Have You Met Nora?

by Nicole Blades

  “Sorry? That’s you. I’m not sorry. This day—right this minute—this is the fucking best! I ran into, like literally ran into the fabulous Nora Bourdain. What luck, what luck, call me a duck.” The woman chuckled and tossed the clutter of cups and ice into the gutter just past Nora’s feet. “You know, for a minute I started to believe that I imagined you, dreamed you up. But no, you’re real”—she dusted off her hands, dragging her eyes slowly up Nora’s frame—“and lookatcha, still pulling this shit. You’re about that long game, huh? Wow. That’s commitment; I’ll give you that.” She shook her head and gave Nora the once-over again. “Nora muhfuckin’ Bourdain, in the flesh. I really should hit a bodega and buy me a lottery ticket.”

  “Listen. I don’t know what you think is happening, but I already offered to pay for your mocha whipped bullshit,” Nora said, her hand waving across the dripping mess along the woman’s top. “You declined. So, it looks like we’re done here.”

  As Nora moved left to leave, the woman stepped in her path, blocking the way. “Oh, no-no. Not this time,” she said, leaning into Nora’s face. “It’s not going down like that. Not again. I’ll definitely be seeing you around, Miss Bourdain. Definitely. Hashtag facts only. Now”—she pulled out of Nora’s space—“I’m going back in the Bean House and get a redo on my iced-up deliciousness. But thank you, truly, for this exquisite evening. Later, buddy!”

  Nora walked away, not daring to look back. But once she rounded the corner, her body folded at the middle, as if kicked, and she stumbled back to what she believed was a yellow wall—that is, until the thing started moving. Nora couldn’t hear what the cab driver was saying, but from his flailing arms she guessed that he was likely cursing at her. She sputtered some words at him and he nodded. She pulled the cab door open and, still doubled over, Nora slid into the back and stayed curled up on her side like a sick animal, her face pressed against the seat.

  The cab bounced and dipped, picked up speed, and stopped hard over and again, jostling Nora around. Her mind had taken leave of her body, so she felt nothing. All Nora could process was that she had just met up with her horrible past—crashed right into it—and its name is Ghetto Dawn.

  Her real name is Dawn Brooks, but Nora and her small, enviable circle of friends gave her the mean moniker shortly after the girl arrived at the prestigious boarding school in their junior year. Dawn was a black, self-assured, hard-shelled, scholarship student from starkly humble beginnings in Chicago. Upon meeting Nora, she smirked and nodded, knowing something about the school’s golden princess “didn’t curl all the way over.” She started snooping around, digging into anything Nora touched. Dawn stayed suspicious from the very beginning right up to the moment Nora created the end.

  Nora hadn’t thought about Ghetto Dawn in forever. Not once since she watched her being escorted from their school flanked by the security guard and a young state trooper. Yet here she was, present day, standing before Nora with her smirk as crooked as a decade ago and refusing to break her classic deep stare.

  Nora pulled herself mostly upright in the back of the cab and leaned her head against the cracked-open window. Those last days with Dawn at Immaculate Heart spiraled through her brain with a blistering heat.

  “Well, look at you,” Dawn had said. She was leaning on the sink closest to the antique half lite door with frosted glass.

  Nora swallowed hard. The gulping sound was loud in her ears. She had just gotten out of the showers. She turned her back to Dawn and put her robe on over her towel. “What, did you come in here to hurl or something?”

  Dawn chuckled. “No, not my style.”

  “What is your style, sneaking up on people in the shower?” Nora stepped lightly over to the sink near Dawn. She kept her eyes low on her own reflection in the mirror.

  “That’s not me either,” Dawn said.

  “So what, you’re just going to stand there, all creepy and staring?” She turned on the faucet and splashed water on her already-wet face.

  “You’re really doing this, huh?”

  “What?” Nora locked the faucet and finally looked at Dawn. “I can use these showers. Emily’s doing an ice-bath soak or something in ours.”

  “Oh, you’re going to just stand there and act like you don’t know what’s up?”

  Nora’s hands started tingling. She balled them into fists and used them to prop herself up against the edge of the sink. “I don’t know what your problem is, but I’d like some privacy. So . . . do you mind?”

  “Actually, I don’t mind. But I’m sure your white homegirls would.”

  Nora’s heart started its rhythmic punch again. The rise and fall of her chest picked up the tempo. She knew her eyes were shifty, but couldn’t summon the calm to stop them from darting around the empty bathroom. From somewhere in the base of her stomach, the words came. “You know what? Fuck you.”

  “Fuck me?” Dawn tossed her head back and laughed. Her mouth was wide and her nostrils flared. The cackle was loud and hard. “Fuck me? You’re the one who’s fucked. I mean, how much hate must you have swirling around your gut to do this?” She drew a circle around Nora’s face with her pointed finger. “Pretending that you’re some white bitch with a trust fund? But you know what, they bought it. They all bought that shit.”

  Nora’s elbows buckled, sending her swaying forward into the basin. She put a hand out in time to stop from crashing into the mirror. She pushed against it and slid her other hand along the inside of the sink, trying to regain her balance.

  Dawn stepped in, closer, leering.

  Nora eyed the door behind Dawn.

  “You know what’s crazy? I think I almost bought your bullshit, too.” Dawn clucked her tongue. “Almost.”

  Nora looked away and stared down into the sink. The throbbing by her temples slowed. Her heartbeat moved from the middle of her throat and settled back into her chest, but the churning in her stomach remained. She turned toward Dawn again, gazing at her feet, studying the girl’s ratty slippers. She slowly shook her head. “You don’t know anything about me,” Nora said. She paused and licked her lips. She started again, louder, slower, and raising her eyes enough to lock in on Dawn. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I know that you’re one lying piece of shit,” Dawn said with a mix of delight and disgust. “The worst part is, I work so hard to get people to like me, to get them to trust me and still, there are no guarantees. But you, you’re out here standing on the grandest of lies—you’re the one they shouldn’t trust. You’re the one to be afraid of, but you slide on through and they stay giving me the side looks. So fucked up.”

  Nora wrapped the robe tighter around her and pulled the sash snug. “Just stay out of my way,” she said, and gathered her expensive monogrammed cosmetics bag. She wanted to drop everything and tear down the hall, but instead Nora put her full concentration behind walking past Dawn and out of the bathroom with her jaw locked and head high and not even a hint of a glance back. By the time she arrived back in her suite, the door shut tight behind her, Nora dropped everything: the pretense, the cool, and the flimsy theory that no one would ever find out. Dawn was going to unmask her; Nora was convinced of this, so she committed all of her energy and ideas to making sure that that didn’t happen.

  A recent spate of petty theft on the seniors’ dorm floor and burnout tenth-grader Cat Dipalo’s near-fatal drug overdose at the school gave Nora all that she needed to put her savage plan in play. Using little else besides her good name, charm, and raw talent of persuasion, Nora dealt her preemptive blow: She discredited Dawn by setting her up to look like the thief and drug dealer that the school had struggled to root out. Dawn was immediately expelled.

  * * *

  The way Ghetto Dawn’s eyes burned a hole into Nora tonight, even with the coffee dripping from her chin, it was so menacing. Nora couldn’t shake that look. It was clear: She has never forgotten or forgiven Nora.

  But that was Nora Bourdain, she thought, once the static lifted from her br
ain. That version of Nora was long gone, changed for good, along with the blighted surname.

  This was going to be a problem. Dawn Brooks was going to be a problem. It was a solid fact and Nora was terrified, because as she discovered many years ago, the facts are not friendly. The evidence is out to get you. And the truth will ruin your life.

  CHAPTER 8

  Her phone rang again and Nora pressed Ignore again. It was Fisher calling, as promised, to say good morning. She had been sprawled out in the tub the first time he rang at 6:01 on the dot. She had been awake for hours and was unable to speak more than a few jumbled words at a time. And Nora was in no better shape to handle his second call either. She heard the chime notifying her that there was a new text message but ignored that, too. It was the doorbell chime sounding out twice in full that finally got her to move.

  Nora hauled her stiff body out of the empty tub, stepping over the huddle of bottles on the floor beside her. She walked toward the front door, dragging Fisher’s open robe that hung from her shoulders behind her like a necrotic limb. She was still wearing the stained windbreaker from last night, zipped up all the way right under her chin, and her tight sport-shorts panties. When Nora reached the door, she opened it wide and slid down the wall next to it in the foyer. She sat there staring out at nothing, waiting almost motionless for over an hour.

  The security phone buzzed. Nora, barely blinking, reached up to the panel above her head and yanked the phone down. She placed it by her ear and said nothing.

  “Uh, morning, Miss Nora? It’s Javie. I . . . sorry to disturb you so early, but I have Miss Jenna down here. She said you’re expecting her? Normally, that’s okay, but it being so early and everything, I thought it’s best I buzz you.”

  Nora grunted out a sound that was close enough to an affirmation, and Javie let Jenna proceed up to the penthouse.

  “Nor?” Jenna said quietly. She pushed the door open farther and crept in on eggshells. “Oh, Jesus,” she said, startled by Nora slumped over by the wall, still cradling the lobby phone. “Honey, are you okay?” Jenna slammed the door shut and swooped down to Nora’s level. She caught a glimpse of Nora’s dirty jacket beneath the open robe. “Oh, my God! What happened? What is this, mud? Puke?” Jenna ripped open the robe and scanned the dried mess on Nora’s jacket. “What the—Nora, are you physically hurt? Did someone . . . hurt you?”

  Nora gave a slight shake of her head and kept a hazy gaze just past Jenna’s shoulder. “It’s coffee,” she said. The words slipped out in a hush through her dry, cracked lips.

  “Coffee?” Jenna said, her face red and misted over with sweat. She did a quick scan of the rest of Nora’s bunched-up body and slinked closer to her catatonic best friend. “ ‘I need you please come,’ that’s it. That’s all you texted. I burn it down here, come upstairs, and the door’s wide open; you’re sitting on the floor like a zombie and covered in old coffee stains. What the fuck is going on? Do we need to call Fish, tell him to come back early?”

  Nora moved her eyes to meet Jenna’s and shook her head again. “I-I can’t . . . I don’t know what . . .” Her tears came in with a sting, and she crumpled into a sobbing, trembling heap.

  Jenna threw her arms around Nora’s twitching body and pulled her in close. “Honey, honey, it’s okay. Don’t force it. Let’s just baby-step this,” she said, gently rocking Nora. “First, let’s clean you up, all right? A hot shower, get you out of these coffee-dirty clothes, and we’ll go from there.” She helped Nora up and guided her to the master bathroom. “I’ll, uh”—she gestured to the guest bathroom down the hall with a tilt of her head—“clean up all the other stuff down there while you’re showering.” She smiled. It was gentle, kind, and it only made Nora’s chest hurt more. “And I’ll call Oli. You’re not going in today. They can handle it.”

  A stiff nod was all that Nora had.

  Even as Jenna helped Nora out of her grimy clothes, as she put her broken friend to sit on the padded bench by the window while she tested the shower’s warmth with her hand, as she tucked Nora’s limp hair behind her ears and looked into her clouded eyes with clear empathy and caring, Nora couldn’t find the words to tell her thank you. . . .

  I’m sorry. . . .

  This is all a lie.

  Nora skipped the mirror—she knew what she looked like—and went straight into the shower. As the hot water covered her shaking body, she dropped her head back and watched the steam dancing by the lights high above. The shower had always been her special space, a haven from the roughness of regular life, the place where she could recover. And after leaving parts of herself on the floor of Dr. Bourdain’s study, in the basements of curious boys’ homes, or wedged into a box she had kept hidden under her dorm room bed, the shower stall—no matter how stark or opulent—was where Nora went to glue the remaining pieces of herself back together.

  The shower was also where Nora did her thinking, devising ways to survive being demolished by the walls that threatened to crush her. Dawn was a wall. Back in their senior year at boarding school, Dawn was explicit with her intentions: She was going to destroy her. She told Nora this outright as the two were hustling into chemistry class, late. This ran deeper than a simple threat for Nora. Dawn’s words sliced into Nora’s white, bright, unruffled, self-contained life in Vermont. There, she was Nora Bourdain: popular, revered, idolized, and, most important, accepted. Finally she belonged, no longer unclaimed and rejected. And it was all so immediate; she was an instant hit at Immaculate Heart. Nora herself was surprised at how well this deception launched by Mrs. Bourdain had played at the school. Of course she was white. Of course she was wealthy, privileged, held under a special, glowing light. She deserved to be there. She deserved to be in any room that she cared to grace. The thought of Dawn, cheap and malicious, unraveling her handsome life was too much to process.

  She knew something had to be done.

  And so Nora would spend hours swaying in the shower at school—often three times a day—thinking of ways to stop Ghetto Dawn. With administrators already whispering about the uptick in petty theft and prescription drug abuse at the school, it wasn’t hard to cultivate the seeds of suspicion around Dawn. After all, she was new—and black. In fact, Dawn was the only (visible) African-American student in both the junior and senior classes combined.

  The ambient shush of the running water grew louder as Nora tuned in to the present again. It was soothing, this sound, and she closed her eyes and listened. But her mind refused to stay put. This bad luck encounter with Dawn had her bouncing from one horrible idea to the next, desperately searching for an answer to the question: What now?

  Subscribing to you’ll probably never see her again theories was weak and witless. Nora knew Dawn meant it; she’d see her around. And the “do nothing” refrain was just as useless. She even considered doing the absolute worst possible thing: stepping out from underneath the deception and coming clean to Fisher and her friends, but the real truth was, she didn’t want to. The alternative—being an outlier again, being unclaimed and rejected—Nora wanted no parts of it. She took a deep breath and another slow turn under the rain shower, letting the water beat down her back. It stung, but she kept going with it a few minutes more before shutting it off. She had been in there a long while and was sure Jenna would come knocking soon.

  Nora slipped Fisher’s robe back over her heated body and stood in front of the long marble counter, looking at the tall mirror above, staring through it, past herself. Her face was clean, but still puffy around the eyes. She let her robe drop a little and turned, angling her body in the mirror to get a glimpse at what brought the stinging. She spotted a long, red scratch near the top of her shoulder. Touching it only made it hurt more, but she kept running her finger the length of it. Finally, Nora went to the narrow built-in cabinet for some ointment and a clear bandage and patched herself up. She pulled the robe back up over herself and returned to the mirror. The tears were brimming again. Nora looked down and shook her head.

 
; A light knock at the door.

  “Hon, you okay in there?” Jenna said. “You’re going to look like a raisin by the time you get out.”

  Nora let out a deep, slow breath. “I’m almost done,” she said, and went back to the mirror, forcing a smile. It was pinched and pained, but it would have to do.

  She walked out to the light echo of clinking coming from the kitchen. Nora followed the sound and found Jenna in there shoving the last of the empty champagne bottles into an opaque garbage bag and tying it up. “Oh, God, you don’t have to do that,” Nora said, embarrassed.

  Jenna waved her off. “Please. It’s nothing. Plus, you don’t want your cleaning ladies thinking there might be a teeny problem here. I know they say that they don’t snoop or judge—they tell you that, but you know what? They all fucking judge. And they snoop! It’s unwritten.” She removed the gold polka-dotted apron she’d been wearing and slung it over a chair. The pretty apron was part of a gift from the surprise bridal shower that Nora’s staff threw her a month ago. It was from Kazzy, the recent Oberlin grad and classic California girl who joined Nora’s team on Oli’s recommendation. She had put together a darling basket of “little lady” must-haves that looked fresh from the 1950s. It was a wink to Mad Men, a show Kazzy adored and that Nora merely pretended to. Jenna rolled her eyes at the gift basket—in front of Kazzy—when Nora opened it. It was an inside joke that Nora thought was sweet, but Jenna considered obsequious. Jenna wasn’t a fan of Kazzy in general. From her name (not short for anything) down to how hard she laughed at any of Nora’s even marginally funny quips. She’s so desperate to be liked, Jenna had told Nora after only briefly interacting with the then new-to-the-team Kazzy. Nora couldn’t see it, and didn’t want to.

  “Thanks, but really, it’s fine,” Nora said, walking toward Jenna and squeezing her shoulder. “We don’t have cleaners.” She eased the apron off of the chair and was folding it when she caught herself. “I mean, right now. This week. We don’t have the cleaners coming this week. Scheduling thing.” Nora fired the cleaners a month after moving into Fisher’s penthouse. She didn’t think they were doing an adequate job. Her mother would have found a million things wrong with their work. Nora took over the cleaning herself. It’s therapeutic, she told Fisher when he balked. And it was in a way. Cleaning, using the rather thorough Mona Gittens method, made her feel like her mother was there in spirit, moving through the rooms with her, giving her head nods with each job well done.