Nora’s grin dropped and she peered at her friend. “Don’t say that. Don’t apologize about me. I’m not a mistake.”
Jenna frowned and pulled back from the window. “Now, hang on a good minute. No one’s saying anything about you being a mistake. But, honey, you have to admit, you are acting a bit outside of yourself. I mean, you were pounding those shots with those garbage burger frat boys in there; then you just spilled out into the street, and now you’re sitting up talking all crude about your guy’s nether business in front of”—she darted her eyes in Mr. Wally’s direction and whispered—“every-old-anyone. Come on. If the boot was on the other foot, what would you think?”
Nora turned her body to face Jenna and, without breaking her stare, said, “I would think . . . maybe you had a shitty day and this is how you were trying to glue it back together. And I would help you. Not judge you.”
Jenna stepped closer to the car window, her voice hushed. “I know you would. I know. And that’s what I’m doing for you here, Nora. Just let Mr. Wally get you home. Text—no, call me when you’re close—and take a cool shower when you get in. By the time Fisher arrives, you’ll be cleaned up and as right as rain.” She reached in again to push Nora’s hair from her eyes. “We’ll talk later, okay, sweetie.”
Nora nodded and leaned back in the seat. “Okay.” She looked over at her friend. “Thank you.”
“No Biggie Smalls, hon.”
* * *
Nora looked out the window at the endless row of buildings melding into a massive gray smear with splotches of deep amber, steely blue, and bone white—the lights shimmying in between the blurred structures. The late-evening sky was dim and overcast, but she could still make out the shapes of thin, stretched clouds. Leaned up against the door, her head on the darkened window, looking out calmed her spinning brain. It also helped her avoid catching any wayward glances from Mr. Wally.
She closed her eyes and tried to imagine how it will be when Fisher walks in and sees her there on their bed waiting for him. His favorite nightie or nothing but the sheets draped over her fresh, showered body? Nora bounced back and forth between the choices, unsure of which one he’d love more. He is going to be so happy to see her, just as she is to see him. It really didn’t matter what she was wearing, he was going to devour her, and it made her body warm thinking about it.
Nora sat up and scanned her surroundings. They had just passed the Powell Building; they were close to the penthouse. The high squeak of the brakes as the car came to a stop sent Nora’s shoulder into her ears again. It was time.
Mr. Wally cleared his throat loudly and reached up to turn on the interior light over the rearview. Nora unfastened her seat belt and slid across the backseat to the passenger side of the car. She paused for another deep inhale, her hand on the silver door handle, and glanced over at Mr. Wally.
“I’m good from here,” she said quietly. “No need to walk me in.”
“Okay, then,” Mr. Wally said, adding a rigid nod.
Nora pulled her phone out of her bag and flopped it about with a limp wrist. “I’ll just call her when I get inside, so, um . . . thanks.”
“You have a good night, mistruss.”
Mistruss. That’s how her mother used to say it, she thought, and smiled at the driver. He looked back at her with his eyes searing. Nora hustled out of the car and he pulled off just as quickly.
She hit Jenna’s number as she watched the car’s taillights shrink and melt into the night.
“Hey.”
“Hey, sweetie. You almost home?”
Nora nodded. “Yeah.”
“How’s Mr. Wally—has he recovered yet?” Jenna said with a chuckle.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Oh, he’s just an ol’ boiled peanut. Don’t worry about him. He’ll be fine. But you . . . let’s work on getting you fine, too.”
“I’m okay.”
“Well, you will be. Just drink tons of water and pop a couple Advil. I would give you my real, tried and true hangover cure, but it involves raw egg, mayonnaise, and eye of newt. Fisher does not want any part of that, sugar. Trust.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“All right, sweetie, take it easy, okay. Lots of water. And debrief in the morning? I want to hear all about the sexy-lexy reunion. You know I’m a nosy bitch!”
Nora rolled her eyes and a small grin started to slide along her face. “That you are. Good night.”
“Texas forever!”
* * *
Inside the cool of the marble foyer, her heels clacking in echo, Nora released the breath she didn’t realize she had been holding. She gave a quick head nod to the night doorman. He was new, young, and wearing a jacket at least two sizes too large. That was one thing Nora noted about Javie, he was always pristine: his uniform crisp and ironed, his hair sharp and exactly the same every day in a tapered fade with a knife-edge part on the left, and his only accessories were a gold wedding band and a long gold chain with a heavy crucifix that peeked out of the middle buttons on his shirt a handful of times. He was simple and classic with a level of courtesy and professionalism that never faltered. Nora appreciated his overall comportment. There was a sense of majesty to it. He never missed a day of work. Even in the blizzard, he was there, ringing Nora up to check on her with Fisher overseas. Javie was a real part of home base for her.
The late-evening and night staff was a different case. Never consistent or reliable, Nora once counted six new doormen in the span of eight nights.
“Ah, these guys. They’re young,” Javie told Nora when she mentioned the rotating evening staff. “There’s always something better around the corner calling them over, you know?”
When she glanced back at the new guy, making sure she hadn’t spotted him there before, he waved her over. “Are you Nora, uh, Miss Nora . . . Mackensing?”
“Mackenzie, yes.” Nora kept her phone in her hand and visible as she walked over to him. Just in case.
“Okay, good. Mackenzie. Mackenzie, got it. There’s a package for you, Miss Mackenzie.” He held up a lime-green pastry box with a distinct chocolate-brown bow tied large on top.
It was from Angie’s, the pastry shop that shared a wall with Bean House Café. Nora knew Angie’s packaging well. She and Fisher often stopped by back when their Sundays were still shapeless and fun. Angie’s jumbo almond croissant drew the crowds, but Nora coveted her coconut pastries. Sticky, sweet, doughy, and stuffed with finely grated coconut browned and sweetened with sugar and soaked in extracts, they were so close to the Bajan coconut turnovers that Nora’s mother baked for her when she was a child, before they moved into the Bourdain house. Sitting on a small bench in a small park eating one of Angie’s turnovers, reading the Sunday Styles section with her long leg stretched across Fisher’s lap, her sunglasses pushed up through her thick hair and perched atop her head, and thinking only of how good and tasty her life was. Those mornings were Nora’s own quiet requiem for her mother. But the trips to Angie’s became errands, not amusement, and Fisher stopped tagging along. She didn’t buy the turnovers, but instead put in standing orders, selections of her client favorites, gifts, tokens of thanks, and charming introductions. And soon Nora handed over the Angie’s run to Oli and then passed it along again to interns.
“I’m not expecting anything,” Nora said. She stretched out her hand well before she was at a reasonable distance to actually take the box from the young guard. “I wonder if it was supposed to go to my atelier, maybe.”
“I don’t know . . . it’s just here.” He leaned out from behind the desk toward Nora. “They waited for a little bit and then left it.”
Nora dropped her phone into the side of her bag and slid both hands under the pretty box. “What do you mean they waited? The delivery guy?”
“Ah, no. It was a woman.”
“A woman delivery person?”
“Nah, she was dressed regular. Said she was a friend, so she waited for you.”
The box balancing on Nora’s ha
nd dipped, pitching forward. The doorman grabbed for it, saving it from the drop, and rested it on the desk again.
“Oh, sorry. I just . . . sorry. Did she leave her name?”
He shook his head. “Just the box, and there’s a note tucked in on the side there.” The doorman darted his eyes between Nora and the box. “She was real nice, your friend.”
Nora understood. “Right . . .” She reached into her bag to the front pocket where she kept a couple singles. “Thanks for your help, Mr. . . . ?”
“Junior. Everybody calls me Junior.”
Nora handed him a thin fold of dollars. “Thanks, Junior.”
“No, thank you, miss. That’s nice of you. Do you want me to—” He looked down at the box again.
“God, no. I can carry it up,” she sniffed. “Good night, Junior.”
“You too, miss.”
She wanted to slice into the box, tear open the note, but somehow kept it together through the elevator ride up. Inside the penthouse, Nora dropped everything—handbag, keys, dollar bills—on the counter and attacked the box, ruining its bow with scissors down the center. She lifted the top, releasing its baked goodness into the air, the fragrance floating up her nose. And under the parchment, stacked artfully, were two dozen black-and-white cookies. The note from the side of the box fell flat onto one of them. Nora ripped into the small envelope.
Special treats from me to “you.”
Enjoy it all, friend.
xoxo
She stared down at the note, even bringing it closer up to her eyes, and read the first line three times, breaking down the words.
From me. To “you.”
She focused in on the quotation marks, squinting, pursing her lips. Oli, she thought, and her tight expression smoothed out. But why the quotations? Why so anonymous? And Oli doesn’t do desserts. She grabbed her phone and texted Jenna:
hey did u send cookies to me by messenger?
wait . . . u still drunk? is this code???
srsly did you have 2 doz b&w cookies sent?
Never. I get the harmony stuff & Seinfeld thing, but theyre gross!
box from Angie’s pastry arrived. Note but no name.
Probs client . . . or interns trying to get in good??
maybe. anyway talk tmrw . . . Exhausted.
WATER YOURSELF PLS.
oh god. enough. bye!
Nora tapped her fingers against the card and read it aloud once more. The crumple in her brow returned and stayed there as she walked over to the security phone by the front door, holding the card tight in one hand. She pressed the Video button and waited the few seconds for Junior’s face to show up in the monitor.
“Hey, Miss Mackenzie. Everything all right?” He gripped the corded phone piece of the elaborate intercom system. Nora didn’t like the video feature. More than the clear intrusion into her privacy, it was how the doorman (usually Javie) looked like an inmate behind the prison glass partition that really troubled her.
“Yeah . . . actually, just a question: Who’d you say delivered this box again? What did this woman look like?”
“Uh, she looked regular. You know, nice. Friendly.”
“No, I mean, what did she look like look like? Was she Asian, did she have long hair?”
“Oh, okay. I feel you. Nah, she was black. African-American. Her hair was kind of medium, I guess.” Nora’s eyes drifted away from the video monitor as the gears in her brain clicked into motion. She gritted her teeth. “She said she was your friend from, like, back in the day, college or school or something,” Junior continued.
Shit. Dawn.
Nora took a breath, balanced her tone, brought her focus back to the monitor, and forced a smile. “Did she leave a name? They didn’t sign the card”—she flashed it in front of the monitor—“and I can’t quite place which friend this is, you know? Just another quick question, I don’t want to keep you.”
“No doubt, no doubt. Okay, what do you want to know? She came in, like, five or six minutes after I started my shift and—”
“Wait. Do you think Javie saw her before he left?”
“I don’t know. But Javie,” he chuckled, “he sees everything. I could call him at home and ask.”
“No, no. Let’s not disturb him. She said she wanted to wait for me?”
“Let me see.” Junior tipped his head back, chin to the ceiling. “She came in like a few minutes after I got here and asked for you, said she hadn’t seen you in a minute and that she wanted to surprise you and take the box up to your spot.” Nora opened her eyes wide, and Junior put his hand up near his face in response. “But I know that’s against the rules. So I called up, you know, to announce the visitor and get your okay to send her up there, but you were out. That’s when she said she’s cool with waiting for a bit.”
“How long did she stay?”
“That, I don’t recall. But she kept looking at her phone, so not long. I think she had somewhere else to be.”
“All right, thanks, Junior.”
“No problem. Oh! One last thing . . . Earlier, you know when you gave me the tip, um, there was a twenty mixed up with the singles. Maybe you didn’t realize and—”
Nora shook her head. “It’s fine. Honestly. Keep it.”
“For real? Thank you, Miss Mackenzie! That’s super nice of you.”
“Don’t mention it,” she said, clenching her jaw to keep her smile intact. “But, just one favor, between us? Next time that old college friend stops by tell her I’m not here, even if I am. Then call me on my cell, okay? Number’s in the books.”
Junior raised a finger near his winking eye and pointed it at the monitor like a toy gun, chuckling. “Right. I got you. It’s like that, huh?”
Nora nodded. “Yeah, something like that. Thanks.” She pressed the Video button again. The minute the screen went black, Nora felt the waves in her stomach turn to flames. Her breath went ragged. She dropped the note card like a lit matchstick and stomped back into the kitchen to the box and swept it off the counter, sending the cookies toppling to the floor with a low thud.
“No,” she said with force. “Not again.” She wanted to throw something else. Wild, her eyes searched the counter and landed on a vase. Down it went with another sweep of her arm. A mug half filled with stale coffee followed, then her keys, then the jarred candle, then a wide bowl, then some blurred-out square—everything blended into the gray of the marble countertop and Nora, her arms thrashing, could no longer make out the details of the items she sent flying.
An urgent need to tear at things took over next. Nora, bending and twisting, stripped away her clothes, her dangling necklaces and jewelry, letting them fall by her feet as she stumbled to the bathroom, unconcerned with the sounds of buttons popping and fabric tearing. It all had to come off at once. The engagement ring—the last article still on her body—scorched her finger. She dragged it off and tossed the heavy rock onto a mirrored tray on her dresser before storming into the open shower with the charge of a fighter entering the ring. She flung the faucet handles to the right and lunged with her already sweaty, wet face into the rainfall. What stung at first soon settled into something soothing. The water slid over her, kneading the stiffness out of her back, neck, legs, shoulders. Nora tilted her head and let the shower massage her scalp, hoping the kind touch would somehow seep into her brain, too. She took deeper breaths and let them out slowly as the fever in her belly relented. Finally she felt steady enough to sit down and dropped her weight onto the boulder rock seat behind her. She looked at herself, tracing the river running down the middle of her chest and pooling between her closed, stretched-out legs. Nora didn’t want to think about anything else right then. She just wanted to feel good, and the water trickling down her body felt good. She leaned her head back against the textured tiles and brought a leg up, bending it and tucking her foot behind her knee. Nora tracked the water’s path from the base of her neck down over her breast and stomach, moving her hand farther and farther in a smooth line until she c
ould slide two fingers inside of her soft opening. She kept her eyes closed and head back, fingers gliding in and out, rough but rhythmic. As she picked up the tempo of the stroke—her breathing uneven again and her skin prickly—she heard it: Fisher yelling her name.
She opened her eyes and he was standing just outside the frameless shower.
“Nora, are you okay?” His face was flushed and frantic. “Jesus! What happened?” Fisher reached into the shower toward Nora—his jacket drenched—and she leapt out into his arms before he could touch her.
“I’m so glad you’re home,” she sobbed into his neck, and wrapped herself around him tighter.
He tried to pry her away a little, to get a clearer look. “Nora, what happened? What happened to you?” His voice cracked. He brushed back the wet hair from Nora’s face, her mascara smeared, and his eyes went wide. “Did someone hurt you? What happened? There’s smashed shit everywhere, your clothes are ripped and tossed on the floor. What—”
Nora shook her head firmly. “It’s okay. It’s nothing. I’m okay,” she said on repeat, and started kissing Fisher—his face, neck, mouth—with each word.
“Nora . . . what . . . Nora—”
“No,” she whispered. “Just Mack. Only Mack.”
Fisher tried to get more words out, but they only melted in her mouth. And Nora, starved, kissed him deeper. He gave in and pressed his torso into her nakedness. She peeled off his jacket and he helped her remove his shirt, pitching it to the side like a useless husk. Fisher stepped out of his pants, dragged off his shoes and socks, and quickly scooped up Nora. They kissed more—deeper, harder, and untamed—as they staggered over to the running water.
“Mack,” Fisher growled as they backed into the shower. “Promise me you’re okay.”
“Promise,” she whispered into his lips.
In the shower Fisher put Nora to stand, leaned up against the glass, and worked his way down the center of her. She grabbed his thick hair and pushed his head down farther, arching into him. He seemed to like Nora guiding his face to just below her waist and positioning it to be exactly where she needed it. Nora rested her hand lightly on the crown of his head as it swayed and she tried to let time collapse on itself as it often did whenever they vanished into each other this way. But it all felt off, unfamiliar. Wrong. The urge to tear away at something returned, more insistent and dire this time, and Nora wanted to break out of her own skin. She yanked Fisher’s head up from between her legs, gripping a thicket of his hair as if it were the end of the rope saving her from falling to her death.
Have You Met Nora? Page 14