******
Netty tapped Fiona on the shoulder. “Time.”
They almost made it to the bedroom they’d appropriated for the night when,
“Fiona! There you are,” Andrea said, as though she should have been elsewhere. “Could I steal you for just a few minutes? We need to do the tiniest bit of press. I let Entertainment Tonight and one or two others come in for just a second! Are you not changed?”
Netty had picked the last dress out of at least 30 choices, and then laughed herself silly when she found out their friend Lani had designed it. Gold silk ropes and thin, diaphanous pieces of fabric cling for dear life to Fiona’s lush curves. The only things holding back gravity were several delicate-looking gold and diamond studded pins. The gown stopped at her ankles and allowed peeks of metallic gold stiletto that twinkled like gems.
The reporter from Entertainment Tonight was tipsy and having a roaring good time. She told them she’d interviewed so many different celebrities they were planning to expand the broadcast from 60 seconds to several minutes.
“Great party!” she kept saying, clinging to Fiona’s side like a limpet.
“Thank you,” Fiona answered.
The third time Fiona pried the woman’s hand from her arm, Andrea stepped in. “We’re gonna cut the cake and blow out candles. You better get set up.”
Netty had chosen a delicious white chocolate raspberry mousse for the second cake, “With the one fruit you didn’t pick,” and helped Fiona sneak two pieces before Cleo could stop her.
“They were small,” she told her narrow-eyed cousin.
“Bull shit.”
Fiona just grinned and licked some mousse off her finger.
******
At the end of the night, somewhere around three when Fiona was all danced out and had drunk enough Veuve to float away on a sea of nose-tickling bubbles, Daney appeared like a genie to shore her up as she said a formal goodbye on the mic.
“Well,” she husked – her voice had given up the ghost several hours earlier – “Thank you, everyone, for coming out to celebrate that I’m another year on the planet. I appreciate your smiles and stories and all of your fabulous gifts. I can’t believe how many of you bought something! Be sure to get a gift bag on the way out; we do not wanna carry that shit home.” She paused as the crowd laughed.
“I really hope you enjoyed yourselves. I had a wonderful time. Special thanks to my Transplants star Tino whose house you’re currently trashing.” Spontaneous bursts of laughter, whistling and applause punctuated her words. “I’m 35 years old today, and I won’t bore you with any personal epiphanies or maudlin reminiscing, but I will say a heartfelt thank you God for giving me this beautiful night, and you,” she squeezed Daney’s side, and he grinned and kissed her cheek. “My girls, Big, all my peeps who came in from the Chi and everywhere else, and all of you new friends who kicked it with me tonight, celebratin’ the fact that I’m still here. Peace!” And she blew the party a kiss before Andrea hustled her away.
“That was super fun,” Fiona told them. Then she passed out.
Chapter eight
“Peace.”
“Feef Love.”
“What up, boy?” she asked Natty. “No,” she told Netty. “That’s been seen too much. Get rid of it.”
“May I have your attention for a moment, please? I come bearing news.”
“What’s good, daddy? You know after birthday ain’t time for nothin’ serious.”
“I had too much fun at your party,” he confessed.
“With who?”
“Never mind. I got a job for you.”
“What I just say? I’m on vacation.”
Natty laughed. “You ain’t on no damn vacation! And this is an easy job. Easy job’s easy money,” he quipped. It was an old phrase between them.
“Yeah? What?”
“Gabriel Larkin wants you to play the female lead in his next video.”
“Gabriel Larkin, Gabriel Larkin. That sounds familiar.”
He heard the rasp of a lighter as she inhaled.
“Is he that blonde, blue-eyed cat from England who’s makin’ a name for himself?”
“The very same. I produced a song for him, and he asked me if I knew you. Of course, he already knew I do, but I played along.”
“He’s good.”
“Very good. He’s gonna be huge here. He’s already a star over there. Says States-side paparazzi is like taking a breather, if you can believe that.”
Fiona whistled. “He’s what, 20?”
“22. So? Apparently you don’t have to be a certain age to recognize quality. He thinks you’ll be perfect for the part. Said the song subject matter reminds him of you,” Natty quoted in a deliberately terrible English accent.
Fiona laughed. “Well, I’ll have Cleo give them a call to see what they talkin’ about.”
“I already gave them your number. Told them to wait on the okay from me before they used it.”
“You know me that well?”
“Yes, my girl, I do.”
Gabriel called himself not 10 minutes later, and told her he’d been a fan forever.
“Yeah?” Fiona laughed. “I like you too.”
They chatted briefly before he launched into the premise for the song – a gorgeous, up-tempo pop number about loving someone the world viewed as wrong – and video.
“It made me think of your situation with Daney.”
They laughed about how the world had changed Dane’s name, now referring to him by the nickname she’d given him.
“The studio’s got a choreographer lined up for some of the trickier bits, but she knows you’re a dancer, so if you want to do your own thing, it’ll be fine.”
“Bet,” Fiona told him.
“Hmmm?”
“That will be fine,” Fiona rephrased, and air kissed him goodbye.
Shit. She had less than a month to whip her ass into some semblance of shape.
She began to exercise every other day for at least an hour, and on off days she’d dance. She griped miserably, but acquiesced to Cleo’s demands that she eat no processed food and drink nothing but water and sugarless tea until the shoot. As a result she showed up in New York three weeks later 10 pounds lighter with muscles taut and glowing from daily exercise and Sugar’s faithful attention.
The video concept was familiar. She and Gabriel were star-crossed lovers. Their respective parents, friends, etc. were doing everything from dropping bugs in the ear to starting fights over the other person’s unsuitability. She thought it was clever how no one ever said race was the reason. Instead, Gabriel portrayed a poor musician and she a wealthy Park Avenue princess type who did everything they could to be together.
In the final climactic 40 seconds of the song Fiona’s character, who’d been buttoned up and reserved except for a few strategic thawings while in his company, broke out and began to dance around him. Gabriel’s tall, lanky body could have been a wall as she spun, leaned and kicked, using him like a prop before she fell backward over his arm in a classic dancer’s pose.
“This is going to be fabulous,” Gabriel said when the first rehearsal was over. Everyone, including perpetual harsh critic Cleo, agreed.
Rather than go home after the video shoot, Fiona stayed for a few meetings and to be close to Daney.
“I gotta be here to shoot Transplants soon anyway,” she told the girls.
Daney took her everywhere with him. Sometimes she felt like their hands were surgically attached, but when he let her go she felt bereft, then relieved when he grabbed her back. She loved how he treated her, and was simultaneously irritated by the intensity of his possession. She wondered if she might be bi-polar, but when she looked it up she was missing several of the key symptoms. So she smoked to bring her scattered thoughts under control and mask the jitters and her moments of indecision, and went to elaborate lengths to hide it from the others.
She left early in the morning before anyone was asleep and walked around
the neighborhood until people woke up. Then she got in her car and began a long series of errands, light shopping and calls to her Mother’s to hear Flora babble into the phone. She also cleaned. Every rug had been vacuumed, every paper shredded, every piece of clothing had been sent to the cleaners.
“I don’t even know why you have a cell phone,” Cleo bitched, whenever Fiona pulled one of her vanishing acts and had to be hustled into her clothes for the evening.
She managed to dodge Daney for a full 36 hours once. He woke her at the crack of dawn so sad she felt terrible for needing a minute to regroup, or break down, depending on which emotion she was on. But most of the time she was right where he wanted her, and he began to look to her for every little thing.
“Did you call about the tickets, babe?” or “My belly hurts. I think I ate too much dinner. Rub it for me?” or “Did you manage to get us in that restaurant?” and “You know that show’s been sold out for months. You think we can swing it?”
Yes, Fiona inevitably said.
Daney treats me too good, she told Netty, when that girl commented on her solicitous behavior. What could she do? The sex was still hot and exciting after months of coupling. He fed her in restaurants, oblivious to the stares his actions drew from patrons and staff. He watched over her, eyeing approaching strangers and never really lowering his guard when they were near. He even protected her from the wind, instinctively using his larger body like a shield.
At first, she’d tried to remain separate in public, but Daney wouldn’t let her, and after a while Fiona stopped caring about the pictures that snapped everywhere they went. She no longer moved away when he put his arms around her waist in a store. She leaned against him, pressing his half-hard dick against her ass. She tipped her head back to make it easier for him to steal short, wet kisses that made the people around them hot.
“Do you love me?” he asked her one day.
They were on an upper floor of Sax Fifth Avenue, and for once there were no cameras watching.
She’d only allowed herself to contemplate the word love recently. Most of the time she pushed it aside with work or sleep or pinners or irritation with the paparazzi, but that time she asked, “You love me?”
He nodded.
She dropped the dress she was looking at to throw her arms around his neck. “Good. I love you too.”
“How come you haven’t told me?”
She shrugged. “Why you ain’t tell me?”
“I just did. I told you first.”
She grinned, kissing him gently. “You sure did, baby.”
“I am so open right now, it’s sick,” she told Netty, on one of the rare mornings she’d slept at home, aka Boomer’s Brooklyn Heights’ brownstone. Daney was shooting all day at a farm upstate for one of the fashion bibles.
“Well,” said Netty, “If that’s how it is you may as well enjoy it and not worry, right? You want an egg with your grits? I’m thinkin’ ‘bout havin’ a beer. You always get good outfits when I do that.”
“Gimme one too,” Fiona laughed and rose to hug her old friend.
She’d pouted the night before when Daney left her to sleep, but she actually enjoyed the time alone. Of course, she’d never tell him so. Nor would she tell him how often he crossed her mind as she and the girls went shopping and had lunch out with Andrea and some of the crew from her movie. She certainly wasn’t going to tell him how her heart pounded when her cell phone rang. How could a woman explain that her body instinctively knew when a certain man was on the line and still keep her dignity?
She and Netty got rip-roaring drunk and passed out a little before 5 p.m. Fiona’s room was like a fashion crime scene. Beer bottles mingled with the shoes and purses scattered over chairs, the floor and a few random piles of weed.
Fiona woke slowly with a hot front. She snuggled against the soft warmth, squeezed the waist beneath her arm.
“If you get fresh I’m leaving,” Netty said, voice muffled by the pillow.
Fiona laughed and jumped up to slap her friend’s round ass with a loud smack. They tussled with the pillows until Netty pinned Fiona in a head lock and made her cry uncle.
The girls continued to keep her busy, and Fiona was grateful for any distraction that rerouted her Daney-centric thinking. Cleo spent most of her time nattering on her cell phone, occasionally pausing to report some tidbit. She was making progress on Fiona’s perfume project. They had scheduled research meetings in several perfumeries, as Fiona liked to call the specialized fragrance houses. Andrea was helping to schedule a sit down with a top-of-the-industry French company that had offices in New York, but the people Fiona wanted to speak with were actually based in France, so it required some maneuvering.
Netty had a list of Carrie Bradshaw type places to shop, and in almost all, she’d called ahead to say they were coming. The sales girls greeted Fiona like a long lost friend. They showed things they’d put aside for her, took pictures, offered champagne, cleverly catered low-calorie snacks and discounts, all of which she cheerfully accepted.
Sugar had them in and out of apothecaries and herb shops looking for all natural beauty products and information. She was planning to start her own line of lotions and potions, which Fiona had promised to endorse. She hadn’t told Sugar but she also planned to be her partner and put down the money to bankroll her start.
“You can take on other clients, you know,” Fiona told her, but Sugar just shook her head.
“I want people that I can care for on a consistent basis, and make a serious difference, the way I can with you.”
Netty had a different interpretation. She figured Sugar was half in love with Fiona because she’d rescued her from life as a counter girl, a day time department store drone commuting from the low end of the city downtown every day.
Fiona didn’t know if she believed that, though Sugar was extraordinarily caring and devoted, but that was part of the reason she continued to press the girl’s dreams forward. Sugar would smile modestly when Fiona introduced her to celebs and other influential people, and then make herself scarce, but she took down their information when it was offered and sent out requested samples. She’d gathered a number of followers this way, and now spent all of her free time making products, for which Fiona insisted she charge top dollar.
“I can’t have folks thinkin’ you puttin’ cheap shit on my ass!”
Sugar just laughed, but she confided she’d built quite a little nest egg, which she gleefully reported as it increased by thousand dollar increments.
Cleo and Andrea had helped her put together a simple but jazzy brochure that offered a few Sugar Belle – Sweet Beauty – tips and tricks for the face, and showed pictures of her products in the elegant packaging she’d picked for the launch. The samples, however, came in plain plastic containers.
“I’m not officially set up yet,” she’d say when people asked for her web address. “I’m still dabbling with my menu!” and they all laughed.
******
Fiona was also slowly losing her fear of Flora. Netty had convinced her she could handle the baby in New York, and had flown home to bring her out. Then everyone left her to spend her first day alone with the child. Deliberately, she realized later, forcing her to be responsible.
When she woke that morning to Flora’s gentle taps on her face, she picked up the child and stuck her head out the bedroom door to yell, “Netty!”
No answer.
“Sugar!”
The house remained silent.
“Hmmm. Looks like it’s me and you, little girl.”
Flora looked on with interest to see what would happen next, and they stared at each other. Then the baby smiled, and Fiona laughed and scooped her up for a flurry of kisses.
“Hungry?” she asked, and the baby babbled an answer as Fiona changed her diaper then stuffed her gently into the kitchen highchair.
She washed her hands and face, then the baby’s, and set water to boil for grits. She took out a pan to scramble eggs, reasoning
that soft breakfast foods would be okay for the baby to eat. The baby food looked like shit. She microwaved herself some bacon, but Flora ended up eating some of that too, making great use of her pearly teeth as she gummed down the sweet, buttery grits and fluffy yellow eggs.
Her cell was sitting in its charging cradle, and Fiona checked it after she’d cleaned up and wiped Flora down. Daney had called to say he’d be through that afternoon around lunchtime to meet the baby. Cleo was sleeping in at Barney’s and would be taking the next plane out to join them. Of Netty there was no word, but Fiona remembered her saying something about an early sale. Sugar had probably tagged along.
“You wanna meet momma’s sweetie? He gon’ be here at noon. What we gon’ cook, huh?”
Flora smiled and banged her hands on the highchair table and held her arms up when Fiona approached.
“I think we should make something easy but filling. Spaghetti with meat sauce and a salad.” She opened the freezer. “We’ve got some cheesecake bites we can have for desert, since Cleo’s not here to say we can’t, and I think, yep. Here it is – leftover strawberry sauce! We’ll leave this out to thaw. We should probably take a bath, huh?”
So Fiona ran a bathtub full of water and got in with the baby. She had a moment’s apprehension when she realized how far over the baby’s head the water was, but she kissed her energetically splashing child with a promise not to let go of her for a second.
“I shoulda got you some-a those baby swim lessons where you stick your tongue out and wear teeny little goggles,” Fiona said and laughed when Flora splashed water in her face.
She cleaned her daughter gently, enjoying the not-often-had pleasure of washing the tiny limbs, fingers and toes. She even dipped the baby’s head under the faucet to rinse her hair beneath a medium-sized trickle of water. Once her hair was wet, Fiona immediately got out and wrapped Flora like a mummy.
“Big momma would have something to say if you caught a cold while you here, I’m sure,” she told the child, making Flora laugh as she used the hand dryer to playfully blow her dry along with her silky black curls.
Fiona Love Page 11
