The Other Black Girl(88)
14
October 20, 2018
“Nala?” The barista stared at her, wide-eyed beneath his bangs, his marker poised tentatively over a white paper cup. “Like The Lion King? Cool!”
Nella shifted her weight to her other boot. “Not quite. Nella.”
“Bella? Sorry.” He started to write.
“No. Sort of like Bella. But with an ‘N.’?”
He blinked at her. “Okay. So, Mella,” he said, crossing out the “B.” “That’s a cool name, too. I guess.”
“Actually…” Nella paused. Hardly anyone could be heard over the sound of Christmas music that—in Nella’s opinion—had no business playing in mid-October. Behind her, a double-decker stroller continued to bump against the back of her legs, pressing her closer to the counter. She wasn’t sure why she was spending so much time putting the poor guy through this name thing when he had already taken her order. His only job was to defend that particular Midtown Starbucks from tourist riffraff and the crazy people who went into work on Saturdays.
Nella, a member of the latter camp, conceded. “Mella works. Thanks.”
She scurried out of the way of another potential stroller hit, scouring for a safe place to wait for her latte. Nella couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen the coffee shop so crowded… but then again, it was a particularly chilly day, the holidays were rapidly approaching, and the Herald Square Macy’s was a mere six blocks away. She supposed that this was what she deserved for leaving Brooklyn on a Saturday.
“Logan! Venti chai tea latte no foam on the bar for Logan!”
A petite blonde woman in a beige fur coat stepped forward to claim the cup. Her trappings swished vigorously as she stormed out, apparently miffed that she’d had to wait at all for anything in Midtown on a weekend.
Nella pulled out her tablet and started to read, so that she wouldn’t become one of those people who felt their important time had been wasted. She hadn’t finished a full page when she felt a tap on her shoulder.
“Excuse me, miss?”
Nella turned around. A tall, broad-shouldered Black man in a green parka holding an iced coffee was looking down at her. She decided in a matter of seconds that he was probably in his late thirties and, as she took in his kind eyes and his bearded face, fairly attractive. An added plus was that he’d elected to pull his black sock cap all the way down over his ears, rather than let it hang off his head like a careless hipster. She wasn’t sure if she knew him from somewhere, although he did look an awful lot like Marvin Gaye in his What’s Going On phase.
When it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything, she smiled and asked, tepidly, “Yes?”
“Sorry,” he said shyly, running a hand along the back of his neck. “You’re just… so beautiful. Wow.”
A flash of heat flared beneath Nella’s turtleneck. “Oh,” she said, as though people told her this in coffee shops all the time. “Thanks?”
He cocked his head at her and stopped smiling only long enough to take a sip of his iced coffee. His pearly white teeth resurfaced as soon as the straw left his mouth. “You are very welcome. So, uh. Anyway, I just wanted to say… well, that you’re beautiful. And also—I think you dropped this.”
She held out her hand. He dropped a Starbucks napkin in it.
“You have a good day, now,” the man said with a wink. Then he turned and pushed his way toward the door.
“Thanks?” Nella repeated. She looked down at the paper napkin, prepared to crumble it up and throw it in the trash. But then she noticed nine digits and three dashes.
Did that guy just ask me out on a Starbucks napkin? She felt both a little bit horrified and a little bit thrilled at the thought of it. She tried to find the tall Black man again. He was now walking to the door, pulling it open, squeezing his way not impolitely through a family of tourists. Malaika would love this story, she knew. She’d tell Owen, too—except maybe she’d downplay his attractiveness. Just a little bit.
Nella looked at the napkin again, expecting to get one last laugh before she went back to her reading, but what she saw turned her blood cold. Somehow, before, she’d missed the words that had been written above the phone number in all caps:
WAGNER’S DANGEROUS. YOU’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.
Nella stared at the first three digits of the phone number, prepared to see the number that she’d called up last month. But the area code was different: 617. This was a Massachusetts area code, a fact she’d involuntarily committed to memory after a brief fling with an MIT grad back in her early NYC days.
So, this wasn’t the same person she’d spilled her soul out to last month. Presumably, anyway.
Unless whoever had been following her had simply changed phone numbers.
She craned her neck to see if Marvin Gaye’s doppelganger was still outside, watching her. Was he the person who’d been following her this entire time? But all she could see were streams of bundled-up tourists moving down the sidewalk, holding hands, swinging shopping bags, staring down at cell phone screens. The Black man was nowhere in sight.
Nella turned back around, awash with relief that almost instantly ebbed into fear. She wanted to see someone watching her. She wanted answers. It had been weeks since she’d received a note, and she’d been naive enough to think that calling that number last time meant the letters would cease. But now that she’d received another one—no, not received, it had practically been thrown in her face—she felt like a stone-cold fool.