Have You Met Nora?

by Nicole Blades

  “What Jesus factor?”

  “You said that Jesus was flying out with Fisher, too, right? Well, you’re probably more familiar with his earthly name: Liam. Liam is Jesus. With all that luscious rock god hair—even in that questionable man-bun he seems to favor—and then the crunchy beard, I mean, goddamn. Super fuckable.”

  “Oh, good Christ,” Nora said, cringing and looking away from the phone.

  “And I heard he has a flying bald eagle tattoo that runs along his collarbone and chest, like, right over his heart, and goes down his shoulder.”

  “Gross. Liam’s basically a minor.”

  “He’s over twenty-one, Nora. That’s the line in the sand these days. And he’s a Harrison; he’s got dirty, raw, and reckless deep in his DNA,” Jenna said, barely able to contain her cackle.

  Nora closed her eyes and let her head fall back so she was staring, in full disgust, at her high ceiling. “He’s a child. He’s been Fisher’s mentee for, like, years. Since he was in high school.”

  “But he’s got all the grown-up boy parts.”

  “Can we end this call now?”

  Jenna’s laugh filled Nora’s studio. “It’s all good, clean fun. Sorta.”

  “I can’t do this with you. This whole thirsty old woman thing you’re into lately, I can’t be a party to it.”

  “Sure you can. Corrupting young souls is the whole point of getting older. It’s in the bylaws.”

  Where she would normally chuckle at her friend’s crassness, instead Nora went silent. Her usually comfortable chair was too small right then, too hard and practically poking at her back. She stood up from it with a start and tugged at her chiseled gold necklace. It was a rare piece composed of a series of layered interwoven rings—one of many gifts from Fisher—and, despite all of its magnificence, it was choking her.

  Nora moved quickly over to the window and pressed her forehead on the cool of it. This is what she used to do back at Immaculate Heart whenever she woke suddenly in the dead of night, gagging on her memories. She would pad over to the small window in her dorm room, press her head against it, angling her face to the right, just past where the sugar maple tree–lined, gravel path was, trying to see if this time, this night Caswell Coop was visible through the thick darkness. The Coop—or Hen House, as it was typically called—was the converted stable where the Convent of the Immaculate Heart nuns once raised chickens. Once the old building transformed to a school, The Coop served as the art gallery, displaying the homespun talents of the students. Nora had spent countless hours staring out at it, envisioning what her life might look like had it been molded better—in the hands of a ceramic artist instead of the Bourdains—and painted with different colors.

  “Nor?” Jenna said. “Honey, did I lose you?”

  “No,” she said, raising her voice to cover the distance.

  “What’s going on over there? Are you at the window? Bring me with you, girl!” Jenna giggled, but it sounded nervous and artificial in Nora’s ears. She let the forced laugh run its course and then dropped her voice. “Seriously. You okay, hon?”

  “Yeah, of course.” Nora straightened her shoulders and readjusted her deep-cut white blouse, tucking it farther into her jeans. She fixed her necklace and slicked her hand along her side part. “I’m good. Totally. Just had to pull a file. I have a big client meet today.” She walked back over to the cell phone on her desk. “Another reason why I can’t go jetting off to Geneva, running behind Fisher. I’ve got shit to do. And the wedding planner emailed this morning. She’s sending somebody over to get paperwork going for the married name change.” Nora pulled at her necklace once more, sat back down in her seat, and forced out a loud sigh close to the phone. “So, yeah . . . busy, busy.”

  “Are you hyphenating?”

  “No.” Nora knew she sounded terse, but didn’t care.

  “Well, all right . . . hyphenation not optimal. Guess going double-barreled is out, too?”

  Nothing.

  “Got it,” Jenna said in a heavy whisper. “Moving on . . . Do you want to do dinner tonight? You only have a few weeks left as a single girl—correction, an affianced lady. I say take your lovable maid of honor out and get her drunk enough to sing ‘Single Ladies’ at karaoke—complete with Beyoncé hand dance moves.”

  “You’re doing the moves now, aren’t you?”

  “Yep!”

  Nora laughed, finally. “All right. Where to?” she said, still smiling.

  “Ugh. I have to meet that chef and his agent at his new restaurant. I already know the food will be awful. I’m going to be starving after. Let’s do nine-ish at Chestnut. His place is just over the bridge.”

  Nora’s grin vanished and she sat up straight in her seat. “I can’t go back there. I . . . I am . . . going to be way uptown later today. Basically Harlem, so I can’t get back down to Brooklyn to meet you.”

  “I could send Mr. Wally to get you.”

  “Don’t,” Nora said, sharply. “I don’t want that—” She quickly brought back her smile, pulling it tight over her face. A trick she learned from being around Mrs. Bourdain: Anything sounds like sugar when squeezed through a toothy smile. “It doesn’t make sense to do all that. We could just meet somewhere else for dinner. I’ll text you options.” The strained smile was starting to make her jaw sore.

  As one of the youngest editorial directors of a Penguin Random House imprint, Jenna was overly concerned about appearing too flighty, too unreliable, and effectively, too young for the job. Mr. Wally, a slight but stately black man in his early sixties from Barbados, was Jenna’s driver. He knew every shortcut that ever was in the city—even mapping some new ones all his own. If Jenna needed to jet over to meet one of NYC’s elite chefs/musicians/comedians/artists-turned-memoirists or she had to get back to the office, not on time but thirty minutes early, for a meeting, Mr. Wally knew the way. He had been driving Jenna exclusively for three years. She said that she liked how his mellow singsong accent soothed her ever-frayed nerves. Plus, she said, his close-cropped silver hair reminded her of the Uncle Ben’s character from the rice box. “I just trust him with everything,” she said, when Nora questioned why she had given the elderly man keys to her Chelsea apartment. But Nora didn’t like him—more, she didn’t like how she felt around him. She didn’t like how she’d catch him spying on her through the rearview. It wouldn’t be straight on; instead, he’d sneak looks through the side of his eyes and always unsmiling and steeped in something suspicious and bitter. He didn’t do this every time, and Nora couldn’t be sure she wasn’t reading too far into all of it. But it had happened often enough that Nora avoided riding along with Jenna whenever possible.

  “I gotta go,” Jenna said. “We’re prepping for an auction. I’m actually a little giddy about it, too. Catch you later . . . unless you’re in Geneva.” Jenna sent an air kiss—mwah—through the phone and she was gone.

  Nora sat quite still, looking at the silent phone. When she finally moved to pick it up, she noticed her hand trembled. It was slight, but real. She held her next breath, hoping to steady her hand as she tapped and scrolled to Dr. Bourdain’s bookmarked obituary. This time she studied the picture at the top of the web page. She homed in on the details of his face, taking in his lipless mouth, his eyes, and the wrinkles around both. He looked different: older, a little sad. His hair was nearly all gray and cropped close to his head. The lines by his eyes were etched deep, almost carved in, and his eyebrows were thicker, bushier, and more unruly. He wore the same tortoise-shell glasses—or something very similar to the ones he always wore when Nora was a girl. She remembered every facet of those glasses (or specs, as he called them). When he started making Nora “visit” with him in his study, he would remove them the minute she entered the room and gently rest them on his desk before directing her to the alcove with a dart of his eyes. And when he was finished rubbing himself on her and it was time to move on to the next phase in his nasty production, he’d scoop up those eyeglasses from his desk as he us
hered Nora over to the slim daybed in a corner of his office, where he set them, always, on the small round table by Nora’s head. He would make her lie back so he had easier access inside of her—first with his crooked fingers like branches, then years later, his raw penis. Nora would turn her head in the direction of the glasses and stare at them, just waiting for it to be over. And when it was, he’d pick up those glasses and gently position them on his face again. That was her prompt, Nora’s cue to leave his study without a single word or even a glance back at him.

  The loud jangle of keys snapped Nora’s attention. In her rush to look immediately casual and cool, as if nothing were snatching the breath clean out of her lungs, she dropped her phone and knocked over a vase, spilling water over everything, her desk, books, phone, lap.

  It was Oli Chung, one of Nora’s assistants. “Sorry! Didn’t mean to startle,” she said, removing her giant earmuff-like headphones and covering her mouth in one smooth motion. “Ohmigod. I’m so sorry, Nora. Here, let me clean that up. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Nora leapt to her feet. “No, no. Don’t you dare,” she said, shaking her head and hand. “This is all me. I can clean up my own mess.” She righted the vase, jamming the flowers back in dry, and moved what didn’t get wet off to the side.

  “Let me at least get some paper towels.” Before Nora could move to stop her, Oli shuffled off to the back room—the storage closet-slash-kitchen and prep space where clients never go. “I was so wrapped up in this podcast, you know?” Oli shouted back from deep in the closet. “It was about . . . hang on.”

  Nora looked at her phone and knew it was a goner. It was dripping with water and stray leaves and petals. She clenched her fists and pounded them on the desk. Like every horrible thing that had seeped into her once-simple life, this too was the Bourdains’ fault. She was sure of it. It’s always them, destroying things, blighting them, and rendering them critically damaged, warped, and useless. Had she not been reading his wretched obituary; had she not been dragged back in time, blinded by graphic flashes of his sickening ways; had she been focused on now and not then, there would be none of this soaked mess. Or any of the other ones, Nora thought, shaking her head.

  Oli trotted back with a roll of paper towels and a crispy-dry sponge. She still had her bags slung across her slim body and her headphones around her neck. “So this pod,” she said, lunging toward the edge of Nora’s desk to catch the waterfall. “It’s that true crime series—Slay. You’ve heard about this, right?” Oli nodded on Nora’s behalf. “They follow one case over thirteen weeks; one delicious episode at a time, and I . . . am . . . obsessed.” She paused on sopping up the water and stood looking at Nora.

  Olivia Chung is Nora’s ardent and loyal No. 2. She came to work for Nora just days after the two met in a cramped bathroom at a Fashion Week event three years ago. Nora had dipped into the loo to check her hair; it was unreasonably humid for September and she was . . . concerned. There she found Oli crouched in the only functioning stall with the door half-open, bawling. The sick sound pouring from this small body rolled up into a tight ball made Nora push the stall door the rest of the way open. Oli barely looked up, unconcerned about being so exposed, and kept crying. Her face was smeared with wet makeup. Her shoulders jerked as the rest of her trembled against the clammy bathroom floor. She stayed there trying to tuck her head deeper into her neck and bend her neck into her convulsing chest past where it was physically capable of going. She was trying to disappear; fold into herself until there was nothing left. Nora knew this because on that one horrible day in June, she had wanted her body to do the same thing, to tuck itself into itself, squeeze all of its matter into the tiniest space until it was rendered invisible.

  Seeing the young woman, a stranger, so uncontrollably sad and broken by the world pulled Nora back into the black hole of when her mother died. Cancer. At first the disease was just rare and that’s all they could process, but then it turned merciless and cruel.

  “It’s called mucinous cystic neoplasm,” Dr. Bourdain had said, his voice low and dour. “And unfortunately, it developed into pancreatic cancer.” He and his wife, both with severe sadness drawn over their faces, sat across from Nora in the still-spotless kitchen—her mother’s sacred province—trying to explain to her what was happening, prepare her for what she would see at the hospital. All Nora heard was that her mother was dying, and fast.

  “Just breathe,” Nora had said to Oli, when she sunk deeper into her wailing and started to cough and gasp. “Breathe,” she’d said, squatting down beside Oli and gripping her shoulders.

  Oli could only shake her head. “IcantIcantIcant,” she sputtered. “I can’t breathe. Not like this. Not . . . without her.” She had just been dumped by her girlfriend of eighteen months. Speaking that truth, saying the words, putting her lost love’s name into the stale air was too much for Oli. She fell into Nora, a sobbing, shivering, sweaty heap. Nora pulled her, this shattered stranger, closer, crushing her own precious couture jacket—dismissing its high-end specialness—and she cried with Oli, stroking the sides of her night-black hair piled atop her head like a dark mountain. She stayed rocking her as Oli’s baying unwound, settling into sniffles, and her breathing caught a smoother rhythm. She stayed with her, waiting, like she wished someone had done for her back on that wretched summer’s day when the world Nora knew crumbled into dust. She stayed with her until they were both ready to stand and return to life, pieced back together—if only for that night. The two women walked out of the stall, leaning on each other and with a tacit promise to leave their sorrow whole and untouched on the damp floor behind them and to cover their splintered hearts with layers of the finest fabrics and the most fabulous accessories their trained eye could find.

  Nora looked at the water spread all over her desk now and at Oli trying to sop it up. “You really don’t have to clean up after me,” Nora said. She reached for the paper towel roll, but Oli arched it away from her.

  “Nonsense,” she said. “I’m on this. Plus, you gotta listen to my whole thing about this podcast.” Oli returned to wiping up the water in her precise way. “So this guy, Edmund Thackeray—which is the most British and brillz name at the same bloody time—he’s a former MI6 intelligence officer who for years had this cover as a biomedical sciences professor at Oxford. Already I’m seeing a young Harrison Ford or maybe Christian Bale playing this part in the movie. No—younger! And Asian! Daniel Henney. Yes, that damn Daniel Henney is perfect. And for the movie, instead of retired, we’d make him very active in the spy game. Who could direct that, though?”

  “Wait, are we on a tangent of another tangent?” Nora said, and twisted her face in faux confusion.

  Oli laughed and shook her head, trying to toggle her brain back to her original thoughts. “But, come on. That damn Daniel Henney is such a good tangent to be on.”

  “Point taken.” Nora scooped up her fried phone, rolling it in her palm as she sat back in her seat. She thought about her Daniel from long ago. He was a really good tangent to be on, too, she wanted to say, but didn’t. Instead she added the sentiment to the others on the long list of things she couldn’t say. Not out loud. Not in this version of her life. But with Oli the temptation to say “me too” was particularly high. Like when she told Nora that her surname was actually Hogan. Chung is her Chinese-Jamaican mother’s maiden name. Hogan belonged to her Irish-American father, who died before his memory could find a place in her heart.

  Me too.

  When she talked about being an only child who fiercely loved her hardworking mother, but still found herself on an unrelenting search for a father.

  Me too.

  And each time feeling betrayed and shattered when this search led her straight into nothing.

  Me too.

  When she talked about how frustrating it was to grow up living in that very thin middle between being Us and Them, and winding up on the outside of circles anyway.

  Me too.

  Or when, with anger and hurt swi
rling in her throat, she talked about the irritating, incessant question: Where are you from? And followed that with an explanation of what microag-gressions are—in terms Nora, the ally, might understand.

  Nora understood. It had been over a decade in this new skin, but she understood. She remembered.

  “What about this spy guy and the podcast?” Nora said. Guiding Oli back to the center of the conversation was one of Nora’s regular tasks.

  “Oh, yeah, yeah.” She draped her dark curtain of hair across her left shoulder and took a deep breath. “All right, so this Thackeray goes back under for a last mission investigating the Alton Brothers’ energy company and ties to the Russian mafia.”

  “Alton Brothers . . . wait, this story is sounding familiar.”

  “Let me get there,” Oli said, holding the saturated sponge up near her beaming face. “So Thackeray meets this other British agent—Barnes—for coffee in North London to talk their hush-hush. Two days later, Barnes turns up dead.”

  Nora began a slow nod, forming her lips to speak.

  “Poisoned!” she chirped, before Nora had a chance to say anything. Oli was pleased by the startled look on her boss’s face, it didn’t matter that it was probably owing to her screeching. She took her points however they came. “Big bad dose of radioactive polonium-210, which is—”

  “Highly lethal. I know,” Nora said, her mouth sailing open and eyebrows pitched high on her forehead. “Actually, Fisher was talking about this case last month. They have a compound just like it at the research lab.”

  “Beaumont Medical is dabbling in polonium-210? Whut?”

  “They’re not dabbling in it,” Nora snapped. “It’s a different element. There’s no radioactive piece to it.”

  “Is it still poisonous and mad dangerous?”

  “Yeah, but you can’t use it for anything nuclear.”

  “Sounds pretty close to it. That’s crazy. Is the lab owned by the Alton Brothers?”