Miss Independent (10 page)

No matter how she felt about him in that moment or any other, ultimately, Nikki knew he was right, at least part of what he was addressing to her. She was in fact afraid, terrified almost to the point of shaking. She was afraid of not living up to who her parents were in show business, not living up to the legacy of two multiple Tony winners. She couldn’t sing, and she couldn’t dance, but she had passion. Where had it gone? She knew, but couldn’t bring herself to admit it out loud to anyone.

Maurice dropped his towel on the counter and moved over to her.

She looked up at him and sucked in her cheeks.

“I’m not telling you this to be in asshole.”

“Yes you are. But I’m still going to that audition. And maybe on the way home, I’ll look for a steadier job just to shut you up. But if this entire spiel was your very own way of getting me so pissed off I’d move out so that you could play pretend with Vanessa?” She leaned forward and gave him a devilish grin. “Tough shit. She doesn’t want you. And after this little ‘pep talk’, I’ll make sure she’ll never look twice at you again.”

She raced from the bathroom and slammed the door to her room, quickly getting dressed to make it across town to her audition in Brooklyn.

Maurice remained in the middle of the bathroom, confounded.

Part Five

Back at the office, Vanessa had just finished up a phone call with one of her more important publishers in Milan and was now working on bylines for the upcoming issue when she heard a familiar voice chiming in her doorway.

“BONJOUR! Bon apres-midi, Mon Cheri!”

              She looked up from her desk and saw Alexis standing with one hand resting on the frame of the door while the other rested on her hip. The woman looked fierce as always. Jet black hair flowing to her waist, lashes so long and thick they were often mistaken for fakes, a dress so tight you could see what she had had for breakfast, and a kind of bright red lipstick that was once only reserved for prostitutes; now, it was making its debut on the runways of New York Fashion week, and Alexis was the reason why.

As she stared at the gleefulness on her mother’s face, Vanessa’s heart dropped to the pool of acid sitting in her stomach. She felt as if her insides were beginning to eat themselves and curdled.

              It’s not as if she hated her mother outright. But neither would deny that they had always had a contentious relationship. Two people had never been more like oil and water than Alexis and Vanessa, whom the latter always believed loved her sister more anyway, which was part of her problem. It wasn’t true, Alexis loved her children equally. She just had an interesting way of showing it, meaning little to almost none at all. It probably didn’t help that Felicia was more like Alexis than Vanessa ever wanted to be. She had more drive and ambition to be more in life from the very beginning, to run the magazine anywhere but into the ground; whereas Vanessa lived to get by until she had no other choice but to change course.

              She pushed her glasses to the crown of her head and loosened her sleek ponytail. Alexis was bound to give her a headache, no need in adding to the torture with a tight scalp.

              “You’re back earlier than I expected.”

              She smirked. “Are you disappointed, daughter?”

              “Only slightly.”

              “As am I. Though I
am
glad to see that you haven’t burned the place down,” Alexis continued, stepping inside.

              “Give me time,” she said. She got up from her desk and stood before her mother, crossing one arm over the other and leaning aside. “Let me guess. You were already in flight when you called me last night?”

              “Perhaps.” She tapped Vanessa’s shoulder with the tip of her clutch bag and winked. She admired her from head to toe and lifted her head. “I see you’ve straightened your hair.”

              “I had my hair straightened before you even left town, Mother. But since you were too preoccupied with everything and everyone else but me before your flight out, you just didn’t seem to notice.”

              “May I tell you what I didn’t miss, Vanessa? The snippy attitude.” She moved around the room, admiring the décor. Or at least tolerating it. “Nor have I missed this office of yours. I have always hated these windows in place of plain white walls that you could decorate anyway you pleased. Instead you chose
this
. I’ve always felt your office was too open to your employees and passersby.”

              She spun around with her arms still folded. “And I always felt yours was too cold and closed off. Maybe our offices reflect who we are.”

              “Or perhaps I only value my alone time.”

              “At work? It’s the one and only time you shouldn’t be allowed to be alone.”

              “Says the girl who threw a hissy fit and needed to go home in the middle of the day. Maybe some alone time would have done you some good.”

“Are you really going to give me a hard time about that?”

“No.” She slid back on top of the desk and crossed her long legs. She knit her brows a little and lowered her lids, trying her best to appear as the caring mother. “How are you taking things today?”

              “A lot better than I did last night… and yesterday afternoon and morning. I’m learning to deal with it, it’s not like I have any other choice.”

              “Are you going to this reunion?”

              “I don’t know. Especially now that Joan’s backed out of being president due to having a baby and appointed Sheila in her place.”

              “My God, girl. You have the worst luck of anyone I’ve ever known.”

              “Thanks, Mother. As if I didn’t know that already, I needed to hear it straight from your lips.”

              She went back around her desk and plopped down in her chair.

              “I didn’t mean I like that,” Alexis replied, getting up and turning around. She reached out for the chair behind her and pulled it closer to sit down. “I have wanted you to escape those people ever since high school. Sheila was a terrible influence from the very beginning and Nathan did nothing but cloud your judgment. He was similar to a hallucinogenic, always in your thoughts when there were more important things in life to focus on.”

“Like this magazine?”

“For starters. And now here we are, a place I never wanted you to be again. These people are going to come back into your life and make a mess of it all over again.”

              “They’re not going to make a mess of anything. I’m not going to let that wench get to me.”

              “Is Nathan coming with her?”

              She shrugged. “I don’t know. But I don’t think that crow will pass up an opportunity to flaunt him in my face again, so I’m sure he will make some sort of appearance that weekend. Showing off is probably one of the only things Sheila’s ever been good at. No, wait, if that were the case, she wouldn’t have gotten Nathan in the first place.” She lay her head back on her chair and breathed out. “I was determined to get some work done today. It’s the whole reason I sent Samantha in my place to the photo shoot, and now I can’t stop talking about this nonsense once again.”

              “Just a second.” Alexis stiffened and scrunched her brows together. “You sent who, where?”

              “Samantha, my new assistant. I sent her in my place to the shoot.”

“For God’s sake, Vanessa! You don’t send assistants to an important shoot like this in your place. They are there to assist you!
You
needed to be there with her as the editor-in-chief!”

“And miss out on all of this fun we’re currently having here?” she spewed. “What’s the big deal, anyway? It’s not like she’s going to be forced to do something drastic, like ask the models what they didn’t have for breakfast.”

              “Can this girl even take notes? Has she ever worked at a magazine before this? She was hardly the most competent when I talked to her on the phone.”

              “Which time was that? The first or the fifteenth?”

“Don’t get smart--”

“I’m not. But you can be a little intimidating at times, especially over the phone. Look, Mother, this girl is extremely intelligent. A lot more than the last few
you
managed to hire for me. She worked at a newspaper as their top staff writer and has a 4.8 GPA from Brown. And she never once thought of running in the midst of my meltdown yesterday. She got things taken care of before I even left and I came in this morning with no harrowing messages from our publishers, or photographers. Isn’t she exactly the type of assistant you wanted for me?”

              “She sounds all well and good on paper, Vanessa, but is she really ready to handle what this magazine is all about?”

              “If she can handle me losing my mind in front of everyone, she can handle this. Relax. It’s only a photo shoot, she’s not a practicing midwife delivering a baby for the first time!”

              “She may as well be. This is one of our biggest shoots of the year and you send a novice to handle the task.”

              “Mother!” She pushed back in her chair and widened her arms. “What the hell are you doing here? Did you come here to work or to bitch me out for the millionth time about how much I suck at my job?”

              “I am doing no such thing,
little girl
. And that language
and tone
is uncalled for.”

“So is your attitude,” she muttered, staring down at her desk.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“You are not too old to get snatched, Miss Thing.” Alexis exhaled sharply and tossed her hair back over her shoulder. “This magazine has a reputation to uphold.”

              “And that reputation will continue to be in check. She can’t do much damage, she’s only there to video the whole thing and take notes. Calm down.”

              When the phone at her desk started ringing, they both stared down at the receiver, panicking.

              “See there?” hissed Alexis. “You see? You spoke too soon. It’s a disaster already.”

              “I think a part of you hopes that I fail so that you can just scream to everyone who told you that you should hire me, ‘I told you so, I told you so!’”

              “That is not true, Vanessa.”

              “It is, but it doesn’t matter. With or without your support, I’m going to keep making this magazine into an even bigger success than when you started it.”

Vanessa leaned forward and glanced down at the caller ID as the phone continued blaring off the hook.

“I need to take this,” she said.

“Tell them to wait, whatever it is they have to say to you can wait.”

“I would love to do that, Mother, except I don’t want to.”

              She picked up the phone and heard whistles coming from the other side. Along with heavy breathing.

              “Hello?” she asked. There was no answer. “Hello, hello, hello?!” She exhaled and clucked her tongue. “I know this is you, Nicole. I can see your number flashing across the screen.”

              “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Alexis tossed her hands up in the air and strolled toward the door.

              “That sounded like your mother,” Nikki finally responded. “Is she back in town already?”

              “So you
can
speak. And, yes. Alexis is back and as you can imagine, seeing her after two and a half weeks is as lovely as always,” she replied.

Alexis turned and made a face at her daughter before leaving the room. Vanessa flinched, slightly intimidated by the glare her mother tossed her way. It reminded her of when she was a child and was all but threatened to eat her vegetables before getting dessert of any kind.

She cleared her throat to shake off the feeling and sat back.

“Anyway, what’s up?”

Nikki wavered a moment before responding. She was standing outside a small Brooklyn dance studio waiting to audition for the role of a crack addict whose boyfriend and stepmother were plotting her murder. As the wind swirled around her face and through her hair, she struggled with the right words to use.

              “Nikki, hello???” Vanessa said.

              She lowered her head and gazed at the ground. “Yeah, I’m still here.”

              “What’s up? Why are you calling? Not that I don’t like to hear from you before lunch, it’s just not the norm.”

              “I just… wanted to check up on you, see how you were doing today.”

              “I’m a lot better. I think. Maybe. I don’t know. I did just learn that if we planned on attending the reunion after all that we’d be dealing with none other than the She-Devil herself.”

              “What? What the hell happened to Joan?”

              “A baby happened.”

              “Oh.” She paused. “I thought I heard she got pregnant by that guy she’s been with for three years, but then I also heard that he was gay and their sex life was a myth.”

              “Well, it still might be. Either way that myth is the reason she appointed Sheila as the new chairman of the reunion committee, because clearly no one else was up to task for the job.” Her eyes were practically rolling into her head like a spinning bowling ball down the alleyway. “Apparently she has been the vice president the entire time.”

              Nikki scoffed. “How did we not know this?”

              “We didn’t care. Anyway, I’m dealing with it.”

              “Are you thinking of going now?”

              “I don’t know. A part of me wants to, but then another more rational part of me thinks, ‘what’s the point?’ It’s not like we’re both rivaling for Nathan’s affections, she’s marrying the man. And the last thing I need is to see her rubbing my face in it all over again. I don’t know, I’ll just have to think about it. If I remember, Maurice RSVP’d for himself and a guest months ago, so either way, he was always going. Maybe that’s why Sheila thought to invite him to the wedding.”

              “He didn’t know she was the Vice President?”

              “No, and I’m starting to wonder if anyone did. Listen, I don’t want to derail the conversation talking more about that piece of trash. Let’s get to the real reason why you called.”

Nikki went completely silent then. She began chewing the inside of her cheek, which she always did when she was nervous, and tapped her foot on the ground.

“I didn’t want anything, I just, wanted to check in on you.”

“I can tell something else is going on,” said Vanessa. “The sound of your voice always gives you away. There’s a little rattle in the back of your throat that seems to become more apparent as you talk.”

She let out a deep breath and looked up toward the sky.

“I don’t know, I just… Do you think I’m a moocher?”

              “What? Where is that coming from?”

              “I was talking to Maurice this morning--”

              “You managed to get up before noon?”

              “Yes, for this audition I’m currently waiting for.” She moved the hair from her face and looked aside. “I just don’t want you to think that I’m using you or that our friendship means more to you than it does to me, because it doesn’t.”

              “I don’t think you’re a moocher, Nicole. Maurice was just being an ass this morning, most likely because that girl he was with snuck out on him last night after he untied her and probably stole some money from his wallet. Don’t let anything he ever says get to you like that.”

              “He was right in some of the things he said.”

              “He wasn’t right about that. Is that why you started off asking me about Sheila?”

              “Yes and no. I genuinely wanted to know how you were doing. But I also didn’t want you to think I didn’t care, despite the way I can come off about it.”

              “I know that you care. I can come off fairly annoying about it and I know that too. Sometimes I just need to vent, and sometimes, I can go over the top.”

              Her assistant walked back into the office then, appearing somewhat disheveled. Her pants were stained with coffee and grape jelly. There were traces of what looked like butter left on her shirt, and her hair looked as if it had been caught inside a vacuum. Vanessa frowned a little and sat up in her chair.

              “Nik, I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you when I get home and we can decide what will be for dinner.”

              As she hung up the phone, she rushed to Samantha’s desk. She was slumped over in her chair from complete exhaustion and almost near tears.

              “What the hell happened to you? You were supposed to work a photo shoot, not tame a lion.”

              “Believe me,” she began, her voice cracking like little bits of paper as she tried her best to keep from blubbering, “some of those women WERE lions. I’ve never seen such an utter lack of self-control.” The skin around her eyes expanded as she leaned forward on her desk and opened her arms. “One model decided it would be fun to take a joy ride on the back of that old time cop car that sits on display near the hot dog stand.”

“I didn’t even think that thing could run.”

“No one did, but to my surprise, Brandi Urvine was somehow able to hotwire it as we were busy trying to get things set up. Meanwhile, the other one climbed on top of it with her top off! Her boobs were flying everywhere, and Brandi kept screaming music lyrics out of the window. In between all of this, she got cigarette burns all over her arms that we had to cover with an enormous amount of makeup. I knew models could be problematic, but these two…” She momentarily dropped her face in her hands and sharply rattled her head. “They didn’t get arrested but it was only because I told the police that they were my mentally unstable half-sisters who I was looking to stick inside an asylum in Newark. He suggested more secure facilities around the city before going after some naked man who was streaking us in the park. And then, one of the girls had to pose on a horse. But she didn’t want to pose on the horse because she was afraid of horses and afraid of being tossed off.”

“Veronica, right?” she asked. Samantha nodded. “We asked her this months ago and now she’s suddenly afraid to be on a horse? This girl informed me once that she had sex in a Ferris wheel while it was stuck at the top for crying out loud. Granted, she was apparently high on coke, but even sober, I’m supposed to believe that a few feet from the ground made her
that
nervous? What else happened?”

“She finally got on the horse after I convinced her that she was only sitting, not riding it. But she still thought she needed some alcohol first to get through it.”

              “Oh great--”

              “And then I think I saw her snort something from the back of her hand. I didn’t know what to say to her, so I kept the shoot going.”

“I’ll have yet another talk with her later. Go on.”

“Ok. So, we’re getting her up on this horse, she steadies herself, and then as soon as Pierre gets the perfect shot of her appearing like a goddess on a stallion, she pukes all over it and herself. The horse immediately ran off and I was forced to catch her before she fell to the ground and then told to run after the horse while vomit is flying back in the wind, landing on my shirt.”

              Vanessa placed her hand to her lips. She snorted a little, but tried to stop herself.

              “Are you laughing at me?” Samantha asked. Her voice was shaking now. “Was this some kind of test?”

              “No! It wasn’t, and I’m sorry. It wasn’t a test, I really did need your help and I’m grateful for you being there, especially under these horrific circumstances... Since I never received a call, I assumed everything was going fine.”

              “No one wanted to call you because everyone thought they’d be fired.”

              “They just might be, but that’s the reason I sent you out there. Now I know what happens when I’m not there to control these idiots.”

              “You’re not going to fire me, are you?”

              “Of course not!” said Vanessa. “You did your job. And it seems you were the only one who did.”

              Samantha began picking pieces of leaves and twigs from her hair as Vanessa looked on with a bit of pity.

              “Hey,” she continued. “Why don’t you go and get cleaned up. The company showers are finally working again in the locker rooms. Take a nice, long hot shower because you look like you could use it. Also, head to the wardrobe department downstairs, find Anthony and tell him that you need something to wear for the rest of the day. I can’t have you sitting here looking like this and I know that you don’t want to smell like week old cottage cheese for the next few hours.”

              “Are you sure? I don’t want you to miss calls or anything.”

              “Before I became an editor, I answered my mother’s phone at the desk that sits in front of her office, just like mine. I think I can remember how it goes and what buttons to push.”

“I didn’t mean to imply anything.”

“I know you didn’t. I was just being snarky. By the way, did you manage to take any pictures or get any video before the chaos?”

              She reached into her back pocket and pulled out her phone.

              “I saved a few pictures of the models as soon as the shoot began. I tried taking a video as they frequently changed poses, but every time I tried switching over, something managed to happen with me involved, so I couldn’t.”

              “Whatever you have should be good enough for now. From what I’ve seen and what you’re telling me, it seems we’ll have a lot to discuss prior to this issue going on stands. Email me the shots and then I will compare notes with Pierre and the rest of the team.”

              When the phone rang, Samantha reached out for it.

Vanessa shook her head and raced back into her office, picking it up without looking. “
Attitude Magazine
.”

              “Anyone ever tell you that you’ve got the voice of a sex kitten in heat? It just purrs when you say the name of where you work.”