery of the intricacies of developing and perfecting AI software. But as I glanced around the office, I saw others moving on, inside or outside the firm. I was really well respected and, as I said, pretty well-liked, but I sometimes felt too much part of the furniture. I was not the person who was encouraged to apply for the big promotion. I think I was the person everyone expected would still be here next year.

That morning, the office was soon buzzing with the hum of activity, colleagues darting back and forth on their cell phones, calling people into meetings in the breakout spaces, with their bean-to-cup coffee machines, fridges with kombucha bottles, and angular chairs no one knew quite how to sit on.

But that morning, I felt a strange little emptiness, one which had become familiar to me now. There was the question that repeated on a loop in my head: “Is this enough? Every day of my life recently, I had thought some version of it. Sometimes it was: “Is this actually what I want?”

I wanted to get lost in my work, but I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of envy as I watched others climb the corporate ladder. Sarah, who was calling David into a meeting, used to be an intern but was now a head of department. This was an industry where things moved fast, people moved fast.

Their promotions were celebrated with fanfare, and their achievements were applauded by management in our whole-team meetings. I smiled and congratulated them sincerely and genuinely. I wished them well, but I couldn’t help but question why their successes seemed to come so easily.

In other words, I was coming to a realization: it was time to move on. You could stay in one place too long. You could be someone on whom people rely so much that, in the end, they forget about you.

I was twenty-nine. I’d be thirty in no time. I was a cute guy, I guess, medium height, fair hair, slim. I was funny and smart, with a love of art and all things creative. I think what I am saying is that I felt like I had potential, but the question was, for what? And maybe even for whom?

And so the day unfolded with its usual run of tasks and interruptions as I sifted through emails and attachments that flooded my inbox. I settled into a rhythm, and I let the office hum around me with relentless persistence.

I logged into our project-management system to see where different AI software design projects were at, checked clients’ requests for updates, feedback on what had been shown to them, and the occasional bug report.

Someone complained that the system had not been cooperative. I sighed. It’s AI: it doesn’t think, it doesn’t know, it doesn’t cooperate. It’s something you hammer away at in hopes that eventually it will give you what you want.

That’s a bit of a metaphor for life, in fact!

I do have an ambition. Well, maybe not an ambition; a desire, a dream. Externally, my goal was supposed to be clear – that’s what my mentor had said to me before she also said to me that it was time for her to move on from being my mentor. That external goal was to excel at my career, to grow out of my current role, and to emerge as a leader in the field. Accolades and recognition would surely follow.

My secret ambition – not even a whisper of possibility, really – was that for as long as I could remember, I had wanted to be an artist. AI can be really creative, but what I mean is that want to paint, to make art from scratch.

When I was a kid, art was my refuge, and I still painted from time to time. Recently, however, my desire to do it – to do it seriously – had returned. In quiet moments, I allowed myself the fantasy that I could become a real artist – to immerse myself in a much more deeply creative world.

I pictured myself standing before a blank canvas, brush in hand, in the molten act of creation. I liked to paint portraits best of all, and if I could afford it, I would go and do a fine arts degree specializing in painting.

If I could afford it…

New York City is a tough place for a single renter on an okay salary. I couldn’t complain too much about money; compared to lots of people, I did all right, but I was not one of those big earners.

The cost of living in the city is exorbitant, and my bank account wept every month with what I paid for a studio uptown, but not uptown in a good way! I had a bit of a social life, but not that much, and after utilities, groceries, transportation, there wasn’t that much to save the tens of thousands of dollars I’d need to do an arts degree, let alone set myself up as a painter.

So, for now, what I first called my ambition seemed destined to remain what I had called it second: a dream.

Besides, I had found myself questioning whether I could move somewhere else. The idea of leaving New York was not one that sat too easily with me because I loved it. However, even if I were a painter, my options would be better here. Small-town living would be affordable, and I could be part of a community. The truth was, I wasn’t entirely alone in New York, but I was often lonely.

I’d never really found someone. I’d never been one for relationships. Women liked me, even said I was cute, but they didn’t seem to fall for me.

And I didn’t fall for them.

Man, I had to stop wondering, and wondering, and wondering. It was time to get on. I delved into my work on a design project that had been running for some while and needed a push to the end.

But just as I was really getting into it, a notification bleeped across my screen – a Zoom chat message.

HARRY

Hey Paul, are you free for a meeting

Harry was the second-in-command at my company and the head of the New York office. He was a good guy. I typed back:

PAUL

Sure when?

A second passed.

HARRY

Right now?

I could see Harry’s office from my seat. I could see him at his desk, visible through the office’s glass wall and open door. From the way he was sitting, I could tell he was not alone. What was the urgency? I saved my work and got ready to face whatever was about to happen.

I made my way to the office. As I entered it, I glanced around the room, and there I saw Jack – our real boss from the original Chicago office, the visionary who had founded the firm and built it up to what it was.

***

I had met Jack many times, mostly over Zoom but in person, too, but every time I saw him, it was like the first time. Jack was six foot four tall, fortyish, dark hair swept back in a thick wave, masculine, deep voice, firm handshake. He was…a real man.

Jack had a commanding presence – but it was not an intimidating one. He was a funny guy. Even though he was the head honcho, he was well-liked by everyone in the office. He could be very charming, always interested in what you were doing at work and even in your personal life. He could hardly have known all of us, but he made you feel like he knew you.

And he was handsome. Very handsome.

***

“Hey, Paul,” Jack greeted me with a warm smile, rising to his feet to shake my hand, his voice resonant with natural confidence and authority.

I returned the greeting with a nod, and then our hands touched, mine smaller than his, enclosed in its warm, tight embrace. He had one of those handshakes that belonged to a man.

Jack stood a clear six inches taller than me. He almost cast a shadow.

“Glad you could make it,” Harry said. “Sit down.”

“No worries,” I replied. “What’s up?”

I felt a hint of nerves in my belly.

“So, Paul,” Jack began, his tone professional yet friendly. “Harry and I have been discussing a new project, and we wanted to get you on board.”

My pulse quickened at the mention of a new project.

“Oh, cool,” I said.

Harry sighed a little. He was always hard to read, but Jack was gazing at me, giving me one of those smiles that handsome men give you: open, maybe not even knowing its effect, or perhaps they do know. I grinned a little, felt my uncertainty.

I couldn’t help but notice the subtle nuances of Jack’s presence – the confident tilt of his head, his easy, manly grace, his eyes focused on me very closely, dark eyes that pulled you in.

There was a magnetic charm about him, a charisma that people responded to, and I was one of those people. But I felt a flicker of something deeper, too – a more primal instinct, a whisper of something that was, well, closer to desire.

I wasn’t gay, or at least I had never acted on anything gay I might have felt about another man. I had barely even touched another guy, let alone done anything with them.

But I had always had these feelings, and Jack was the type of man for whom I had them most: a man’s man, but a cool one. But you know, lots of guys had these feelings, and never acted on them. To look at a man, a beautiful man, and to desire him: that’s not the same as being gay, right?

Harry was talking:

“You know that the firm has opened a new London office to expand our business into the European market and, from the UK, into the Asian market, too.”

I nodded.

“Sure.”

It had been a big deal. There had been talk that Jack was going to sell the company, that one of the big tech empires, Meta or Google or whoever, was going to come and give him tens of millions of dollars to give them what he had – and us, too, I suppose.

But instead, Jack had pushed forward with an ambitious expansion into London, one of the most competitive but also innovative tech markets in the world. From London, he had told us, American companies could move into the whole world.

“Well, Jack here,” Harry began, “he has been going back and forth to the UK, and now we have recruited about fifteen people, and the office is up and running. Most people started last week. But we feel it would be really useful to have a couple of” – he did air quotes – “‘home’ guys go over and hold people’s hands for a while.”

“Cool,” I said. “That’s a good idea.”

Harry and Jack were silent for a moment, gazing at me.

“So we thought maybe you could go over for a while, if you’re interested,” Harry said.

I was surprised.

“Seriously?”

Harry nodded, but it was Jack who spoke.

“You have lots of experience. Everyone works really well with you. You have the knack of working with people without stepping on toes. You understand a lot of our projects and what clients want. It’s a question of getting it right for everyone, and I think you might help me achieve that, Paul.” He smiled. “I would be very grateful if you would say yes.”

I felt such excitement at the possibility.

“That sounds amazing,” I exclaimed, unable to contain my happiness. “I would love to go to London.”

Jack’s smile widened.

“Excellent, Paul,” he said, and then he clapped his hands. “It’ll be maybe two weeks, and we’ll go next week. Is that okay? Do you have any schedule clashes?”

I knew already that I didn’t, but even if I had had some, I would have canceled them.

“No, there is nothing I can’t shift, Jack.”

“Excellent,” he said again. “This is going to be so good.”

We were gazing at each other happily. I nodded, my mind already racing with possibilities: working in London, them asking me to go work in London. That very morning, my discontent had been gnawing at me. Was this exactly the kind of encouragement I had been needing?

“I’m really ready for this kind of challenge,” I said, trying to sound ambitious. My old mentor always said that I was never ambitious enough. “You have to sound ambitious!” they’d always say.

“And if it works out, and you like it, maybe you can be there a bit longer.”

“Longer?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “I will need someone to go back and forth in the next few months. Or even live there for a while if it falls that way.”

Living in London for a while?

“That’s amazing!”

Jack got to his feet and extended his arm toward me. As our hands touched in congratulation, a surge of something coursed through me, through my fingers, the muscles in my arm, into my throat, belly, all my body.

“We’ll have a great time over there,” Jack said with a wink.

“We?”

“Oh,” Harry said, also getting to his feet. I looked at him. “Jack is going to go with you.”

At once, I looked back at Jack: those dark, attentive eyes, that masculine grin of his.

“We are going to be spending a lot of time together,” he said. “London is a lot of fun, Paul. A hell of a lot of fun.”

We held each other’s gaze for a moment, maybe a moment too long.

“Cool,” I said. “That’s really cool.”