The Other Black Girl(74)



She was sure that it was getting late, and she needed to go home. “I have to go,” she said simply, getting up from her seat. “My friends are waiting.”

“I understand. But Dick is here now, in case you wanted to pop over and say goodbye to him on your way out.”

“Who?”

“Ack, sorry…” Hazel mimed a facepalm as she stood, too. “I meant Richard.”

“He’s here?” Nella spun around. Sure enough, Richard Wagner had just strolled in, a dark denim jacket casually thrown over his right shoulder. He was walking steadily toward them, as though he hadn’t shown up three hours late to the main event, as though it didn’t matter, since he had donated ten thousand dollars to the organization.

“Richard! What’s going on?”

“Hazel, hello!” he said cheerfully, his eyes never quite making it over to Nella. “So sorry to miss this. I made the mistake of getting into a long conversation with an author about the pros and cons of including the word ‘the’ in the beginning of the title of his next novel. Needless to say, it lasted for over an hour, and then I had a few other legitimate things to take care of and… well, time just flew away from me.”

“Wow!” exclaimed Nella, just as Hazel said, at the same exact time, “Was it Joshua Edwards?”

Richard laughed and patted Hazel’s shoulder. “You guessed it.”

“Joshua Edwards? What a piece of work!” Nella heard herself say, a bit too loudly, her tone brightening considerably.

Richard looked over at her—for the first time, really—and smiled wanly. “Nella! What a pleasant surprise.” Then he turned to face Hazel once more, his eyes two polished sapphires. “Please tell me you recorded a video of these girls reading. I think I’d like to include them on our website at Wagner somehow, maybe incorporate them into our social media.”

“That sounds great! I think Juanita recorded everything. I’ll introduce you to her soon.”

Richard clapped his hands again. “Great. By the way, this place? Even better than you made it sound. You know… being here kind of reminded me of that film. What was that film that came out in the nineties, with the young African American man who’s a poet, and the woman he falls for is a photographer?”

“Love Jones?” Hazel guessed.

Richard slapped his thigh. “Indeed! This feels quite like that movie.”

Hazel supported his claim while Nella studied him through watchful eyes. The man looked downright moved. Like he might cry. What do you know about Love Jones? a vexed Angela Davis asked in Nella’s head. Not a damn thing.

But Nella didn’t dare utter a word. Maybe he had a soft spot for ’90s rom-coms, or for Nia Long.

Or… maybe Richard was dating his own Nia Long. Maybe Kenny’s agent—his mistress—was of the melanin persuasion. Nella grinned in spite of herself as Hazel said to Richard, “Isn’t this space great? I’ve been compiling a mental list of all of the authors we could have here for readings and stuff, if you’d like to talk about it.”

“Let’s plan on it. How about before the week ends?”

Nella breathed out a loud, fake yawn, made a show of buttoning her jacket. “Well, it’s getting late.”

Richard nodded as he turned his attention to something on the wall behind her.

Curious, Nella turned to see what was so important. It was a large poster of a beautiful woman with bone-straight, just-blow-dried hair. A beautiful ebony woman.

“Um… I’m going to head home now,” Nella said. “Nice to see you both.”

She lingered as long as her dignity would let her, which happened to be the same amount of time it took Richard to point to the poster, turn to Hazel, and ask, “Does this woman work here?”

Nella ambled away, queasy. The snub stung more than Vera’s or even India’s had, because it hadn’t just been a snub. It was a slap on the wrist, a punishment, an answer to the question that had been bugging her for weeks: Yes, Richard had heard about her problems with Colin’s book—maybe from Vera, but also quite possibly from Hazel, too. I wish all of our editorial assistants worked as hard as you, he used to say to her in that first year, a glow in his eye whenever he saw her burning the midnight oil at her desk. Vera’s very lucky to have you.

The sentiment seemed to have blown away in the wind.

Feeling a bit out of whack, Nella scanned the room until she spotted her boyfriend and best friend. They waved at her, thrilled at the prospect of leaving, before abruptly lowering their hands. Owen leaned over and murmured something to Malaika, who shook her head and closed her eyes.

Nella felt a tap on her shoulder.

“Hey—girl?”

Nella spun around. It was Hazel again. She was holding a small, bright blue jar in her hands that hadn’t been there before. “I meant to give this to you before you left,” she said, handing it over. “Remember how you were talking about how dry your ends get in the fall? This will help with that.”

Nella accepted it, turning it around in her hands beneath the overhead light closest to her. There was no label, no ingredients listed. Just the blue of the plastic. “What’s this?” she asked, unscrewing the cap and sniffing the jar’s contents. It smelled a little like Brown Buttah, but a tad bit sweeter. A deeper inhale granted her a syrupy whiff of molasses.

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