During her high school years, whenever it felt like the ground was shifting beneath her, Nora would calm her anxiety by reciting the names of her senior classmates, alphabetized.
Jennifer Abbott, Katie Adams, Camryn Agnor, Grace Ah-Su, Lauren Atkinson.
Even after she left the school abruptly, one month shy of graduating as the class valedictorian, Nora would still run through the same names—her private meditation. She held on to this practice like a sturdy, double-braided rope keeping her tethered to something rooted and real for years. Nora was well into her newest life as an independent, thick-skinned, scrappy stylist—albeit with a blurry origin story—thriving in New York City before she finally packed away the recital game along with all the other things she shoved into the deep margins.
Jennifer Abbott, Katie Adams, Camryn Agnor, Grace Ah-Su, Lauren Atkinson. “Bianca Amato,” Nora said, under her breath. “I always forget about stupid Bianca Amato. Christ.”
“Mack?” Fisher frowned and looked confused.
Nora shook her head hard and after a long, steady breath, met his eyes. “No, it’s not . . . it’s not her. My mother, she wouldn’t want that. She wouldn’t want me to hold on to that day—this morbid anniversary, carrying it hanging around my neck like some kind of—”
“Noose?”
Nora felt the fluttering return to her heart, but didn’t allow it to distract her. “Yeah . . . like a noose. It’s not her. That date, it doesn’t mean anything. We said good-bye before. That day, it was just ashes. Not her.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry you went through that—so young. You were a kid. I know how that feels. It’s maybe the worst thing a kid can live through.” He squeezed her shoulders. “But like I said before, Mack, this is one of those big days. It’s a milestone, and you not having any family there, standing with you for this huge moment, it’s going to affect you. Maybe that’s what’s happening now. The residual sadness, it’s bubbling up to the surface like black tar. It’s physically hurting me to see you like this. And what’s fucked up is, it’s too late to change anything. We’re locked in. It’s, what, eighteen days away? I can’t—”
“Fisher, I don’t want you to change anything. I agreed to this date. No one forced me. It’s . . . I just want it to actually happen,” Nora said, raising her voice. “I want to marry you and move ahead with our life together. But”—Nora slipped out of his arms and took a step back—“every time that I want something or I try to hold on to something, hold someone close, it gets taken away. It doesn’t matter what I do to stop it from happening, it happens. And I’m left with nothing, just dust. I don’t want that to happ—”
“Nora. Look, no one’s taking me anywhere. I’m with you. No one is changing that. It’s us. It’s you and me, okay? Fish and Mack. Mack and Fish. Mack and Cheese and Fish,” he said, unleashing a goofy grin and stepping closer to stroke under Nora’s chin. “It’s us, darling. Always.” He moved in even closer, slow, angling his mouth to kiss hers, but Nora turned away.
“I’m sorry. I’m kind of a mess right now. I should—” She felt the vibration of his cell phone against her side.
“Ah—shit. I thought I left it in the kitchen.”
“It’s okay,” she said, wiggling her way out of his caress. “Take the call. It’s fine. I need to clean up anyway. I’m sure I look crazy.”
“Never that,” he said, and pulled the slim phone out of his front pocket. He slid it up next to his face, held it up by his ear with the lightest grip. “Yes, I’m here. Go ahead,” he said into the phone, raising his index finger at Nora. She nodded and mouthed, Go, go, as she waved him away. This brand of interruption was so baked into Beaumont life that Nora had stopped taking offense long ago. “That’s the goal. Correct. Rock is handling all the amendments and Asher’s on top of the reprogramming effort, plus Liam is tying up the few loose ends on that.” Fisher continued, pacing in his usual slow pattern. He made his way toward the far end of the terrace, his mellow voice trailing him. Nora stood watching, taking it in: his broad, built back; the carved shoulders printing through his shirt; his free hand clapped to the back of his neck. She wanted to rush up behind him, wrap her arms around his steely middle, spin him around to face his square jaw, and devour every sinewy line, every sculpted arch of him.
It was this view of Fisher that first drew her in. Only it was early evening, not night; they were at The Met for a lavish fund-raiser, not atop the terrace of their (his) Tribeca penthouse, and he was wearing a custom-made tuxedo, not an easy, white linen button-down and slim-cut, broken-in navy chinos. His caramel blond hair—a military undercut with perfect sides—was rigid and serious, not the softer, more disconnected cut he sports now with the playful, tousled quiff on top that looks like some woman just ran her hand through it. He was holding court, as he often does, not on a phone but live, in the company of other wealthy men with stiff backs holding even stiffer drinks. He was dashing—from the back view alone—and Nora was immediately curious. She ended up at the black-tie benefit as she always had back then: tagging along with Vincent Dunn, being ushered into certain rooms, welcomed by exclusive circles, no questions asked. And where Vincent didn’t provide the entrée, Nora’s charm served as her passport.
“It’s the man who knows what he wants that gets what he wants,” she said to the nodding circle of men congregating near Fisher; her finesse was turned up on high. “This is the truth in style, business, love.”
She knew that finding her way around Fisher’s rapt crowd of middle-aged white men named John would require some careful maneuvering. Nora didn’t want to appear forlorn and fawning like the endless string of young, single (and quite often not-so-young or single) women who would do whatever they could to brush up against him, hoping to catch his attention and squeeze into the opening, a chance to stare into his very blue eyes. Nora wanted to stay cool, maintain her reserve and poise. She needed to keep her jacket on, as her mother would say. But she also wanted—needed—to glimpse what his front side had to offer. So strong was this need, Nora almost begged Vincent to make the introduction, under the guise of networking and growing the business, of course. It all sounded too limp in her own head, so she scrapped the ask, opting instead to stay put and continue watching the art of Fisher’s back on the sly.
Like every other man or boy who had ever encountered her, Fisher noticed Nora the minute she entered the space. Between sips of his neat drink and after each rumble of overbearing laughter that rose from his posse of penguins, Fisher would turn his head to glance at her. Like clockwork or punctuation or blinking, it was repetitive and automatic and completely out of his control. Anyone watching the two of them would have been dizzy by the momentum of their human-style Newton’s cradle: standing on opposite sides of the opulent room, unable to stop stealing looks at each other on the offbeat. Organic and fated at once, the back and forth went on for much of the night.
After getting distracted by Vincent’s flagrant seduction of a fresh-faced, long-limbed Beverly Hills jock, Nora lost track of where Fisher went. She was about to tug Vincent’s velvety coattails and check out for the night, when Fisher showed up; he stepped right in her path and introduced himself. Both Vincent and his new boy-ingénue fell silent and stared at them, mesmerized by the palpable current running between Nora and Fisher.
“I should have come over sooner,” Fisher said, smiling down at her. He moved in close to Nora and leaned against a wall, his long, lithe top half almost stretching over her like a sheltering tree. “Playing it cool, I almost lost you.”
Nora narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, playfully. “Lost me? I didn’t know I was yours to hold.”
A grin spilled across his face. He licked his lips and followed that with the brush of his fingers along the glistening dampness left behind. “Ah, but you look like the kind of woman who is held by the world.”
Somehow that did it. That line, doused in his special brand of magnetism, cracked Nora’s polished, porcelain mask and left a slip of space open for
Fisher to nestle in underneath her skin. She inhaled and let herself melt into the moment, enchanted, as they stayed fixed on one another, sinking in fully, unprepared and unwilling to move. Three days later he was walking into her studio under the flimsy guise of needing “a few suits,” and two nights after that, they were on their first date, both incapable of living another day without each other.
* * *
Sensing her eyes on him, Fisher, still on his call, turned to Nora. He shook his head and put his hand out flat into the air, raising a shoulder—a recycled mea culpa wrapped up in a bow made of his dashing smile and good looks. Nora, using two hands this time, waved him off again. Don’t worry about it, she said in a stage whisper. She tilted her head, motioning to the wall of folding glass doors behind her. Fisher gave her a hurried nod and went back to sending directives through the phone.
She stepped out of his view. The doors couldn’t slide closed fast enough behind her before Nora made a dash, her long legs striding to the guest bathroom. Though they’ve never once entertained a guest, the bathroom was extravagant, well appointed to the tiniest detail, and tucked into the quietest corner of the penthouse. It was Nora’s instant favorite; a retreat that reminded her of the bathroom of the hotel in which Vincent put her up while on her first solo business trip to Paris. She had only been working for him a half year after having just landed in New York a few months earlier—this pretend orphan with old money and a newish name. He told Nora that there was an upstanding quality emanating from her, something about her personality that felt familiar and warm and honest. Likable, he said finally. “Even if you’re doing something awful, I think I’d still like you,” Vincent said, somewhat incredulous during her second interview with him.
As she reached the bathroom’s entrance, Nora was breathing fast and loud, tears clouding her eyes. She leaned over the sink, trying to catch her breath, but it only quickened. Nora squatted in the corner behind the door. She put her hand tightly over her mouth and cried.
It had become too much today. This week. Maybe it had been this way all month. All she could recognize was the feeling building, swirling in her gut. Today it felt like something the size of a grapefruit jabbing her insides and making her feel actual pain. Vomiting brought no relief, Nora knew. It was only two nights ago that she was on her knees with one hand clutching the side of the cold toilet bowl and the other holding her hastily pulled together ponytail, keeping her hair away from any parts of her mouth or brushing against her cheek. Even as she dangled her face over the same bowl now, Nora was thinking about her hair. Thinking about not letting any throw-up splatter on so much as a strand of her gorgeous golden pride: her shiny, lush mane of bouncing, moving hair. Good hair, as her mother had called it. The same good hair that made the other black girls at St. Gabriel Elementary School choose to either envy her or pick on, as well as push, kick, and punch her.
“This too shall pass, Ra-Ra,” her mother told her when Nora came home in tears yet another day. “They’re children. Them can’t understand that you’re special. Children can be real cruel, but it will pass.” She was rubbing an ice cube through a tangled section of Nora’s head, trying to dislodge a thick wad of bubble gum someone had left behind. “You have good hair, child. Best thing about you. Those other black girls wish they had what you have . . . no picky knots rolled up at the nape of your neck, no scratchy broken-off ends. Beautiful, good hair. That’s what all them want for themselves.”
It took just fifteen months for Nora to learn how to use the “good” of her hair along with her green eyes. The older boys in the seventh and eighth grades learned how good Nora could be, too. “You don’t look black,” the boys would usually comment early into meeting Nora. And when she responded that she was “mixed,” it would prompt queries about her white half—things that she had no real clue about since she never once met her father. But soon the boys would move on to other questions, like what kind of music she liked. “Everything,” she’d say, desperate to end the quiz show. And the boys quickly became more interested in her pink plump lips, her advanced kissing techniques—Nora knew how to use her tongue, and her hands around their heated penises. And to them, deciphering the mystery of what Nora was quickly became insignificant.
She straightened out from hunching over the toilet and sat back on the floor, letting her eyes rest on her reflection in the full-length mirror. Strands of her golden hair floated around her streaked face. The light freckles that dotted the straight ridge of her slightly turned-up nose were illuminated, the tip of it red and wet. Her eyes—the whites of them, stinging and sore—were ringed in the black smudge of what was left of her mascara. The color and chaos of all of it lulled her. Nora stopped heaving, her mind quieted, and she returned to silently reciting the names.
Jennifer Abbott, Katie Adams, Camryn Agnor, Grace Ah-Su, Bianca Amato, Lauren Atkinson . . .
CHAPTER 5
“Perfect weather, perfect people, Fisher by your side—it’s a solid cure to those jitters,” Jenna said, a little too loudly, through the phone. Her voice hung off the hand-painted wisteria branch twining across the wallpaper behind Nora. “Geneva is exactly what you need right now, hon.”
Nora sat back in her narrow, coral-colored desk chair and looked around the room for a hint of what to say next. Her office was airy and favored by natural light courtesy of the tall, steel-framed window that ran almost the full length of the loft. The fresh-cut flowers in squat vases; the repurposed dining table with a raw-edge stone top used as a desk; the carefully selected club chairs and the French-styled settee; the crisp-white upholstery smartly blended with quiet colors—mint greens, pale blues, smoky grays—even the lamp shades and the custom garment racks: all of it was designed to make Nora’s atelier feel familiar to her upper-crust patrons and look aspirational to her younger, newly minted clients.
“It doesn’t work like that,” was all Nora could gargle out after a too-long pause. She looked down at the cell phone resting on her stack of oversize, hardback fashion books and rolled her eyes at herself. These conversations with her best friend were draining her. “He asked me to come with him.”
“Perfect!”
“No, he only asked because I was”—Nora took a beat—“not feeling well last night.” She shuffled in her chair and slicked her hand along the side of her scraped-back, tight bun. “He was just being nice.”
“Aw. I think Sweet Fish is maybe my favorite Fish.”
“I don’t think he meant it. Plus, this is a really quick-jump, all-hands kind of emergency trip. Some issue with this new steroid drug and some shady pharma company. Rock will be there, obviously, and Asher’s flying in from London, no wife. When Fisher’s with his brothers and wrapped up in the whole thing—all officious and direct and clipped—it’s not my favorite Fish.”
“First, officious is such a great word,” Jenna said. “Next, are you kidding me? Watching a man be all business, barking orders, not asking just telling, demanding that shit get done right now, goddammit—that’s like sex on a stick.”
“Fisher is not the barking type.” A smile inched across Nora’s face as she glanced at the small, square photo framed on her desk—the only real slice of her private life set out in the open at her studio. It was a candid shot of her and Fisher bunched up together on a yacht bench, her arm slung around his neck, his face pressed against hers, their profiles in near silhouette, with a wash of cobalt, pastels, and flecks of gold behind them. It was their first trip together. Italy, the Amalfi Coast. A grand surprise for Nora, complete with blindfold, private jet, and directions to bring only her passport and an overnight bag. “Yeah, he’s serious about the business—I don’t blame him; it’s a lot,” Nora said. “But he’s not an asshole. That’s just not his style, you know?”
“Agree. He’s a total diplomat . . . unless you’re deceitful and/or crooked. Then that statesman shit goes out the window and the Beaumont venom bubbles right on up to the surface,” Jenna said, with a snort. “We’ve all seen him wearing tha
t black hat, right? Or as I call that cautionary tale: ‘The Spectacular and Hapless Fall of Jacob Winthrop the Fourth.’ You know, I still want to get him to write that memoir. It would be fire wrapped in a hardcover.”
“Jenna, I honestly do not want to talk about Jacob—”
“I know, I know. Not the point. But like I said, the book would not besmirch the Beaumont name. This is not the New York Post treatment. It’s a book. We control the narrative.”
“You know how horrible that whole scandal bullshit was on Fisher and his brothers and the board—and, Jesus, his mother. That woman is used to being in the paper because of some hospital wing dedication or their typical generous donations to things, not a frickin’ lawsuit. She was mortified. They all were.”
“Well, it never made it into court so—”
“Jenna, don’t start.”
“Okay, but let’s be real, though: a threatened lawsuit is not adjudication, right? And, come on, the Beaumonts were never going to set foot in a courtroom anyway. But I hear where you’re coming from. Those gotcha pics in the Post were not a good look. I can see why Fish and the fam were so pissed. But . . . you looked good in the background.”
Nora pursed her lips and let the silence brew.
Jenna soon cleared her throat. “Anyway, I think going to Geneva would do you some good. It’ll be just like our trip to Maldives—only no overwater suites, no lagoon, no yoga on the white powder sand, and no tans. Although, you were able to soak up that sun with such ease and rock that bronze goddess look. Me? These pale limbs are impenetrable. Someone needs to make like a perma-tan pill for my brand of white person.”
Nora shifted in her seat again.
“The whole point is: I still think you should go with Fisher. Just head home now, throw some shit in a bag, and take the limo to the airport. That’s what I’d do. Plus, there’s also the Jesus factor.”
Have You Met Nora? Page 6