The Wrong Mr. Darcy

by Evelyn Lozada

  As Hara followed the action on the court and took notes, the women around her got louder. While there was a lot of shouting at the players on the court, and at the refs, there were also plenty of side conversations centered around gossip, especially a rejected engagement, and a woman worried that her son was gay and her husband wouldn’t take it well, and someone else complained about balancing the multiple babies and their mamas attached to her man.

  Hara had thought these women wearing expensive clothes and jewelry, most of them wealthy and spending their time in trendy restaurants and penthouses, would have different conversations than the rest of America. But no.

  “Why didn’t you invite Katya to your boutique opening? You hurt her feelings.”

  “Why should I be nice to that ho? She hits on Steven every time I leave the room. Besides, her weave stinks. She needs to wash, the nasty bitch.”

  “Why you always gotta get so shady? Can’t you go one day without insulting somebody? It don’t always have to be messy round you.”

  “What are you talking about? She’s not here.”

  The basketball wives and girlfriends were dealing with as much daily drama over personality conflicts and mundane bullshit as everybody else. One big difference from the people in Hara’s small world, however, was that these women rarely put up with shit for long, especially if they felt disrespected. Many of them had poured a lot of time and effort and self-sacrifice into maintaining their ballplayers’ careers and finances, and they were willing to throw down to protect themselves and their families. Their men were warriors on the court, but these ladies battled it out in high heels in the back rooms, doing their part in making sure status quo remained status quo.

  As the game progressed, both Charles and Derek were shining stars, pure grace on the court. O’Donnell had not shown up in the suite, much to Hara’s relief, but the other owners in attendance were vocal in support of their rookie, happy to see him slinging hash now that he was finally off the bench.

  Hara wrote down everything they said. Who was she to look a gift owner in the mouth? Tina had only made her promise to not say anything about the WAGs.

  The halftime buzzer rang. The game had been going at a breakneck pace, and ended with a lobbed shot to tie it.

  Thank God she hadn’t decided to fly out that day. This was a great game to cover.

  She stared at her notes, surprised at her feelings. Earlier, she’d been wallowing in self-pity, but now that she was embracing this time and doing what she loved, she felt good again. She would continue to prove herself. No one else was going to do it for her and that was okay.

  The women and men in the suite turned their attention to food, drinks, and the weather. The news stations reported scattered road detours and unrelenting rain.

  Kitty’s phone rang. She argued in Italian for a few minutes and then hung up. “Bella, I am sorry to abandon you, my father says I must go.”

  Hara, bewildered, asked, “Your father?”

  “Si. He says my driver is waiting for me and that I am to come straight home. He fears I will be trapped here.” She snorted. “If the players are trapped here, I’m not sure I’d mind.” The heiress wrapped herself in a Burberry cloak. “You can come home with me. Or would you stay?”

  Once again, Hara wanted to ask Kitty just how old she was, but bit her tongue. She’d never had a dad around to make decisions for her. But, if she were worth millions and millions of dollars, Hara probably would have someone paying close attention to her, too. She looked back down at her notes. Would she give up on this story? Or see it through? “I … I guess I’ll stay. I’m sure I can get an Uber, or even walk if I have to. Naomi’s is only a few blocks away, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  “Ciao, then.”

  At the end of the third quarter, Hara shivered, a chill running up her back. She glanced away from the game, checking out the room behind her. And froze, a deer in the headlights.

  Madeline and O’Donnell had come in and were now talking to the men who were part of the owners’ cooperative. She shrank down into the seat but before she could turn away, Madeline glanced up and locked eyes with her. The assistant’s mouth shaped a surprised O, which would have been funny if Hara didn’t feel so much anger crawling up out of her stomach, a feeling that increased exponentially as the assistant approached and then stood over her.

  “What are you doing here?” Madeline asked with a constipated grimace. “I thought you’d flown home.”

  “Umm.” You are a hateful woman. “Flight was canceled due to weather. I’ve been staying with a friend.”

  “No offense, but how did you get in here?”

  No offense. Right. Hara sat up straight, tapped her shoe with her middle finger. “I walked in. The planes aren’t working, but my feet are.”

  “I’m sorry, you are going to have to leave.”

  “I—”

  Tina surprised them both from a few seats down, yawning loudly and stretching her arms out dramatically. Then she said, “Unclench your pearls, Madeline. She’s fine. I invited her.”

  “Ah, Tina.” Madeline crossed her arms and smirked. “From what I hear, you might not be the best person to be handing out passes to our VIP room. Didn’t Charles dump you?”

  Tina tossed her hair and hooted, but then leaned back, stretching her legs out in front of her. The WAGs around Tina angled in, but she just said, casually, “You are treading on some thin ice, little miss secretary.” She twiddled her fingers lazily in the air by her head. “Buh-bye.”

  Madeline rolled her eyes and stomped off in three-inch heels, rejoining the owners. She whispered something to O’Donnell. They both stared at Hara for a second then went back to their nation-building conversation.

  “Anybody who is not a friend to Madeline is a friend of mine,” Tina said loudly to Hara, uncaring that the assistant could hear her. A number of other women chimed in, grumbling in agreement, though most of them wisely kept their comments out of earshot.

  Hara nodded her thanks.

  The next hour was stressful. As Madeline stared daggers at Hara’s back, the game remained tight, back and forth. In the last portion of the fourth quarter, the Fishers were up, but only by two points. Tempers ran high. Hara had stopped writing down most of what the owners had to say, it not being fit for public consumption.

  Then, with only three minutes left, Charles did something shocking.

  The floor general shoved his own teammate out of the way to get to the ball. Derek had just rebounded the ball and was stepping back for a shot when Charles used one hand to push him to the side, hard, and plucked the ball from his hands before driving back to the basket, swarmed by the opposition. The foul whistle blew.

  Hara thought maybe Charles was called for jumping his own man, but instead, the foul was called on the other team. How did the refs not see that? Maybe they couldn’t believe it, either. Charles, who should have been penalized, instead set up at the free-throw line while Derek slowly took his place at the bottom of the key, glowering; Hara could feel the heat on the top floor.

  “Whoa. That was crazy,” the woman in Juicy pink said.

  Tina snorted. “What? You mean big Charles hogging the ball? Not surprising.”

  Everyone around them grew quiet.

  “Come on. It’s no shocker Charles got a problem with loyalty. When shit gets real, it’s all about him.” Tina sucked her teeth. “That’s why he needs me, to keep him focused.”

  Hara took Tina’s critique with a grain of salt. His move on Derek looked purposeful, but there had to be more to the story. She didn’t believe Charles would do something like that unless there was a good reason.

  The six-foot-seven point guard wiped the sweat from his forehead and toed the line at the top of the key, his arm going up for a shot when, suddenly, the lights flickered.

  Then, the lights went out.

  A silence descended with the darkness.

  CHAPTER 12

  Do not give way to useless alarm …


  —Pride and Prejudice

  The dark, heavy air crashed in on her. Screams from below broke the initial hush and swelled. Women and men in the room with Hara yelped and cursed in alarm. She sucked the cloying blackness into her lungs, and let out a distressed grunt.

  What if this was a terrorist attack? Her mind went into gibberish mode as she clenched the armrest of her chair. Should she get under it? Would she fit? She felt her hair turning white.

  Hara forced her head back and breathed in deep. Breathed out. Taking another shaky breath, she realized the power outage was most likely due to the big storm. No more catastrophizing, Hara Isari.

  “What the fuck?” shouted a teenage boy behind her. “I lost my last life!”

  A sound like a cackle burst from Hara’s throat. She cut off the weird, nervous laugh before it could grow and become unstoppable.

  She hated the dark. And it wasn’t just that she was blind—it was also that the radios and the fans and the clocks and air-conditioning and everything else electrical had shut down, creating a void, a lack of background noise that would normally be humming behind the muffled shouts and screams from below.

  Was this what it was like for her daddy? Lying on his bunk at night?

  The arena was in blackness at most for fifteen seconds before generators kicked in. A fifteen-second eternity. An orange glow illuminated the stadium stairwells and the doorways, and a few emergency lights cast a weak light from overhead. The huge stadium remained mostly in shadows but at least people could see now. She and others let out loud sighs. Thank God.

  * * *

  Derek, standing at the edge of the key, pressed his eyes shut and clenched his fists, trying to control his rage while listening to Charles dribble on the free-throw line, preparing himself for the shot.

  What the hell? Charles totally dicked me on purpose.

  There was a collective gasp from thousands of people around them. His eyes popped open. He found himself in a shocking blackness, thick like soup, with some parts consisting of a darker, shifting blackness that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  What in the hell? he thought again, much more adamantly this time.

  Derek felt the Chicago point guard next to him twist around, a sweaty arm brushing against him. “Dude, what is this?” the player growled. The other guys on the court were muttering and cursing.

  “I don’t know, man. I don’t like it.” Seconds ticked by. Should I just be standing here? He felt stupid, unable to make a decision.

  The generators whirred to life and emergency lights clicked on. Relief shot into his veins. But then the security guards flooded into the arena and the relief turned to ice. Some of the guards circled around him and the others on the floor, while others were lining up at the team benches. No one had guns drawn, but their hands were on their belts.

  I mean, seriously—what in the hell!

  * * *

  Hara almost whooped when the generator lights kicked in, but she clamped her lips shut in time. Upstairs and down, people were standing up in their seats, staring around with wide eyes, trying to decide what to do. That included Hara. She peered down into the gloomy arena and then back around the suite. What is this? What am I supposed to be doing?

  The owners were on their cell phones, trying to reach maintenance or anybody with a clue of what was happening. After a minute, O’Donnell broke from the pack, pushed open the doors, and went to the elevator, stabbing at the flat buttons in the dark wall panel.

  “Sir. Sir! You can’t take the elevator.” The concierge hurried after him and pulled on his sleeve. “You’ll have to take the stairs.”

  “Fuck me.”

  He came back in. Jerking a thumb toward an emergency exit door on the other side of the room, he and two other men pushed rudely through a milling clot of women and strode out, presumably to fix the issue.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the massive loudspeaker in the middle of the arena blared, loud even through the glass encasing their suite. “We apologize for the disturbance.” The announcer sounded as bewildered as everyone else in the audience looked, thousands of faces lifted to the speakers in the ceiling. The majority of the fans quieted and sat back down, hunched in their seats, wanting to hear what answers the voice of God could provide.

  Madeline went to the bay windows and slid open one of the panels. They could hear the arena noises clearer now, the mass shuffling and cursing.

  A mechanical squeal shrilled and rebounded off the walls. “Ahh!” yelled sixteen thousand people, clapping their hands over their collective ears, including Hara.

  “Sorry, sorry!” said the frantic announcer. “Er, it looks like we had a power outage.”

  Simultaneously, at least a hundred class clowns from around the arena shouted out, “No shit!”

  Ripples of laughter followed. The merriment probably would have lasted longer, had not even more security begun to funnel out onto the court and take up position by the player benches and along the wall under the basket where Charles and the others were clustered.

  The women around her, dressed in Gucci and Prada and anxiety, pressed close enough to the box windows to leave nose prints. And boob prints. There was a lot of nervous sweating happening in this room. “What’s goin’ on? What’s with the security? Why are they circling the wagons?”

  Fans who had sat down popped back up, wondering the same thing. Even though there were a few minutes left in the game, some ticket holders began streaming out the exits. The rumbling from the crowd grew louder.

  “One minute, please!” said the announcer. “We should be able to resume play in just one minute.”

  It had gone quiet in the owners’ box, with the ladies talk-whispering, watching their men closely. The intercom and radio link that had provided the live feed to what was happening on the Fishers’ bench no longer worked. Everyone watched as Tina barged up to the only admin left in the room.

  “What’s going on, Madeline?”

  The executive assistant, normally pale, glowed in the dim light. She cleared her throat. “I don’t know why the power is out.”

  “I am talking about the freaking gun show down there! What are they doing?”

  “Oh. Oh, that. The organization is just making sure our assets are safe, just in case. There’s nothing wrong. Company policy. If they were in immediate danger, the players would have been removed from the court already.” Madeline left the windows, headed toward the bar. “Jimmy, I could use a shot of tequila.”

  Tina glared daggers at the assistant and then huddled with her girls.

  I am pretty sure this has never happened before. Hara breathed in, out. If nothing else, the event would make an interesting story. That is, if someone could get the lights back on.

  She still had cell service, though, and her data.

  Googling “Boston power outage,” she came across a live stream from a local news station. “Boston is experiencing record flooding in the North End and the downtown waterfront. With a now-twelve-foot high tide in the harbor, and over four inches of rain in the last two hours, we are experiencing a three-foot storm surge.”

  Others clustered around her. She turned it up.

  “Higher than expected winds and floodwaters have caused sporadic power outages around the city, and the waters have reached the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a rarity in Boston. The Aquarium T stop is closed due to high water and several buildings have been compromised along Atlantic Avenue and Commercial Street, with significant water intrusions. Causeway Street, near the arena, is closed. The police are urging residents to shelter in place and stay off the roads.

  “Stay tuned. We’ll be back with more on what is quickly becoming the storm of the century.”

  “Jesus.” Tina frowned. “That’s why the power is out? The flooding is right here!”

  The WAGs were agitated all over again.

  Hara, on the other hand, immediately felt the tight grip of terror loosen, her cognitive powers gelling back into shape. She had proof now
. No zombies, no men with guns. Flooding was slow; she had time to think and deal with it. Not to mention, every time the news stations at home used the term “storm of the century,” the hyperbole was laughable. She was sure it was the same in Boston.

  One of the women kicked off her high heels, picked them up along with her purse. “I gotta get my driver. We outta here. Who’s with me? I’ve got room.” Barefoot, the player’s girlfriend moved quickly to the door and down the stairs. Others followed. Most of them kept on their shoes.

  What should she do?

  There was another short, high-pitched squeal overhead. “Okay, folks…” A well-modulated, car-salesman voice rolled out of the speaker system, replacing the squeaky, stressed-out announcer from moments before. “We’re going to have to call it a night. We are calling the game as it stands.”

  “Boooo. Boooo. Booooooo.”

  “The Fishers organization apologizes, but this is for your own safety. We are being asked to evacuate the building. As you leave, be aware there are rising floodwaters on neighboring streets between us and the harbor. It is in everybody’s best interest to vacate the premises quickly but calmly. Calmly! Please follow the exit signs. Check the website for compensation tomorrow. Drive carefully, folks.”

  Hara gathered up her notes and her jacket. She longingly eyed the bottles of liquor behind the bar, but Madeline was chatting with the bartender, and much of the room had cleared out. Better to slide out, unnoticed. She’d call Naomi from downstairs.

  In the stairwell, the backup lights were out in some places, only dim flickers in others. Hara’s flashlight phone app provided plenty of light to see the stairs in front of her, but seemed to make the darkness at the back of the deep shadows move with her. She could hear others in the private stairwell, below and above her, yet she had an overpowering sense of isolation, felt surrounded by danger. She forced herself to keep moving. The skin on the back of her neck crawled. Every scary movie she’d ever watched had prepared her for this moment; she checked behind her every other second, sure that Chucky or the girl from The Ring were inching up on her. She wanted to conquer the dark stairwell with bravery, like in the Langston Hughes poem, but symbolic courage and persistence were a hell of a lot easier than facing literal terror. She almost peed her pants when someone opened a door a few floors up. She could hear heavy footsteps on the stairs above her.