The Thunder Beneath Us

by Nicole Blades

“Not a game. I don’t know what you’re going to propose; I’m maintaining a holding pattern. Can’t fault a girl. You Hollywood types are freaky.”

  “Right. There’s always the creep factor to consider. I get it. Me being a Hollywood type and everything, it’s probably not going to help with what I’m about to propose. I mean, it’s kind of far-out.”

  “Why, are you about to propose propose?”

  “Yo. Not that far-out. But it does involve a hotel.”

  “A hotel.”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s a long story and it’s boring. Studio shit. Courtship for contract re-ups. My agent, Shawna, only told me about it two hours ago. Look, it’s ridiculous and excessive and whatever the opposite of flattery is, but I’m doing it, apparently, to keep the waters calm.”

  “Wait, are they naming a penthouse suite after you or something?”

  He laughed—a giggle, really, covered over in a breathy chuckle that slipped through his nose. It was cute, wiggling its way through the phone to the soft middle part of me just below my heart, and I knew I was about to say yes to whatever he was about to say next. I was in the net, trapped. That laugh of his—infectious doesn’t quite describe it. The way it would start, in the base of his throat, tickling him as it rose up to his nose and then dancing on his lips. I liked when he would let it fly, loose and wild, his mouth open, actual ha-ha’s tumbling out, his shoulders shaking and his head flopping off to the side. There was something so honest and joyful in it that left you surrendered, open, willing.

  When I got to the hotel, Grant answered the door wearing the classic plush bathrobe along with a pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses.

  “Are you seriously answering the hotel room door naked?” I said, stepping into the room despite my clear disapproval. “If there’s a half-drunk bottle of Jack and some small coke mountain piled on a glass-top table in here . . . then congratulations on being a total cliché, sir.”

  Grant smiled, big and crooked. “You don’t mince a word, do you?”

  “Well, do you blame me? You invite me to your publicist-arranged, studio contract, carrot-on-a-stick thing and then answer the door nude.”

  “Bathrobe,” he said and tightened the sash around his middle like a miffed housewife.

  “Fine. Almost nude, in a bathrobe.” I stepped in a little farther and scoped the grand suite. Whatever wasn’t white was chrome, and the windows were as tall as the walls. It was the picture of luxury and excess, and it was inviting.

  “I think once you slip this robe over yourself, you’re going to want to be nude—sorry, almost nude too.”

  “Is that right? Just a complete panty-dropper, huh?”

  “Feeling is believing, homie. I even took out my contacts—like my eyes wanted to be on that freedom flow too. Go in there,” he said, making an easy motion with his head toward the wide bathroom. “There’s another one—it’s your size, smaller. I hung it on a hanger behind the door. Just slip it on, even over your clothes, and—you know what? No spoilers. You’re your own woman. Go in there. Take responsibility for your life. I’m going to order up some French fries since that’s kind of the only way you can really enjoy cocaine and Jack Daniel’s. That’s what I read in my Hollywood Clichés Handbook,” he said, his face straight and staring right at me.

  I shook my head and bit back my grin. “All right, then. Let me investigate this overpowering terry cloth.”

  “Actually, it’s bamboo.”

  I narrowed my eyes at Grant and he broke. His giggle-chuckle pushed its way out and attached its cheerful self to my sleeve. And that was it: the marked moment when this man, with his singular laugh and movie-star chisel and helpless heart, descended into my brain, into my being, and started to build a home there.

  “Those fries, they almost taste like the ones from Harvey’s,” I said, pushing the tray toward the foot of the huge bed. “Actually, they kind of remind me of the fries at Mikes restaurant—did you guys have Mikes in Vancouver?”

  Grant shook his head. It was so slight, it could have been a nod or shrug. He was lying back, propped by pillows, and his robe had opened all the way down to his belly button. I wanted to run my hand along the ridges of his cut-up abs. It looked smooth, taut. A flash of heat moved from my ears down to my ankles; it tickled. I smiled, but Grant didn’t. His face was straight and serious, but not steely. He leaned toward me, resting his head on the edge of my pillow pile, and I met him there. The kiss started soft. Grant’s warm hand was sliding up the inside of my robe, along my leg, stopping just below my waist and pressing his fingers into the flesh, clutching at my hip bone. His lips tasted exactly as I wanted them to and his breath was hot and a little sweet. I felt that kiss; felt him everywhere. I didn’t want it to end.

  He pulled away first. Asked if I was okay. “I don’t want you to feel like I’m forcing you into this. I mean, I am a Hollywood weirdo—or was it freak?” He pulled back some more and winked. And I actually liked it. I liked his corny wink. I liked him.

  “We should update your name from Hollywood Weirdo to Prom Night Tease. I think you just gave me blue balls.”

  He laughed his laugh. “No, no. Never that. I’m just trying to . . . I don’t know”—he paused and repositioned himself, sliding deeper into his bed—“slow things down.”

  I shuffled over, away from him, and nestled into the bed as well. “Okay. So, no more kissing?”

  “No, no. Most def kissing. Yeah, lots of that. Like, so much that. I just . . . I guess I just want to talk a little bit. Does that sound wack?”

  “Not at all. I like talking. You probably figured that out.”

  “Yeah. I did. You do. I like it.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling for a stretch. “This is going to sound . . .” He paused even longer.

  Something bubbled up in my chest, a strange need to rescue him from the awkward moment brewing right there next to us. It was this weird pull toward him. I wanted him to feel safe and at ease; I almost reached out to grab his hand and clench it in mine. Instead, I just started talking.

  “You would never know this unless I told you, but I went to an all-girls Catholic high school. I actually wanted to go. It was this ancient convent that was completely converted into a school. In my second-to-last year there, a new student came. She was a boarder from northern Quebec named Marie-Claude. Poor Marie-Claude Bouchard, spinal bifida leaving her with full-length leg braces on both deformed limbs. She had to use the rickety elevator that was reserved for the staff and any disabled students, which was just her at the time. A handful of us were tasked with escorting Marie-Claude on the elevator to her dorm room, to the gym on the lower level, cafeteria, chapel, everywhere. There was a schedule and we would ride along with her, sometimes chatting about our classes and listening to the weird clanging sounds of the old counterweight system, hoping it would never fail us like it had Kira, the time she got trapped in that box for two hours with Marie-Claude. Kira had to change Marie-Claude’s adult diaper. Scarred for life, Kira was.”

  Grant’s face warmed up again, and I could almost see the weight of whatever was happening in his world lifting off his body. He was rapt and inching his way over to me on the bed as he listened to each word leaving my mouth.

  “Anyway, Marie-Claude had this journal she took with her most everywhere. It had drawings, magazine pages, and cutouts, and there was a thin strip of paper on the front cover that said For the Shitty Days. Her best friend from home made it for her, she had told each of us at different times on our elevator rides. One morning, I found the journal left behind in the bathroom and I flipped through it. But then I decided to write in it. I scrawled a bunch of vile shit about her, like how she smelled like piss and sour milk. Just mean for no reason. I felt bad about it immediately after I did it, and when Marie-Claude’s handler for the day found it and showed it to her—that was pretty awful. I never admitted that I did it. I actually told myself that it’s just what teena
gers do, that being horrible at being a person was necessary for us to figure how to be better. But deep down I think I knew that wasn’t true. I think I knew that there was something else in me, something black and menacing, arching its way up to the surface.” I took a breath, unsure that I wanted to continue. But the words, they were coming, and I knew there was no way I could stop them. “And this thing inside me, it stayed there, showing up later, unwanted but sticking around anyway, for the shitty days and beyond.”

  “Jesus, Best. You can’t hang onto things you did as a kid. If we all did that, we’d suffocate. We’d stop functioning and choke on all of it. I wouldn’t even be here if I stayed fixed on everything from my shitty childhood.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I wouldn’t be here; I’d be dust.” Grant propped himself up on his elbows. “I was a really unhappy kid. Moody, sad, miserable most days. For a long time, I didn’t think I would make it. I didn’t think I could do life, you know? But my mom”—he shook his head—“she wasn’t down with that. She saw a different version. Like, she could see the pages laid out before they were even written. She hooked me up with someone—a therapist—and things started to just look better.”

  “Sounds like she was an extraordinary woman, your mother.”

  Grant dropped flat to his back again. “That’s what I was getting ready to say before . . . Tomorrow. It’s my mom’s birthday tomorrow. She’s been gone twelve years and it still doesn’t seem real. I know in my brain that it’s true: she’s gone, she’s not in our house, she’s not locked away in the garage in her studio, she’s not on this earth anymore, but large parts of me just won’t believe it. It’s like I can’t believe it. I can’t accept it.”

  “Because it’s unacceptable,” I said, and pulled myself close to him.

  He turned his body toward me, our eyes lining up exactly, and he wrapped his hand around my wrist. “You’re right. That’s what it is: It’s unacceptable.”

  We stayed that way, as if looking into a mirror, quiet and fading, resting on each other’s calm for what could have been an hour or three. And all I could think was the whole thing— the kiss, the bathrobes, French fries and beer and pillows—I wanted it to last forever and let everything else blur away. But it could never be that, and I knew this. It could never be happy and consumed and dazzling. Those things aren’t meant for me. And poor Grant will soon know this too. Like everyone else who’s tried in earnest to pull me in, pull me closer, he’ll figure out that I’m not worthy of any of it.

  Ty—you in BK?

  depends

  Need your beauty services. Plus, I have Stoli.

  Say that 1st next time homegirl

  Bring cranberry juice too, pls!

  My bruno maglis don’t mix with bodega

  Fashion fool! Just hurry up. Kendra’s waiting on me.

  Time with Tyson, even when we’re both sober, is always good. He makes me laugh until my face is sore, and somehow still pulls off minor miracles with my makeup looks. He’s my best-kept beauty secret. We’ve had some of our grandest moments sitting on the floor of the cramped disaster zone known as my closet, digging through forgotten fabrics and somehow finding treasures. But we rarely talked about Grant back then. And Grant knew he was the third wheel when he tried to squeeze into our vodka-laced cackling closet sessions.

  When things fell apart for Grant, we left that day, raced up to Connecticut to his uncle’s. And when I got back home alone, Tyson didn’t phone or text me back, he came right over—within the hour of my distress call. Tyson sat with me on the illegal roof deck. He cooked his grandmother’s gumbo for me. He watched back-to-back-to-back Golden Girls episodes and played Stevie Wonder for me on his iPhone, splitting his earbuds and getting me to sing along with him out loud. And he never once uttered Grant’s name. But we both felt something wedged between us on the living-room floor, like a ghost neither of us could see or even be sure really existed.

  Temptation returns. I want to call Grant. This space everyone keeps saying he needs—that I need and we need—I want to fill it with pillows and build a King-style fort and crawl inside of it and eat dry cereal and kiss and read thick, slick magazines, and call in sick to everything.

  CHAPTER 3

  Before I can clear the elevator door, Trinity pounces. “Did you hear about Miyuki?”

  I raise my brows, then my Starbucks cup to her eyeline.

  “She got promoted. Senior Ed.”

  “Miyuki Butler?” I bark before saying it again, quieter and checking over both my shoulders as we continue down the hall.

  “I know; it’s crazy,” Trinity whispers. She grabs my free arm and stops me from walking. “I’ve been here longer than that girl and do way more work by lunch than she gets done all fucking day.”

  It’s true. Trinity has put in serious work at Millhause-Steig. Four years under JK—that’s a decade in editorial-assistant time—and before that, she was an intern in Nikolai Steig’s office. Oz himself. Most kids quit that post and run screaming like freed demons after six weeks. My Titi, only daughter of hippies turned lawyers, held it down for eighteen long months.

  The muffled knocks and thumps from random high heels streaming by us make Trinity look even more anxious. She keeps scanning the hallway, forcing her hot words through the side of a clenched jaw; lips folded extra-thin. I nudge her and we move into the meditation room. It’s a dim, padded closet near the pantry primarily used for crying. But crying has never been my thing, and doing it at work just seems reckless, even hidden away in a closet. I use the room when I need to call home to Montreal. The thick silence and darkness of the stale room somehow make it easier for me to talk to my parents. I don’t have to look at anything when I’m in there; my eyes won’t wander to my bookshelf or to the old tea tin filled with my green pens or my absurd, expensive purse hanging on its very specific hook. And I don’t hear anyone laughing just beyond the door. I can focus on my father’s words, listen closer for what he means to say. There have been times—rare—that I even heard something like joy underneath his stories. I don’t think I would have caught it if I weren’t in this dull closet.

  “Okay. Run the bullet on this.” I close door behind us and set my cup on the grimy ledge. The tea is already cold and I already know from Trinity’s damp forehead that I’m not going to be in the mood for sipping anything after she gives me the full story on Miyuki Butler.

  “It was Joan’s idea, from what I understand,” Trinity says. I want to give her a tissue, my coat sleeve, scarf—anything to wipe that sweaty brow, but she’s about to unleash her tucked-away Southie accent and go on a speed-taking blitz. Mattified skin won’t change a thing here. “Total fucking bullshit. Gawd-dam fucking bullshit. Four ye-ahs, four fucking ye-ahs I’m doing this, shovelin’ awl the shit, and this bitch comes awn boawd—”

  “Wait. Hold up. Did JK just go along with this?”

  “Yeah, kind of. She’s been backseat on a lot lately.” Trinity frowns at me. “You’ve seen her at the meetings. What do you think, Joan? Let’s check with Joan and circle back. I want to hear Joan’s two cents on this. At first I thought it was about making her feel welcomed and needed those first weeks, but now—Jesus Murphy, it’s like Joan is full-awn runnin’ this shit.”

  “Let’s focus, T. Facts only. Do we know what sections of the book Miyuki Butler will be handling? Or will there be a duty split with any of the other editors, the effective ones, like maybe, Isabelle?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Does Robot—uh, Joan’s assistant—have any intel?”

  “No. That idiot is still trying to figure out how voice mail works. She’s always got a shit-ton of questions about everything every day, all day.” Trinity has no tolerance for slowpokes. “Hey, are you going to be okay?” she says.

  I can’t fix my face. I know it’s contorted. “This is just . . .”

  “Bullshit, I know. I know. Anyway, I should get back. JK’s husband is getting some award this week and she’s sp
eaking at NYU on the same day, so I’m basically on beta-blockers duty. She’s probably pinging me now.” Trinity cracks the door and slips her head out, looking left and right. “Clear,” she says, glancing back at me. “Drinks later?”

  “I think that’s our only choice.”

  We part and I beeline it to my office, slide the frosted door shut. I’m among the lucky few to have an office. It’s actually a cubicle boxed in by thin walls and frosted glass. Smoke and mirrors.

  My cell phone practically jumps into my trembling palm, and I’m jabbing the keys like it’s whack-a-mole.

  “Go for Kendra,” she says. Kendra never offers a simple hello.

  “I want to stab her neck with a dull pencil.”

  “Hello? Who is this?”

  “Kendra, I’m not in the mood.”

  “Robot again?”

  “Yes. She’s just making it all terrible. All of it.”

  “What’d she do this time?”

  “Just woke up breathing.”

  “Best, I know it’s not funny, but the intense hatred you feel for this woman? It’s pretty fucking funny.”

  “She resents me. She resents what I’m about, what I represent: a young, black woman sitting at the table, being noticed, being heard. I’m a sharper, smarter, cooler her, and she resents me. I’m out here highlighting her inadequacies every day. Of course she resents me. Please. I’m sure that’s been bumped up to hate at this point.”

  “But wasn’t she in the newspaper game for years? And she’s married to that old sports columnist—what’s his name? Gordon Gartrell or whatever. That’s got to buy her some cred, no?”

  “It’s Gordon Gregory, and no. It doesn’t buy her shit. Her ideas are wack. Mine are perceptive. She’s this stiff, boring, unoriginal, navy-blue suit, and I am color, wit, and charm. I know what this audience wants to read about, what they care about. No one has to explain what the Bulgarian love lock is to me.”

  “Wait, please tell me that you’re making that part up. The Bulgarian love lock? Gross. Who had to explain that to her?”