by Callie Hart
W hat do you do for work? Astronaut
Highest level of education? GED
Favorite country to travel to? Serbia
Where do you plan on being in 5 years? Dead
Religion? Scientologist
J eez , that one gives me pause…
And then, things take a more hostile turn.
W hat is your greatest fear ? None of your fucking business
Have you ever had to make a tough decision that has affected you and those around you? None of your fucking business
Who is your favorite fictional character and why? None of your fucking business
Favorite movie? None of your fucking business
Tell me three things you like about yourself: None of your fucking business
What are you passionate about? None of your fucking business
I could read on , but it would be pointless. There are three single sided pages of questions, and Raphael North’s response to each and every one of them is the same. He’s answered them in painstakingly neat, almost elegant handwriting. It’s not the rushed, slapdash cursive of someone rushing to finish filling out a form. It looks like he genuinely spent time forming every single word he recorded on the paper. At the end of the document, there’s a box that says, ‘Tell us about your ideal companion.’ Inside the box, there are three words: No fucking blondes.
Just as Thalia said, then. For some reason he really has a strong aversion to blondes. I lay my hands flat on top of the papers, and I think. He really did not want to fill out the questionnaire, obviously. By the looks of things, he really didn’t feel too comfortable with the picture, either.
Picking up the papers, I’m halfway through sliding them back into the envelope when I see black ink on the reverse of the final page.
L ook . I just want to play chess with an actual human being. Nothing weird. Nothing underhanded. Nothing intense or unpleasant for either of us.
S end me someone real .
T he last line screams out at me from the page. I don’t know why, but it clangs around the inside of my head like a tolling bell. He wants someone real. What must it be like for someone like him, constantly under such immense pressure? Constantly avoiding the public eye? I imagine it would be quite lonely to be him, Park Avenue royalty, stuck in his tower, looking out over the city, so close and yet so far removed from everything going on at ground level. He must have been playing chess against his laptop for the longest time now that he just wants someone to engage in polite conversation while he kicks their ass.
I don’t know why, but the coarse, brusque response he wrote to Thalia’s frankly rote questions have made me like him somehow. The short message he’s written on the back of the paper has done more than that, though. In a strange, awkward way, it’s made me want to understand him.
I send Thalia a text, and my heart beats faster as I type the words.
M e : Okay. I’m intrigued. I suppose I can give it a shot.
She replies almost immediately.
T halia : I knew it! I KNEW you’d do it!
A nd then …
T halia : Good thing I already told him yes ;) He’s expecting you at 4 tomorrow. I’ve emailed you the instructions. Don’t be late. And don’t forget to let him win!
Three
Beth
I can’t do this . I can not fucking do this. I don’t know what I was thinking. This isn’t just meeting up with any old guy to chat and play a friendly game of chess. This is Raphael North, for crying out loud. I’m not ready for a meeting like this. I need more time to ready myself mentally, to prepare, to calm my damn nerves. I want to call my mom, but I already know what she’s going to say: “Elizabeth, men like Raphael North have had everything handed to them on a platter their entire lives. Do you really think he’s ever heard the word no before? Do you think he’ll hear it if you’re screaming it from the rooftops while he’s pawing at your body?” Raphael North could be a saint and it wouldn’t matter to my mom; she’d still assume he was going to try and force himself on me at some point.
My whole body is jangling with adrenalin and panic as I pick out clothes for the meeting. Thalia’s instructions were never-ending. They included a very specific dress code, a list of topics that should not be discussed, ranging from the weather (?), to sports (?), to anything related to Raphael’s past or his family. There are directions to Raphael North’s home address, which I could probably have told her. Every man and his dog in this city knows where Raphael lives. The Osiris Building is a work of art. The kind tourists stand in front of and have their pictures taken, huge cheesy grins plastered all over their faces.
It’s rumored that Raphael designed the building and had it built. It’s rumored that he still owns the entire structure, and the other seventy floors that soar straight up into the sky are merely rented by their occupants.
Four o’clock in the afternoon seems to take forever to come around. It’s Saturday, so no class. I putter around my small one-bed apartment, cleaning and reorganizing things, trying not to admit to myself that I might be about ready to bail on the whole thing. I can’t, though. I made a promise to Thalia, and I do my best to make sure I don’t break those.
My nerves don’t manifest themselves the same way they do for other people. Thalia feels lightheaded or sick. My mom gets very chatty when she’s anxious about something. Me, on the other hand? I get hungry. By one in the afternoon, I’ve already eaten an omelet for breakfast, a grilled cheese sandwich, a chicken caesar salad, and the remnants of some Chinese takeout that’s been sitting in my fridge for three days.
I tell myself that I eat the leftovers because it’d be a shame to throw it out, but the truth is I’m worried sick. I can be shy, and I’ve never found myself sat in front of a breathtakingly attractive, mysterious, secretive inventor/philanthropist/celebrity before. I have no idea how I’m going to react in that setting. I could be fine, but then again…god, it doesn’t even bear thinking about. I could be a complete and utter train wreck.
At one thirty, my cell phone rings. I assume it’s Thalia, since I’ve ignored her last two calls (she’s already spoken to me three times this morning, and her nervous energy has done nothing to help my own jitters), but it’s not. It’s my brother, David.
“Hey, Spooch,” he says when I pick up. Fucking Spooch. He’s been calling me that for as long as I can remember. We go through phases of weeks and sometimes even months where he forgets to torture me with the ridiculous nickname, but then, without fail, he’ll remember and it’ll resurface with a vengeance.
“What’s up, Dickface?” Unoriginal, I know, but I have to land my blows where I can with him.
He laughs. “Mom said you asked her if you could move in with me,” he says.
“Oh, lord. I did not . She told me I should .”
“And what did…you…say?” By the sounds of things, he’s eating something. Knowing him, pizza.
“What do you think I said? I told her I’d rather be homeless.”
He cackles, the same way he used to cackle when we were kids and he’d stolen one of my favorite toys. “Well, fuck you, too, little sister. I don’t want to live with you, either.”
“I know you don’t. You’d actually have to put on pants from time to time.”
“Mmm,” he grunts. “Yeah. Fuck pants.”
“Did your call have a purpose, or were you just checking to make sure I wasn’t going to show up on your doorstep tomorrow with all of my things in trash bags?”
“Hey, I know you’d…rather sacrifice your whole degree program and head back to Kansas before you allowed such a…ding to your pride.” He swallows whatever he was chewing. “And yeah, my call does actually have a purpose. The band’s playing at The Gallery next Friday night. Will you come? Pretend like you know the lyrics? Act like you like us and shit?”
My brother’s been in the same almost-nearly-about-to-make-it rock band for the past six years. While I’ve been slaving over my laptop and a towering mountain of textb
ooks, he’s been tending bar, playing guitar, and hitting on women professionally. “Sadly, I do know all the words. I guess I can pretend to like you guys if I absolutely have to. What’s in it for me?”
“Hmm.” David thinks about this. “I’ll set you up with Mal. He broke up with his girlfriend last week. I know you’ve got the hots for him.”
“The day I stoop to dating a failed real estate agent cum drummer is the day hell freezes over, Davey boy. How about you give back the record player you borrowed from me eighteen months ago? I think that’s a fair trade.”
“Hey, what are you doing later?” This kind of diversionary tactic is typical of David. He doesn’t want to give me back this record player. I’ve been asking him for months, he says he’ll bring it by, and then he never does. It’s not even a half decent player. He just hates returning things. Period.
“I’m playing chess with Raphael North,” I say in my most easy-breezy tone. “What about you?”
“Mutually masturbating with Olivia Wilde,” he fires back. “You’re so weird, Spooch. You’re one of the only people on Earth who’d fantasize about playing a game of chess with a Fortune 500 guy.”
“Uhhh… I am not fantasizing about anyone,” I say evenly.
“Hilarious. You’re twenty-eight years old and you still haven’t figured out how to lie properly. I know how many girls want that guy’s dick in and around their mouths.”
“Don’t quote Superbad at me, David. I’m busy. And I assure you, I have not been day dreaming about sleeping with Raphael North.”
“Pssshhhyeah right. Whatever you say, sweetheart. You’re not fooling anyone. Women are all the same. You see a couple of dollar signs and your panties hit the floor at the speed of li—”
I hang up the phone, cutting him off. My brother is a grade-A dick. I don’t have the energy to listen to him complaining about money-grubbing women who have no morals, and even if I did, I would still have hung up. I can defend myself until I’m blue in the face, and I’ll never be able to convince my brother I actually am playing chess with Raphael North this afternoon. And really, is it any wonder? I honestly don’t believe it myself.
*
I haven’t worn business attire in about five years. Not since my father died and I donned my only formal black dress to the funeral. As soon as we got home from the service, I threw the dress in the trash and went and sobbed on my bed for five hours solid. A week later, the dress reappeared in my closet, wrapped in a dry-cleaner’s garment bag, so I took it out into the yard and burned it in a metal trash can like in the movies. Unlike in the movies, the can tipped over and the fire immediately caught on the long grass, nearly claiming the house along with it. My mother didn’t even say a word about it. She stood on the porch, watching me beat at the flames with a wet towel, arms folded across her body, and then she went back inside, as if resigned to her fate. If the house was consumed by fire, then so be it. She would be swallowed by the inferno right along with it. My father’s death came out of the blue. None of us were expecting it. The heart attack was massive and sudden. No way he could have survived it, the doctors said, but of course my mother had been with him at the time. She’d tried, and failed, to save him. I think for a little while there, the idea of dying was kind of appealing to her. Guilt hung around her neck like a yoke, undeserved. It took a long while for her to come through the other side.
I stand in front of the mirror, smoothing my hands over my bright red pencil skirt, fiddling with my button down shirt, trying to decide how much I should tuck in and how much I should leave out. This is a nightmare. I’m already so uncomfortable, I feel like I’m about to pass out.
At three-fifteen, the intercom buzzes, signaling that my ride is here. I was going to order an Uber, but then Thalia messaged to let me know Raphael had organized for a car to collect me. When I head downstairs, this time in the elevator, my pulse skipping all over the place, and I walk out the front of my building, there’s a sleek black Tesla with tinted windows waiting for me at the curb. I was expecting a town car or something equally as archaic and Gossip Girl, and so the Tesla is a surprise. A pleasant one. I’ve never ridden in a Tesla before, though I’ve wanted to forever.
I head to the vehicle, about to open the door, when a tall guy wearing a baseball cap turned backwards hops out of the driver’s side and rushes around the car.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t touch that handle,” he says.
My heart starts slamming in my chest. “Oh, god, shit, I’m sorry, I—”
He holds his hand up, cutting me off. “It’s more than my life is worth to let you open your own door, Ms. Dreymon. Please,” he says, opening the door and stepping away so I can climb into the back seat. My pulse is still throbbing at my temples and in my ears. My skirt feels like it’s trying to squeeze me out of it like a tube of toothpaste. I have to sit ramrod straight, my back arched away from the seat in order to feel like I’m not going to bust out of the stupid thing. The guy closes the door, runs around the car and climbs back in. Once inside, he turns around and smiles at me. “Hi. I’m Nathan. Raphael calls me Nate. You can, too.”
What would Mom say about me getting into a car with a strange guy I didn’t know? She’d probably have a goddamn fit. This guy doesn’t feel like a threat, though. He’s smiling like he’s having the best day ever. He’s fine, Beth. He’s just a normal, friendly guy, doing his job . I forcefully push down my initial nerves and I shake the hand he offers me between the front seats. “It’s very nice to meet you, Nate. You can call me Beth.”
“No can do,” Nate says, grinning. “Boss already told me not to. He’s particular about…formality .”
I eye him, his casual clothes, his back to front ball cap, the darts of ink I can see poking out of the wrists of his long sleeved t-shirt, along with around the neckline; the guy must be covered in tattoos. Nate smiles. He’s a good-looking guy in his own right, the bridge of his nose dashed with more than a handful of freckles. “And yet you’re hardly dressed formally,” I say.
Nate winks. “There are different avenues of formality, Ms. Dreymon. I conform to at least ninety percent of what Raphael considers proper and what isn’t. I run riot with the other ten percent.”
The ride across the city is longer than it should be, and tense. Nate doesn’t ask me any personal questions. He asks me what books I’ve been reading, and asks for my advice over whether he should attend his ten-year high school reunion. I tell him no, that looking back is never a good idea, no matter how much fun you had as a teenager. His wicked laugh implies he had an awful lot of fun indeed.
I don’t notice the Osiris Building creeping up on us. It’s one of the most noteworthy landmarks of the New York City skyline from a distance, but when you’re amongst the madness and the mayhem, the other towering buildings tend to block your view. One minute I’m fine, talking to Nate, rambling away, and then the next I’m staring straight up at the spear of glass punching out of the ground twenty feet away from the car. As always, a crowd of people is gathered around the building’s base, posing and taking photos. Nate hits a button on the Tesla’s dash, and the steel posts blocking off the narrow entranceway down into what I’m assuming is an underground parking lot disappear, sinking into the ground.
I was right; we wind our way down into a parking structure, and we’re suddenly surrounded by luxury cars. So many hundred-thousand dollar vehicles. Everywhere I look, there are Lamborghinis and Aston Martins. Bugattis and Fiskers. This must all be very old hat to Nate; he drives past row after row of sports cars without so much as glancing sideways. David would have a freaking field day in here.
Nate opens the door for me and helps me out, a gentleman dressed in gangster’s clothing. He guides me toward a bank of elevators, shaking his head as I reach out to hit the call button. “No, Ms. Dreymon. This way. Raphael has his own elevator.”
Nate leads me to an unmarked door painted industrial grey. There’s no lock to insert a key, only a small black box at head height next to the doo
rframe. Nate taps something into his cell phone, and a green light appears on the little black box, blinking slowly. He leans forward and looks into the green light, first his left eye and then his right. A loud clunking noise echoes around the garage, the sound of a bolt sliding back, and Nate then opens the door as if this is a totally normal way of passing a security check.
“After you,” he says, smiling, holding the door open for me. I walk through to find myself in a very small lobby area with pale peach and white marble underfoot, shot through with veins of glittering gold. The elevator in front of us only has one button, which Nate hits.
“This probably seems like a lot, doesn’t it?” he asks. “The building, the private elevator, all the secrecy? Unfortunately, things have to be this way. Raphael guards his privacy very fiercely. If the cloak and dagger stuff comes off as a little dramatic, then it’s because it really is. There’s a very good reason behind the security and safety we have in place. There are plenty of people in this city who don’t have Raphael’s best interests at heart.”
“And it’s your job to protect him from them?” I ask, curiosity getting the better of me.
He nods, watching the white light descend down the floor numbers to us. “Amongst other things. Driving. Managing his calendar. Making sure his many businesses are operating on an even keel. He likes to keep me busy,” he says, smiling. The elevator dings and the doors roll back to reveal the most luxurious elevator car I’ve ever seen. There’s an overstuffed sofa in there, dove grey carpet, and instead of mirrors everywhere, framed pieces of art hang from the walls. It resembles a very small, very tastefully decorated living room instead of a means of getting from one floor to another. Nate doesn’t step forward. He braces his hand against the wall and bends at the waist, pulling off his shoes.
“I’m gonna have to ask you to hand over those lovely pumps,” he says. “This elevator doesn’t open into a hallway. It opens into the penthouse itself.”
“Oh? I’m sorry, I don’t…”
Nate gives me an awkward smile. “Raphael’s old fashioned. He doesn’t allow people to wear shoes up there. Like, at all.”