“Ahn, ahn, someone has to spoil them, nau, and I am their only auntie.” She stepped into their five-bedroom villa on the outskirts of Richmond, a symbol of immigrants who had done well for themselves, carving out a satisfying chunk of American Dream pie.
Kemi walked into the waft of dodo—plantains—frying on the stove, and the sight of Kehinde sweating over them. Though they were identical twins, Kehinde matched Kemi’s curves with a leaner, more angular frame. Unlike Kemi’s, her face was dotted with stubborn pimples and weathered by stress.
“Welcome, Auntie-DC-Too-Cool-for-Us,” Kehinde belted out while flipping slices of plantain. Kemi hugged her from behind before settling her oversize purse on the kitchen island. Lanre followed her in. The kids had already grabbed their gifts and scattered off in different directions.
“Smells good. Jollof rice, abi?” Kemi asked, trying to confirm her wish. Kehinde nodded in response.
“So,” Kemi jumped right in. “I’m thinking of taking it.”
“Good for you!” Kehinde seemed elated.
“Taking what?” Lanre asked.
“The job in Sweden,” Kemi said.
“Sweden, ke? What is taking you all the way there?”
“One of the largest marketing firms in the world.”
“And how do you feel about it?” Kehinde chimed in, scooping out perfectly fried plantain.
“Nervous. A whole new country with a language I would have to learn. But they want to double my pay and promised me they will take care of everything—moving, car, apartment—everything.”
“You see how God works, ehn?” Kehinde launched into an impromptu sermon. “He has prepared greener pastures for you.”
“Made sweeter by double pay,” Lanre cackled, and they all laughed.
As she tucked into Kehinde’s always-on-point jollof rice with grilled chicken and dodo, her heart started pounding anew. Kemi felt embraced by their comfort. One she knew she could always retreat into whenever self-doubt grabbed her.
It scared Kemi sometimes, this odd shift where she could strut into boardrooms and walk out with million-dollar deals then crumble into herself if a guy she fancied responded lukewarmly. Kemi’s confidence was fragile despite appearances. One minute, she could feel like the most powerful woman in the world bringing in important clients to Andersen. The next minute, she could feel like shit when doors were held open for svelte women with bone-straight hair while being slammed in her face.
When it came to one-on-one flirtatious talk free of business speak, she cowered and became increasingly self-conscious, folding into herself like origami. That razor-sharp confidence that always looked great in dresses wrapping her curves became blunt and anemic. This dichotomy living within her—a killer at work, killed by romance—jumbled her emotions daily.
She didn’t have a problem attracting men. On the contrary, a day couldn’t pass by without someone pushing boundaries with her. An inappropriate squeeze here masked as an innocent bump, verbal innuendos there, and the slow walk of eyes from her face down to her ample cleavage and curvy hips before making the same violating trek back up to her plump lips.
She was tired of these visual assaults. She oozed something that attracted men the way a famished person stared down a Crock-Pot of beef stew. Comfort food that made you feel satisfied when home alone, yet one you’d never dish out to impress guests.
Once everyone scattered into different crevices around Kehinde’s house to lounge off lunch, Kemi locked herself in her regular guest room. The one with a Midwestern-sourced quilt thrown pretentiously over a rocking chair and floral prints that drowned its occupants in a mad world of peonies. Kemi often wondered what Kehinde was trying to prove, if she was physically wrapping herself in quintessential Americana and hiding away her Ankara prints in order to feel more American.
Kemi reached into her oversize handbag for her laptop, booted it up, and continued her investigation into Jonny von Lundin. The one she’d already started the second she’d gotten off that initial phone call with Ingrid Johansson. She had created a folder on her laptop marked “Sweden,” and in went photos and notes and anything else she could dig up about her new boss.
Getting past superficial content on Google had been difficult because the juicier bits of his life were written in Swedish. There were articles in English talking about this jet-setting entrepreneur who bucked tradition with refreshing nonchalance. The person who had eaten bread and butter while Kemi had eaten filet mignon for lunch was a man of few words and had an unnerving intensity about him.
Apparently, he never gave any interviews, but sources described him as both obsessively focused and unflatteringly dismissive. No one could really get a bead on Jonny von Lundin, the man who had inherited an empire but couldn’t seem to make it through a simple lunch without getting flustered.
She still wasn’t sure what to think, except she remembered him wriggling in his skin, tapping and fidgeting frantically. Gestures Ingrid had seemed accustomed to. Kemi sorted through hundreds of photos online. Standard business shots in crisp suits. A few more casual ones in dress shirts.
Business newspapers and journals covered von Lundin’s IKON marketing debacle in painstaking detail. She watched CNN panelists dissect problems at his company. One panelist in particular, an African American female professor from Howard University, had delivered a zinger: “Imagine you’re sitting in a soundproof room with your wife on the other side, making decisions on her behalf. We all know that never ends well.”
Then there were the assorted lists of most eligible bachelors, which also flashed across her screen multiple times. As Kemi dug deeper, she pulled out roots that shook her. Tabloids made intimations about his range of relationships over the years and suggested underlying fetishes or a teenage rebellion that never loosened its grip on him. Girlfriends from everywhere but Sweden. Red carpet appearances with his “spice of the week,” one tabloid described. A possessive arm around an impossibly proportioned waist here. A proud pose next to ridiculously long legs there. A man who clearly rolled in different circles with women spanning different shades of brown.
Kemi had been bowled over at what she’d stumbled across about his love life. What she’d witnessed in her two hours with him and Ingrid and what she’d been reading about him online seemed at odds. The dour-faced, albeit attractive, man who’d sat across from her hadn’t seemed capable of this level of “obsession” the press kept speculating about.
Based on his dating track record, Kemi decided she would not excuse him for making such glaring diversity blunders within his company.
Kemi dug deeper, unraveling articles in Swedish, using Google Translate to decipher them. Siblings. Two older sisters. They all shared the same look and coloring. One sister, Svea, was rumored to be having on and off flings with a member of the Swedish monarchy over the last ten years. Both sisters were well plugged into high-profile positions within the von Lundin empire. Jonny ran marketing, Svea ran the family’s publishing company, and the eldest, Antonia, ran their charity foundation.
When she’d searched for the job opening at von Lundin Marketing on its career page, nothing had come up. No public announcements for the director of global diversity and inclusion, and she wasn’t sure if Sweden ran human resources differently, or if this entrepreneur with his “refreshing nonchalance”—as one article said—had rules regularly waived for his insouciance.
Jonny had promised her full control when it came to diversity and inclusion on all their marketing campaigns and projects. Something she’d never quite had at Andersen. Not with Connor so close and always hovering. Jonny trusted her to bring his company into a space worthy of its global position when it came to voices, views, and vantage points. He’d flown all the way across an ocean to petition her for two hours.
By the time she was done digging into Jonny’s past, the sun was well below the h
orizon.
* * *
Kemi rang Ingrid on Wednesday.
“Det är Ingrid.”
“Ingrid! It’s me, Kemi,” Kemi said, her pitch inching one level higher than normal.
“Kemi!” Ingrid surpassed her pitch. “How are you today?”
“A lot on my mind that involves Sweden,” Kemi said. “Is this a good time to chat?”
“Yes, of course. I was just reading an article about a fire,” Ingrid said.
“Oh no! Hope no one was hurt.”
“Well, it says it was at an asylum center and someone died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Between you and me,” Ingrid’s voice dipped into an exaggerated whisper, “it’s a center that Jonny donates to anonymously, so obviously we’re invested in making sure everyone is okay there.”
“Really?” Kemi was surprised. She hadn’t pegged him as the philanthropic type.
“So?” Ingrid transitioned. “Any good news for us?”
“Um, yes, good news for you. Hopefully a beneficial relationship for me too,” Kemi added.
After a long pause, Kemi accepted Ingrid’s offer, which was received with a squealed “Yes!” That squeal fueled Kemi’s ego and fed it every good sensation that meant she was sought after and wanted.
Ingrid launched into a breathless series of next steps. She would be sending contracts, relocation packages, global shipping assistance, and steps for expediting Kemi’s work visa and residency. Ingrid’s exact words were, “Just send us a copy of your passport, and we’ll start the process for you!”
No one had ever said “just send me your passport.” Especially if that passport had been forest-green and bearing Nigeria’s golden emblem. It had taken Kemi and Kehinde fifteen years to transition from student visas to work visas to green cards and—finally—naturalization in the U.S.
Her new navy-blue passport, slipped into a metaphoric von Lundin envelope with the outline of Jonny’s puckered lips as its seal, was going to ease her transition into Sweden.
Kemi was expected to officially start the first week of August. She’d promised Andersen & Associates the month of May to tie up loose accounts and hand over duties to a temporary replacement. Von Lundin Marketing would fly her business class to Stockholm for a few days at the end of May to meet relevant colleagues and get an abridged tour of her new workplace.
This gave Kemi June and July to move her entire life and start afresh under a glorious Swedish summer. Kemi imagined all she could do in those months to make herself ready for her new life: a diet, new clothes, something that would help tame her curves.
“You were built for cuddling,” her friend Ngozi—Zizi—once teased, a joke she later recited whenever Kemi fell into her occasional funks and launched a campaign to lose a few more pounds despite having curves in all the right places.
“Stop it with diets, okay? You think that will change anything?” Ngozi pressed on, puzzling Kemi.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Look, you’re beautiful. You know this. Don’t let doubt crawl into your head. I’ve seen you at work, I know how you command a room. Heck, that creepy boss of yours wants your ass!” Ngozi continued, trying to lift her friend up from a place she ought not to be wallowing in.
“That’s the point, Zizi! I don’t want leering. He’s not going to go home and leave his wife for me,” Kemi burst out in frustration. Zizi stared at her, confused.
“Do you want him to?”
“No! Of course not.”
Zizi studied her friend. “Your standards are impossible, Kemi.”
Kemi laughed at the irony in her words. Her twin sister felt her standards were bottom-of-the-barrel low.
“No man will save you. For such a smart woman, you’re still swimming in fairy tales that make us feminists weep in shame,” Zizi continued. “He doesn’t exist, and he’s not coming to save you from your self-pity. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you’ll let a sane man into your life.”
Kemi regarded her friend of four years, angry that she always seemed to cut her with truth she wasn’t ready for. She had a handful of coddling friends who tap-danced around her feelings, while Zizi used direct words to bitch-slap her back into reality.
They had met when Kemi had just started at A&A. Ngozi was working for one of a few design firms Kemi’s company hired for marketing campaigns. Kemi had been enamored by her fellow Nigerian, who had strutted in with an unapologetic, larger-than-life Afro and no makeup. Ngozi had been calm and measured in her responses, pinning each person with an all-encompassing stare that momentarily shut everyone else out of the room as she gave each interrogator her undivided attention.
All Kemi knew was that she wanted to be like Ngozi when she “grew up,” even though they were the same age. She immediately scheduled a lunch date with Ngozi after that meeting, and for weeks to follow, they met for lunch every Thursday. Those lunch dates turned into inviting each other out to parties. Those parties became getaways to Paris, Aruba, and Brazil. And those getaways led to Kemi ugly-crying as Ngozi’s maid of honor in Jamaica. After her destination wedding, they resumed their Thursday lunch dates.
Zizi was often impatient with Kemi’s indecisiveness. “Do something or go home,” she’d always breathe down Kemi’s neck. She was tired of listening to Kemi complain about Connor. “Fuck him, or report him—just make a decision!” Zizi would snap. When Kemi mulled over whether or not to return a guy’s call for fear of coming off as desperate, Zizi would snap again, “Call him, or die single. Your call!”
For all their closeness, she hadn’t initially told Zizi about the von Lundin offer. Mostly because she wanted to come to Zizi ready with her decision. She wanted to show her friend she could be decisive without her prodding—even if she did still need input from Kehinde.
Kemi wasn’t sure she wanted to work for Jonny von Lundin. In fact, she suspected she really didn’t want to work for him because he had freaked her out with his random fidgeting. Besides, she feared he needed her so he could tick off the diversity checkbox on his top management team.
But Kemi was sure she wanted to leave the U.S. because she was tired of being beef stew. Or, according to Zizi, “built for warming a man’s bed and nothing more.”
A few days after accepting Jonny’s offer, Kemi finally shared her news with Ngozi, spilling all of the details of her pending move with elation over their Thursday lunch tradition. Zizi quietly observed and listened while rolling a fork through overpriced spaghetti Bolognese at a restaurant lined with men in business suits.
When Kemi stopped to collect her breath, looking for signs of acknowledgment from her confidante, all Zizi did was shrug and say, “I’m happy for you,” in a flat voice before lifting a fork heavy with spaghetti to her mouth, avoiding Kemi’s eyes.
Serving Kemi that lie sealed this lunch date as their last.
BRITTANY-RAE
Brittany decided not to google him. Not yet. Though temptation dug claws into her, she chose not to dig back. Because googling Jonny meant guilt scraping at her relationship with Jamal.
A war of betrayal had already begun waging within her, tearing at the crusade she had started fifteen years earlier against the likes of Samuel Beaufount. Every pale face since then was his. Black muscle, preferably solid from sport, became her rock and dwelling place. Therapy over the years had held her hand and pulled her off the ledge of blame. None of it had been her fault, her therapist had tried convincing her. Beaufount, who had promised her the world, was the sole owner of his deeds.
Now she was allowing this white stranger to entice her out on her one night off before she had to grab the first shift out of town the next day.
She pulled out her phone. Eight thirteen p.m. Lights sparkled all around Canary Wharf, one of London’s newer posh districts fille
d with skyscrapers, where lavish apartments battled for space with financial powerhouses. It was also her least favorite part of town. Emotionless towers of glass and metal, as she often described it.
She’d been standing at an intersection near the restaurant for the last five minutes, pressed up against a wall, pondering if she should or shouldn’t go in as she saw him choose a table by the window. He clasped his hands together, wringing them continuously as if lost in thought. She couldn’t make out his attire, but his hair was brushed back off his face. Now he seemed to be blowing into those clasped hands, as if warming himself from an invisible draft. He occasionally craned his neck out the window, clearly looking for her, waiting for her to show up and share his table.
But some force kept her firmly pressed against that wall, and she couldn’t get herself to inch closer to Yamamoto, the Japanese restaurant he had chosen, where she was supposed to have met him—she glanced down at her phone again—fifteen minutes ago.
She brushed a nervous palm down her buttercup-colored spring dress and adjusted the light-brown leather jacket she was wearing before turning to the man at the window once more. She stood rooted because she had no excuse to take one more step toward a man guaranteed to upend the consummate life she’d built with Jamal.
Unless Jonny was the excuse she needed.
In spite of her vacillation, she propelled herself toward the restaurant, pulling her bag closer. A valet rushed to open the door for her, and the maître d’ led her to Jonny’s table.
As they approached, Jonny shot to his feet, fists bunched at his sides.
“Mr. von Lundin, your guest, Ms. Johnson.” The maître d’ handed her off to Jonny before half twirling and vanishing into the background once more.
Jonny took her in, eyes never leaving her face, never roaming as she stood in front of him. She broke their wordless standoff with a weak “Hello” and realized right then she shouldn’t have come.
“I was worried you wouldn’t come,” he said. “Please join me.” She half expected him to run around the table to pull out her chair in a chivalrous fashion, but he didn’t. Jonny waited until she’d seated herself before reclaiming his seat. He’d chosen the most visible table in the house, perching them like boutique-store mannequins in the window for all to see. They probably looked the part too: Brittany’s statuesque frame balancing his suave look. This time, he dressed in a navy-blue shirt over darker blue jeans and sand-colored suede oxfords, watch on his wrist like a trusty sidekick. The less he wore, the more he reeked of privilege to Brittany. He didn’t need to physically scream to the world he was wealthy.
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