I told Dr. Monfries about it, about my mother being this sad shell, in our last session before I left for university. We hadn’t spoken about my mother in a little while—he preferred that we focused on my “own lens.” His response was so basic and un-therapist-like, it felt as if I were listening to some cloying, internet-dubbed life coach on an echoey podcast. He said: “Sometimes you have to lose yourself to find yourself.” I nodded, but had no clue what he was talking about. I couldn’t wrap my head around it: Because I was leaving, I was given a chance to lose myself—on purpose—and I had no intention of finding this mess ever again.
CHAPTER 9
Day three: I need to leave this place. I’ve been wearing the same clothes in very limited states of mix-and-match for too long. There’s only so much wash-and-drip-dry one pair of panties can stand. Going commando was never an option—not for Miriam Lightburn’s child. Somehow, despite the years and miles between us, my mother’s rules for life became the rules, for life. When Grant started spinning out, I only had time to toss some toiletries and my satin sleep cap (priorities) into a tote, plus I brought my work laptop, three back issues, and my thick, crumply honor-killing folder. I didn’t plan on staying here long. A couple hours at most, just past dinner, that was my thought. It rolled into three days. Of course it’s guilt. Last week I was rehearsing my breakup speech in the shower, so sure of myself, so sure of my plan to clap Grant from my hands like dirt.
There’s some comfort, I guess, in seeing how well Rosalie cares for him. But it’s also cartoonish: this petite, white woman arching up to touch his forehead, as if fever could explain it. And Grant, a muscled, golden-brown specimen, so wounded he allows her to do it, to dote on, pet, and coddle him. Strange and awkward as it is to see some of those moments play out between them, it also lets me know that I can let go. More important, that he can let go of me, stop reaching out, trying to pull me close, and just let me go. It’s safer for him that way.
Cell reception is a joke in these parts, but I have to contact Trinity and it needs to be by phone, because Trinity is basically your grandmother packed into a twenty-four-year-old’s body. She doesn’t trust transmitting anything personal via e-mail or text. I want to let her know where I am and make sure there are no new fires. I’m still on edge about that edit situation last month: Rachel, the copy editor who actively hates me, went to the Yellow Doors citing inaccuracies in my alpha-wives story. Whatever. I don’t even need to double-check my files to know that it’s not true. I don’t cut corners; I report shit out. Rachel’s probably setting me up, but still, given The Mistake and all, the suits are tracking my moves.
When I step on the porch, I spot Grant sitting on a lonely bench under a massive tree deep in the backyard. I put my fingers to my mouth and send out a piercing whistle—I don’t want to sneak up on him, even though there’s no real sneaking up on someone who’s chilling on incredible, private acreage like this. He turns around and waves me over. By the time I get to him, my temples are damp and I feel a little sweat gathering by the nape of my neck.
“Hey,” he says, and makes room for me on the bench.
I turn my back to him and sit the opposite way. “Hey.”
“Looking for me?” Grant rubs my shoulder with his.
“Not really. Just looking for a prime cell spot; need to call into the office. How was your night?”
He shakes his head. “No progress there.”
“Yeah, I’m not sleeping so well, either.”
“Did I wake you when I left? I should probably keep this batshit business contained in my own room.”
“No, no. It’s okay. Having you there, it’s nice.”
“It’s nice? Don’t do that, Best.”
“What? It’s nice having you in the bed.”
“Come on. Stay level with me. Of all people, I need you to keep it straight.”
Honesty is not a fixer. I know that as fact. Grant does too. If anything, honesty only ignites the bomb that razes everything to the ground. “All right, then: You need to get a handle on the drooling, sir.”
He smiles and looks down at my cell; I’m rolling it in my palm. “You know you could use the house phone,” he says.
“Yeah, I just don’t want to disturb anyone. They’ve been so cool about me being here. I don’t want to be that houseguest.”
“No one’s disturbed here—well, there’s me, but then that’s the other kind of disturbed. Making a call from the house phone won’t change that.”
“Come on—it’s not—you’re not . . .”
He looks at me for the first time since I sat down. “It’s called dark humor. Has the New Yorker been completely squeezed out of you or what?”
“Well, we are in a town called Farmington. I’m already picking up a bit of a folksy drawl. Wait, isn’t this a fly-over state?”
He laughs and looks at me again.
“Listen, Grant. I, uh—”
He nods. “You have to go.”
“I have to go.”
“Today?”
“Today.” I swing my body around to his side of the bench and let our knees touch. “Walking down here to you, I was trying to come up with something to say, something not obvious and useless like, ‘You’ll be all right.’ But that’s all I keep coming up with. It’s stupid. I don’t know what to say to you.”
“Why do you have to say anything?”
“Because it’s good-bye. I’m leaving and people say things when they leave.”
“But I don’t want you to leave. So maybe if you don’t say anything, my addled brain won’t register it. You can trick me.” He smiles and slips his hand over my leg, cupping my knee. “Just trick me. Drive off with the top down without another word.”
“Grant, I can’t take your car. How am I—I can’t take your car.”
He moves his hand from my leg and raises it, palm out, in between our faces. “You’ll be all right,” he says. I give him a light high-five. Grant grabs my hand and brings it to his lips to kiss. “You’ll be all right,” he says.
I nod. “I’ll be all right.”
CHAPTER 10
New York City.
Day Before Thanksgiving.
Standing here at the massive window of this unending terrace, my eyes can’t seem to focus on the beauty before me: Central Park, unobstructed, dim, empty, alluring. A view that only grew more charming when the sun showed up an hour ago, making even the dense skies of fall sliding into this early winter seem beautiful. But I don’t really see it. Instead my mind’s eye has taken over the optics, and it’s playing a different scene for me: spring in Los Angeles. Beachwood Canyon, more precise. Grant flew me out to meet him there for the Golden Globes. We stayed at this incredible, fully restored 1920s Mediterranean villa perfectly perched above Beachwood Canyon. It was the home of a new Hollywood friend of his, Dylan or Declan, something that starts with D. He was in the music business, behind-the-scenes—a songwriter and producer, I think. There were lots of guitars and instruments all around, and an old-fashioned microphone in the corner of the cavernous living room. And candles. So many candles in varying states of being burned-out. Dylan/Declan was bouncing between Austin and London, Grant said, working with “some major artists”—though none that I cared to retain to memory. Grant and I had full run of that gorgeous house. The master bedroom was this magnificent corner of quiet and escape and the bathroom—the other place we spent all of our time—was vintage and without fault. We soaked in that tub each night, overlooking the canyon from the terrace window, until we were withered and thirsty.
Now the only thought circling my brain is how I betrayed all of that with one reckless night.
That’s almost the cruelest part. Grant would love it up here, thirty-two floors above the real world. If he were standing here with me looking out through this wall of glass, Grant would be pointing out all that is hidden and waiting for us in the park, just past the Merchants’ Gate. He’d make up a contest—bet me something silly, like loser has to belt out
the entire first verse of Mellencamp’s “Jack & Diane” in the middle of the subway car—to see who can name the most best Central Park movie movements. And as usual, Grant would win. He’s always set to win.
Even if you asked me under the threat of violence, I still wouldn’t have a complete answer for why I did it. I mean, I wanted to do it last night. Nik wasn’t my boss’ boss last night. He was just Nik last night, and he was what I needed last night. There was no slamming of bodies against walls or counters. No buttons popped, no panties torn. It was hands held and softly kissed everything. He gazed at me, cradled my face, smoothed my cheek with his thumb. He even did that thing where he gently led me to his bedroom by the hand. It must be whatever lovemaking is.
But it’s not last night anymore. It’s the early morning and I’m still at his penthouse, wearing his shirt on my back like a ridiculous rom-com trope, except I have crusted-over mascara on my face. I can barely look at myself in the window’s reflection without shaking my head.
I want to call Kendra. Text her. Get her to tell me I’m right, that this ugly feeling is fleeting, that Grant and I didn’t really break up, because we never had that talk to sketch out what we were to each other anyway, and who really knows what happens on those sets between takes with all of the hurry-up-and-wait and the back rubs. I want her to remind me that Grant and I came to live together by osmosis, and we have separate rooms and beds, and those last few weeks—that last month, really—there was nothing together about us, and when I drove away in his car there was an implied separation, a silent agreement to go to our separate corners, because that’s what made sense.
Bullshit. I can hear Kendra saying it. Bullshit, all of what you said is total bullshit. You cheated on Grant the minute you stepped into the Emerald City, with its unreal private elevator that opens up directly in the Wizard’s place, like it’s the front door, and the extra bedroom masquerading as a shower, with all its fuss and fancy—this button for steam, that one for precision temperature setting, and the four others you have yet to figure out. You need to feel ugly, because this, what you did, it’s ugly . . . she’d say.
Of course, my phone is still shut off and Kendra is still not talking to me, and Nik from last night is Nikolai motherfucking Steig—my boss’ boss. There’s nothing fleeting; I’ve messed up, big-time. But I’m still not turning on my phone. Not yet. I can’t. Bauer’s probably got twenty voice mails on there by now. I gave him the low-battery bullshit. He bought it, I think, and I bolted for Nik’s idling car. I still can’t figure out how this Bauer guy found me. I operate like a goddamn Mission Impossible agent when it comes to my cell phone. I know everyone who has the number. Unless Grant finally earned his iPhone back or got some internet privileges from softhearted Rosalie and read every ridiculous, humiliating word about him and his best bitch on Tell Me More. Maybe he emailed Bauer with his side of the story and tossed my number at him—the only reprisal card he had in his deck, but the most ruinous one. He must hate me. Even if Grant didn’t believe all of it, didn’t fully recognize his broken life on display like that, and didn’t take me for a complete savage, he must still hate me.
I would. I do.
He may have handed over the number, but Grant doesn’t know about Benjamin and Bryant or what happened. None of my friends know. Bauer must have an inside man in Montreal. But none of those high-functioning morons have any connections to me here; those old friends know nothing of my new life. Jesus. I hope Bauer didn’t contact my folks. They barely answer phones there, especially not calls coming from random U.S. area codes. I wonder if Bauer found out about my dad, reached out to some old colleague still slogging through the crime beat at the Gazette. That makes no sense; too circuitous. Just to get bio on me? I want to believe that Robot and her able Asian sidekick are involved in siccing Bauer on me. I want to believe it, but I know better.
This would be the kind of thing that I would enlist Kendra and even Lindee on to help me crack the code. But those girls don’t want to hear from me. Kendra might cut me some slack because of the Lana Scott stuff. Then again, her patience with me has gone anemic lately. And now, with me certainly flaking out on Thanksgiving dinner at the mom’s house tomorrow, the Singh girls will be ready to cunt-punt me for real.
Trinity is the only one who knows that I’m not at the bottom of the Hudson. When I called her—from Nik’s home line, no less—and asked her to messenger my stuff to my place in Brooklyn, she didn’t even pause or pose anything besides, “Are you okay,” which tells me that Bauer hasn’t posted any new shit about me. I would’ve been able to tell if something was up from Trinity’s voice, her elocution. She takes on this higher-pitched, fussy speak when she’s uncomfortable or lying or anxious. It’s what my mother’s Jamaican church sister used to call speaky-spokey, but that was specific to Carib folk trying too hard to camouflage their native tongue with a forced American or British accent. For Trinity that meant slowed-down sentences swollen with ornamental vocabulary, a strained, grammatically overdone string of words pushed through her tight lips. I heard none of that on our call, brief as it was. But she must know Nik Steig’s home address, his phone number too, and she didn’t even clear her throat when I told her where to send my things.
Trinity will put it together at some point, if she hasn’t already. Doesn’t really matter anyway. Bauer, he’s the one who’s going to slice my neck to the bone. The sleeping-with-the-big-cheese part will be the least of my lost graces.
“Aren’t you cold?” Nik wraps me up from behind, first with him and then a cashmere throw. “Morning.”
“Morning. Sorry, did I wake you?”
“Standing there basically nude looking out the window? Yes, highly disruptive stuff, Best.” He circles me, opens up the blanket and pulls me into another hug, burying his face into the top of my head. He likes kissing my hair. And each time I think, please don’t let this devolve into the dreadful your hair is so soft, like cotton skit. Grant never went there. Then again, he dated a good many black women in his day—mostly models and actresses. He knows his way around satin pillowcases and our hair-washing mysteries.
“So, it’s tomorrow. We didn’t shrivel up and blow away.”
“All right, all right. But you’ll admit that it is time to face real life now. I’m about ninety-five percent sure the last twelve hours were part of one protracted, eerily vivid dream.”
“Ninety-five percent, huh?” he says, grinning, and they appear. Not dimples—he’s no child—more like long laugh lines sketched onto his face. I notice a flat mole on the jawline and another midway down his neck. He really is something to behold.
Nik squeezes my shoulders once more before peeling off of me and sliding over to the narrow sofa in his living room. “We can do real-world,” he says and extends his lean body along the chair.
“The fact that you even said that without a pause tells me we definitely can’t. Plus, you’re Nik Steig.”
“Yes, you have reminded me of this quite a bit.”
“Look, last night was . . . it was good, fun; but what are we doing here? What am I doing here? I should just go.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because you’re—”
“Okay. Let’s start a new thread,” he says, and gestures for me to join him.
I follow his gentle chin motion, but sit at the end of the chair closer to his feet and wrap the throw cover tighter around me. He gives me a look that pulls me in, makes me focus on him, on his mouth. Before I realize it, I’m leaning on him, draped over his middle, and he’s rubbing the nape of my neck.
“Why don’t you stay?” he says.
“Stay here?”
“Yes. Stay the night, or the weekend or whatever feels good.” Nik moves his fingers from neck to my shoulders.
“It’s Thanksgiving Day tomorrow.”
“True, and I do have a thing I’ll need to go to tomorrow, but that’s about it. You can come with me.”
“To the thing tomorrow? Just like that? Wait, I thought y
ou said you didn’t have plans. What happened to ‘I’m European. Thanksgiving is not a big holiday for us’? Now there’s a thing? A thing that I should tag along on? I don’t even have clothes here, and more than that—”
“Not an issue. We can get you some new clothes. I know a guy.”
“You know a guy?”
“I do. Henry. He owns a label, he lives a few blocks over and he’s an old friend. Not an issue.”
“What is this, Pretty Woman?”
Nik laughs. “It’s not Pretty Woman or Cinderella or whatever other damsel you may want to summon. That’s not what’s happening. I’m not trying to save you. I’m just enjoying you.”
“And that includes dressing me up in your neighbor’s clothes—”
“And shoes too.”
I cut my eyes at him and choke back my laugh. “And shoes, so that I can be your escort to this thing.”
“It’s my foundation’s thing, actually.”
“Oh, Christ. Are you talking about the charity thing at the soup kitchen?”
He nods.
“Of course you’re talking about the charity thing, because your family does it every year, because you’re Nik Steig—and we’re back to my main point: I need to go!”
In one smooth swoop he’s up and walking to the kitchen. “So you’ll go?”
“Not to the gala. Home. I need to just go home.”
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