The Thunder Beneath Us

by Nicole Blades

  “Works. I can drop you at your place. Or you can take the subway, Annie Hall, and we can meet there.”

  “Nik. I don’t think that’s a good idea. No offense to the soup kitchen.”

  “None taken. Coffee?”

  “Uh, no, thanks. I don’t drink . . . Listen, my head’s spinning. A shower. That’s what needs to happen right now.”

  “Love it. Let’s do it.”

  “Actually, I have to do this one by myself. I’m sweaty and pretty gnarly. All the parts and crevices are in need of freshening.”

  He raises one of his sparse eyebrows and steps out of the kitchen toward me. “That sounds much better than coffee. I can give you a hand . . . or something. I’ve never been afraid of a little sweat, even in the crevices.” Nik slinks over to me and runs his cold, damp fingers up my bare thigh. I have just enough time to grab the top of his shoulders as he’s dropping to his knees before me.

  “Not that. Not right now. I’m serious, I just need a hot shower—alone.”

  “Your choice,” he says, and pulls himself back up with little effort. “I have a couple e-mails and a quick call. If you need anything, just holler.”

  It’s my turn to nod. As I walk toward the bedroom, clutching the soft blanket around me, I want to tell him that what I need is not here in this millionaire’s lair, it’s not within reach. It’s not even something I can give myself.

  From the shower, still wet and wrapped in a white towel, I crawl into the middle of Nik’s bed. It hugs me back and I stay there, facedown, near smothered in all his pillows. I like it here. I like how safe and tucked away it is here. I like that he likes me being here, that he looks at me as if I’m so original and different. I like that thing he does, how he connects with you in this way that commands your attention through everything: not breaking eye contact, speaking to you in these fluid, expressive sentences. You’re instantly drawn in and compelled to stay put. I like how much he enjoys me, my body. I especially like that he likes going down on me, even when I’m unwashed and a little dirty. I like his knowing nods and his ease, the lack of fuss around whatever he does. I like that he’s opaque and people fear him, this enigmatic stone of a man with a tepid disposition and ferocious authority. And I like that I’ve been let into the special back room of him, beyond the red ropes and given access to his secret other side that’s warm and open and caring. I like that he knows a guy and always has an answer, never stumped. I like him—and that’s the problem. If this had to be something, it needed to be an anomaly, a one-night mistake that I think back on years from now when I’m on the subway with a book that’s not holding my attention, and I get flustered and turned on and warmed and perked up. It should be a story I weave into a larger novel, recast and reframed, faded so that any names, characters, places, and events are a clear product of my imagination: Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  “You all right in here?” Nik says from the doorway.

  I turn my head away from him, just enough to get the two words out of the side of my mouth. “Sort of.”

  He’s sitting on the very edge of the bed; I feel the weight shift. “What’s going on—you okay?”

  “No, but that’s not a new thing. I haven’t been okay in years.”

  I hear Nik stretch over and feel his hand on my back. “What’s going on? Do you want me to make you some tea, something to eat?”

  I shake my head, but keep it turned from him. “Do you know what they call you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  “No.”

  “Because . . . you don’t have time to study what people think about you, or something like that?”

  “Something like that,” he says.

  “It would bother me.”

  “And where does that get you—being bothered by what other people think?”

  I nestle my face into the pillows. “I see your point.”

  He rolls me over to my side with a gentle tug and takes a slow breath, as if shaping his thought before he offers it to me. “It’s business. Life, work, the overlap, it’s all business. And within those spheres, some people will line up well with you, your opinions, your ideas and convictions. Others will not. They will be against everything you do, everything you represent. They’re roadblocks or maybe potholes. It comes with trying to get wherever you’re going. Nothing you can do to change it—they’re part of the terrain. Either stop and, as you say, study them, or continue driving forward.”

  It sounds like something my father would say, and instead of comforted, I feel gross all over again. I shove my face back into the pillows.

  Nik laughs and pulls himself across to the middle of the bed. He’s lying near enough that I feel the warmth of him, but without touching me. “I probably sound like a weary old professor,” he says.

  “You could say that.” My words are half-muffled in the pillow and I can feel my ears heating up. I finally turn to look at him, and that’s when I hear that little voice in the back of my brain, piping in for the first time since stepping off the elevator and into Nik’s car: Girl, what the hell are you doing here? He must have seen the realization spread across my face, transmuting it instantly into a wash of dread and angst.

  “What’s really going on?” His face looks dim, almost stern. “On the elevator you were clearly in a state of . . . something. But you moved through that, it seemed, and by the time we got here last night, you were . . . better. Happy, maybe, and it was nice. Now this morning, you’ve changed again. You seem sad. Even your shoulders are slumped.” Nik runs his hand high along my back. “It’s as if you’re carrying this heavy brick right here. You can almost see it resting there. Do you want to talk about it? That might help. They do call me the Wizard, right?” He moves his hand up to my neck and wraps his fingers loosely around it. For a split second I can actually see the Law & Order: SVU episode based on our true story playing out in my mind: the ingénue and the billionaire publisher-slash–charming serial killer. Who would play me, though? But he lets go of my neck and returns to rubbing my back.

  “Right. Wizard. But then other people just call you Ol’ Professor Pervy McPerv with the mixed signals and massages.”

  That does it; we both laugh. I slide my body back into his. He wraps an arm around me. “I’m just trying to find normal again.”

  “It’s all around you, Best. Breathe it in.”

  “Just like that?”

  He smiles. “Yes. Just like that.”

  When I wake up again in the middle of his huge crumpled bed the next day, Thanksgiving morning, Nik is already up. I can hear his whirling and whooshing coming from the kitchen. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in there cooking a full traditional turkey with fixin’s or maybe, factoring in the German genes, it’s one gigantic schnitzel with piles of bratwurst on a platter.

  I stay lying on my back, taking low, slow breaths, afraid to open my eyes all the way. I don’t want any of the details to escape. I need to keep things straight. At some point I guess I’m going to want to tell a person about what happened here. Maybe they’ll be able to make better sense of it than I can. So I lie there, rooted, thinking about it: Dinner last night, Chilean sea bass made by his hand in that cold but lavish kitchen; and about the library, an entire wall stacked nearly to the ceiling with books, some new, but more of them dusty and smelling their age. Rare editions; old, unheard-of titles; authors both famous and unsung—all of it waiting in the quietest quiet I’ve ever experienced, filled with wide, beautiful, lived-in chairs, not one of them stiff or ignored. I actually spent a solid hour in there alone, flipping through some of my favorites. One of them, To Kill a Mockingbird, even came to bed with us last night along with his newspaper. He asked me to read from it aloud. It was that scene where Atticus tells Scout the trick to getting along with folks is to climb into their skin and walk around in it, in their shoes, looking at the world from their view.

  I paused there, after reading the fa
mous line. He stroked my leg.

  “Have you gone back to the elevator again?” he asked.

  “No. I’m still here.”

  “What made you stop reading?”

  “This is going to sound crazy weird—then again, crazy weird is our thing—but I was actually thinking about your skin. Like, how it feels to walk through this world as you.”

  He paused. “You want to be me?”

  “Well, I mean how it feels to walk through a world that was practically created for you: male, rich”—I looked right in his eyes—“and white.”

  When he removed his reading glasses, he let out this long breath. I was sure he was going to use the next one to ask me to leave. But then that smile slid up one side of his face.

  “Right. You’re implying that I’ve been handed everything; that I haven’t worked for any of this. Silver spoons and secret handshakes, is it?”

  My back straightened and I felt my lips begin to purse. “Nik, I’m not implying anything, but . . . let’s keep it real.”

  “Ah. So, you think my life is easy?”

  “Maybe not easy, but easier.”

  He nodded slowly and looked just past my shoulders. “That could be argued,” he said, returning to me, a hint of a smile still hanging from the edge of his mouth.

  “You know what? I don’t know why I said any of that—God, such sexy, sexy pillow talk, right? Reporter me needs to see the line and shut shit down way before I cross it. It’s . . . horrible.”

  “Nothing’s horrible.”

  “Except it kind of is. I should go, Nik. This has all been unreal. Nice, but unreal, and it probably shouldn’t have happened. I had no business getting in your car. Definitely had no business following you home, into your bed. It’s just that everything has become . . . I should just go.”

  He eased the book from my lap, clasped my hands, and pulled me over to him, right under his chin. I wanted to smell his neck. Put my face deep into it and inhale him, but I knew that was creepy-chick 101. I stared at his Adam’s apple instead and wrapped my arm around his steel middle.

  “Do you really think nothing’s horrible?”

  A heavy pause lingered. He slid down toward me, his mouth pressed against my forehead, and kissed me there. “I do. Are you ready to go sleep?”

  I really was; just tired of everything at once. “Yes,” I said, looking up at him, “but I’m seriously leaving tomorrow, Nik. First thing. For real this time.”

  “There’s no rush. The city is basically shut down. And I’m enjoying having you here. Stay as long as you need.”

  “We can’t run this circle again,” I said, and paused for what could have been seconds or stretched-out minutes. “You know I have to go.”

  The quiet fell over us like a thick cloud. We were spooned and fading. Nik finally broke the stillness and moved to turn off the light. It rustled me out of my zombie grog. (I still think it was my literal drool on his abs that woke him.)

  “Don’t. Lights out means it’s over,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “This again?” he whispered.

  “Yes. Turning out the lights means a new day’s at the door, and the sun will come along and dry up all the magic dust that’s sprinkled over everything.”

  “Magic dust. Are you dreaming right now?”

  “Exactly.”

  “The sun will come up whether I turn off the light or not, Best.”

  “Then leave it alone.”

  He ran his hand along the side of my ribs, gliding over my breast, and it felt good. It was lulling me, soothing me. But then in one fast sweep, he pulled my body over his with the ease of a blanket. He kissed me again, this time just off the side of my lips, and moved his hand down my back, pressing all of me into him. And with some advanced yoga move, he flipped me over and like that, I was under him, under his plank. “Still thinking about the lights?” His voice was low and gravelly.

  I nodded.

  Nik slid down, his head just below my stomach. “Give me twenty minutes to fix that.”

  CHAPTER 11

  This is some bullshit. I had just fallen asleep, finally, after slinking through my door from Nik’s house. I actually tiptoed into my own apartment. Didn’t even want to look at the cabbie long enough to tell him my address. Home, sleep, disappear—that’s all I wanted. Now someone’s buzzing my door. It’s Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving morning, no less. What sane American rings a stranger’s bell on the biggest holiday of the year? If I had some hot piss right now . . . It’s something my mother used to say when we were younger and Jehovah’s Witnesses came around. It was gross, yes, but also so damn funny, imagining my proper mother dashing a bedpan full of pee out the window like that.

  It better not be Nik’s driver Hank, or worse, Nik himself talking about going with him to that goddamn soup-kitchen thing. If he followed me home . . . Listen, that hot piss is sounding more like a pantry staple right about now.

  I try to keep my eyes closed and barrel toward the door. If I don’t let the light in, I’m still basically asleep.

  “Yessss.” I’m practically swallowing the intercom. I want my voice to sound raw and abusive.

  “Best? You okay up th—”

  The voice, it’s a man, but it’s distorted. My hand is covering both the talk and listen buttons.

  “Hello?” I start again.

  “Best”—I hear the familiar chuckle—“it’s Grant. Buzz me up, woman.”

  I’m awake now.

  There are only a handful of seconds for me to settle on what to do next: take the fire escape to the roof or sink back into a half-squat fighting position with my fingers curled into claws.

  More buzzing.

  I could also do nothing. Don’t press another button. Push all of this panic down to the bottom of my belly and let him walk away cursing and calling me crazy.

  Buzz. BUZZZZ.

  A quick glance in the mirror: My hair is in a matted high bun and still damp from that sexilicious shower with Nik. Jesus. I probably still smell like him and my nipples are sore and erect. I’m wearing my night retainer, an old shirt of Grant’s, and my Bikram yoga shorts, and there are the beginnings of two diagonal sleep lines on my right check. Doesn’t matter. One look at me—the redness still stretched along my collarbone and up the side of my neck, the nipples poking through—and Grant, he’ll know. He knows my post-boots-knocked face, and he knows it well.

  I hear Grant’s voice through the closed-up windows and heavy brick of my building. It’s faint, but I can tell that he’s yelling, probably even cupping his hands at his mouth as he bellows up to my floor. “Yo, Best! Buzz me up.”

  As history tells, my building basically evacuates by crack-o’-dawn Wednesday for this holiday. But I can’t speak for the neighboring brownstones.

  I close my eyes and press open, holding the button for longer than necessary.

  Grant reaches the top of my floor quickly and, like a wish come true, he’s instantly standing here at my door, snatching my breath. And he looks good. I mean, really good. Healthy. Healed. Everything about Grant—his eyes, face, mouth—glows golden like he just stepped out from the sun. And like that, my steamy thoughts about Nik, that shower, that bed, are gone, eclipsed by this beautiful, radiating, warm star filling up my doorway.

  “Hi,” he says, as if it was that simple, and leans in to hug me. It’s warm and tight. He smells like something delicious baked just for me. As his soft lips press against my cheek, I finally hear myself exhale.

  “Hiiiheeyy. Hi.”

  He’s grinning. “Hi.”

  “Uh. What—here to . . . come in?”

  “If that’s the final question, yes. I will.” Grant unzips his gray hoodie. A plain black T-shirt, identical to the one I’m wearing, hugs his lean, taut torso. He slides by me. He knows what he’s doing.

  “You look great, Best.”

  “You’re kind, but come on—I’m a full-time mess.” He’s still glowing, still grinning, still beautiful. “So, what happened? Wait,
did you—does your family know you’re—”

  “Here? Yeah,” he laughs, “they know. We’re all here. My uncle’s getting this award in the city, and of course Rosalie went along. I decided to hitch a ride. I have a lot of ground to cover with my agent.” He steps over, reaches for my hand. “And with you.”

  “I—I kind of don’t know what to say to you right now. Is this a fever dream?”

  He squeezes my hand. It’s comforting at first. I pull away as gently as I can and move toward the kitchen. This feels like a sick redux of a scene from Nik’s kitchen earlier this morning. I pulled away then too, but that was about coy and sexy and wanting to be followed into the shower. This right here is plain old guilt and discomfort. “Do you want anything? I can make coffee. It’ll be black, though. You know me and this fridge and the milks.”

  “No coffee,” he says, tracing my path, easing over to me again.

  “Okay, tea, OJ? What would you like?”

  “I’d like to go for a run.”

  “You’d like to go for a run?”

  “Yes,” he says, laughing. “I’d like to go for a run.”

  “You run now?”

  “Yeah, I run now. And I want you to go with me. So, come on, get dressed.”

  “I don’t think that’s—have you been reading . . . Grant, we should talk.”

  “B, no dis, but talking is not really your game right now. You’re kinda bumbling.”

  He’s smiling and happy and sweet, and clearly in the dark about everything.

  “It’s because I don’t know where to start. And I don’t want you to hate me.”

  “Hate you? That’s not happening, one. And two, just go put on some workout clothes. We’ll run it out. And if you still feel like talking,” he makes dramatic air quotes, “then we can get into it then. Plan?”

  “Grant—”

  “Just go get dressed, Best. Please.”

  “What if people see you—see us?”

  “Then they’ll see us.” Grant smiles once more and adds a nod at the end, in that Nik Steig way, and I want to vomit. But instead I do as Grant says and change into running clothes. It’s the very least I can do for him.