Free 18mm Blues by Gerald A Browne

painted and strong and complicated. Since 1981, the first time Grady ever saw the bridge, he hadn’t ever taken it for granted. Even on the way home after his most devastating days he was able to get out of himself enough to appreciate it, let it lift him.
    As it did today.
    By the time he reached Market Street and parked the Ford Taurus in the open lot opposite the Phelan Building, his spirit was boosted two, going on three notches. The old ivory and black marble lobby of the Phelan was as impeccable and deserving of appreciation as ever, and five of the seven people Grady shared elevator number two with were gingerly carrying cardboard containers of coffee and the slight steam from the tiny puncture holes in the lids of the cartons seemed playful.
    Every tenant of the thirteen-story Phelan was in one way or another involved in the gem and jewelry trade. Thus the structure was, in effect, a sort of community made up of specialists dependent upon one another or in compatible and sometimes not so compatible competition. So, Grady recognized five of his fellow passengers and was acquainted well enough with the other two—a first-rate stone setter and a younger man who dealt in semiprecious goods—to exchange smiles around good mornings . The setter was next to last to get off. On ten. He seemed eager to get to work. Grady thought probably he’d promised some client, Shreve and Company or someone of that importance, that he’d have a particular piece of work completed first thing that morning.
    Grady went to the top, which was mainly taken up by the Harold Havermeyer Company. The designed ensignia HH was in gold on the heavy double doors (only the door on the right could be opened) and beneath the ensignia, like an explanation of it, was the firm’s full name.
    Grady’s name wasn’t on either door.
    Harold Havermeyer was his father-in-law.
    Now and then over the years Harold would make a point of indicating to Grady where on the door he intended to have Grady’s name put. Harold’s tone always inferred it was imminent and a few times he emphatically tapped the exact prominent spot with a forefinger. However, having it done seemed always to slip Harold’s mind.
    It got so it was embarrassing for Grady, who told himself that his name on the door wasn’t a rung on his ladder.
    The girl at the HH front desk was new, extremely pretty and, probably for both those reasons, overdressed. Earrings so dangling they barely cleared her outdated, padded shoulders. Grady discerned the cool may I help you in her eyes and beat her to it by introducing himself and asking her name.
    He went on down the hall to his office, on the way glancing into the largest office, which was Harold’s. Harold hadn’t come in yet. His office was the only one with personality because that was how Harold wanted it. His desk was a bureau plat , a reproduction but nevertheless a bureau plat . His chairs were convincingly distressed bergères , the rug a high and thick piled Chinese, pale blue. The paintings were original oils, two portraits of anonymous British nobles and a Normandy landscape that featured cows by a turn-of-the-century impressionist who hadn’t made E. Bénézit but who nevertheless had been a turn-of-the-century impressionist. Harold also had a private toilet. He never referred to it as that but rather as his w.c. Too, there was an impressively stocked bar, though Harold refilled a perpetual vintage ’66 Graham port bottle with seven-year-old Sandeman.
    The rest of the HH space, reception area, halls, other offices and even the vault room were painted a surely inoffensive dove gray in a flat finish. The woodwork a shade darker. Matching wall-to-wall nylon carpet throughout, and the only thing allowed to be hung were framed oversize examples of fairly recent HH advertisements that had appeared in trade journals and various fashion and snob publications.
    Grady’s office was an