Page 4 of Mr. North
Three
Beth
I can’t do this. I can not fucking do this. I don’t know what I was thinking. This isn’t just meeting up with any old guy to chat and play a friendly game of chess. This is Raphael North, for crying out loud. I’m not ready for a meeting like this. I need more time to ready myself mentally, to prepare, to calm my damn nerves. I want to call my mom, but I already know what she’s going to say: “Elizabeth, men like Raphael North have had everything handed to them on a platter their entire lives. Do you really think he’s ever heard the word no before? Do you think he’ll hear it if you’re screaming it from the rooftops while he’s pawing at your body?” Raphael North could be a saint and it wouldn’t matter to my mom; she’d still assume he was going to try and force himself on me at some point.
My whole body is jangling with adrenalin and panic as I pick out clothes for the meeting. Thalia’s instructions were never-ending. They included a very specific dress code, a list of topics that should not be discussed, ranging from the weather (?), to sports (?), to anything related to Raphael’s past or his family. There are directions to Raphael North’s home address, which I could probably have told her. Every man and his dog in this city knows where Raphael lives. The Osiris Building is a work of art. The kind tourists stand in front of and have their pictures taken, huge cheesy grins plastered all over their faces.
It’s rumored that Raphael designed the building and had it built. It’s rumored that he still owns the entire structure, and the other seventy floors that soar straight up into the sky are merely rented by their occupants.
Four o’clock in the afternoon seems to take forever to come around. It’s Saturday, so no class. I putter around my small one-bed apartment, cleaning and reorganizing things, trying not to admit to myself that I might be about ready to bail on the whole thing. I can’t, though. I made a promise to Thalia, and I do my best to make sure I don’t break those.
My nerves don’t manifest themselves the same way they do for other people. Thalia feels lightheaded or sick. My mom gets very chatty when she’s anxious about something. Me, on the other hand? I get hungry. By one in the afternoon, I’ve already eaten an omelet for breakfast, a grilled cheese sandwich, a chicken caesar salad, and the remnants of some Chinese takeout that’s been sitting in my fridge for three days.
I tell myself that I eat the leftovers because it’d be a shame to throw it out, but the truth is I’m worried sick. I can be shy, and I’ve never found myself sat in front of a breathtakingly attractive, mysterious, secretive inventor/philanthropist/celebrity before. I have no idea how I’m going to react in that setting. I could be fine, but then again…god, it doesn’t even bear thinking about. I could be a complete and utter train wreck.
At one thirty, my cell phone rings. I assume it’s Thalia, since I’ve ignored her last two calls (she’s already spoken to me three times this morning, and her nervous energy has done nothing to help my own jitters), but it’s not. It’s my brother, David.
“Hey, Spooch,” he says when I pick up. Fucking Spooch. He’s been calling me that for as long as I can remember. We go through phases of weeks and sometimes even months where he forgets to torture me with the ridiculous nickname, but then, without fail, he’ll remember and it’ll resurface with a vengeance.
“What’s up, Dickface?” Unoriginal, I know, but I have to land my blows where I can with him.
He laughs. “Mom said you asked her if you could move in with me,” he says.
“Oh, lord. I did not . She told me I should .”
“And what did…you…say?” By the sounds of things, he’s eating something. Knowing him, pizza.
“What do you think I said? I told her I’d rather be homeless.”
He cackles, the same way he used to cackle when we were kids and he’d stolen one of my favorite toys. “Well, fuck you, too, little sister. I don’t want to live with you, either.”
“I know you don’t. You’d actually have to put on pants from time to time.”
“Mmm,” he grunts. “Yeah. Fuck pants.”
“Did your call have a purpose, or were you just checking to make sure I wasn’t going to show up on your doorstep tomorrow with all of my things in trash bags?”
“Hey, I know you’d…rather sacrifice your whole degree program and head back to Kansas before you allowed such a…ding to your pride.” He swallows whatever he was chewing. “And yeah, my call does actually have a purpose. The band’s playing at The Gallery next Friday night. Will you come? Pretend like you know the lyrics? Act like you like us and shit?”
My brother’s been in the same almost-nearly-about-to-make-it rock band for the past six years. While I’ve been slaving over my laptop and a towering mountain of textbooks, he’s been tending bar, playing guitar, and hitting on women professionally. “Sadly, I do know all the words. I guess I can pretend to like you guys if I absolutely have to. What’s in it for me?”
“Hmm.” David thinks about this. “I’ll set you up with Mal. He broke up with his girlfriend last week. I know you’ve got the hots for him.”
“The day I stoop to dating a failed real estate agent cum drummer is the day hell freezes over, Davey boy. How about you give back the record player you borrowed from me eighteen months ago? I think that’s a fair trade.”
“Hey, what are you doing later?” This kind of diversionary tactic is typical of David. He doesn’t want to give me back this record player. I’ve been asking him for months, he says he’ll bring it by, and then he never does. It’s not even a half decent player. He just hates returning things. Period.
“I’m playing chess with Raphael North,” I say in my most easy-breezy tone. “What about you?”
“Mutually masturbating with Olivia Wilde,” he fires back. “You’re so weird, Spooch. You’re one of the only people on Earth who’d fantasize about playing a game of chess with a Fortune 500 guy.”
“Uhhh… I am not fantasizing about anyone,” I say evenly.
“Hilarious. You’re twenty-eight years old and you still haven’t figured out how to lie properly. I know how many girls want that guy’s dick in and around their mouths.”
“Don’t quote Superbad at me, David. I’m busy. And I assure you, I have not been day dreaming about sleeping with Raphael North.”
“Pssshhhyeah right. Whatever you say, sweetheart. You’re not fooling anyone. Women are all the same. You see a couple of dollar signs and your panties hit the floor at the speed of li—”
