Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney - The Nest

Stephanie bent to pick up a torn page from the floor and placed it on the table with the rest, which were in disarray. She gathered the pages and put them in order. She sat and started reading from the beginning.

LEO DID FEEL BETTER AFTER A SHOWER.He’d made the water as hot as he could bear, and standing in Stephanie’s bathroom as he wiped steam off the mirror, he could see how pink and healthy his skin was. He had lost weight in rehab, and all the running he’d been doing showed. He hadn’t let himself go, that was for sure. As he toweled off, he realized that Stephanie was probably downstairs reading. Good. That was easier than explaining to her — in his own words — the details of the accident and its aftermath. Stephanie would know how to handle this; she was an expert at telling people their work needed to be euthanized — she delivered that news all the time — and she was going to have to help him bury Bea’s story.

Without even trying, Leo could come up with a list of people, starting with Nathan Chowdhury, who would be only too thrilled to write a scathing exposé about his accident, the hand job, the poor caterer from the Bronx hobbling around on one foot. (They would conveniently ignore or somehow downplay that he’d made her a millionaire.) He could see the accompanying pictures, the old drawing of him as King Roach. God. He hadn’t gotten this far — endured rehab, stayed clean for fuck’s sake, protected and carefully camouflaged his savings — just to attract the wrong kind of heat now. Or to end up the laughingstock of New York City, to have people pointing and whispering every time he walked into a room, to be the most e-mailed article on Gawker. He couldn’t have this looming over his head as he tried to set up meetings. Stephanie needed to help him put the whole thing to rest quickly.

When he walked into the kitchen, Stephanie was slowly leafing through the pages, repeatedly returning to one toward the middle (he knew which one). She was pale. She looked up at him and, ah, yes, he remembered that look. He fought back irritation.

“You see what I’m saying. It’s an Archie story,” he said. She sat perfectly still. He watched her, nervously. “Just because she doesn’t call the guy Archie—”

“This all happened?” she asked, as Leo walked over to the sink and got a glass of water. “She lost her foot?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she now?” Stephanie said, still not looking at Leo but at the pages spread on the table in front of her.

“I don’t know.”

“You haven’t heard from her?”

“No,” Leo said. “Well, kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“She’s called a few times, but I haven’t responded. George’s taking care of it. There was a settlement — a very generous one — and part of the agreement was no contact once the papers were signed.”

“I see,” Stephanie said. “I guess you better get George on the amputee right away.”

“I wasn’t privy to the terms of the agreement, Stephanie. I was in rehab. But I have to follow the rules and so does she. It’s in everyone’s best interest, including hers. If she’s caught violating the terms—”

“You guys get the other foot?” Stephanie said. She carefully stacked the papers in the middle of the table, smoothing a page that was wrinkled. Leo thought her hand was trembling a little. He sat down next to her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted to tell you. I really did. But I have a hard time even thinking about it.”

“Aren’t you a little bit curious?”

“Curious?”

“To see how she’s doing. Why she’s calling you? God, Leo, she lost a foot .”

“I know she’s being taken care of. I know she had the absolute best care. I’m not allowed to be curious and contact her.”

Stephanie had one hand on her abdomen like she’d just been gut-punched. “But you wouldn’t call her even if you were allowed to, right?” she said. “Out of sight, out of mind? Write a check and move on?”

“I’m not sure how I could help her. And, yes, I do want to move on. That’s what I’ve been trying to do here!”

“The money? Is this why—”

“Yes. Francie funded the settlement from the trust,” said Leo. “There’s not a lot left, not as much as everyone was counting on, and that’s why they’re circling around here like fucking vultures. Everyone wants me to magically come up with what they think they’re owed. You can see my predicament.”

“ Your predicament?”

“How am I supposed to make that kind of sum appear out of thin air? Those three aren’t thinking clearly.”

“But you’re thinking clearly?”

“Comparatively? Very much so.”

“I see.” Stephanie stood and took a wineglass down from the cabinet, opened a corked bottle on the counter, and poured herself an enormous glass. She thought about the pregnancy app on her phone. The first day she opened it, she’d paged through all nine months and had been amused to see week sixteen, the one that said, This week your baby is a plum! A Plumb. She dumped the wine down the sink.

“What’s her name?” Stephanie asked Leo.

“What difference does that make?” Leo sounded irritated.

“Do you even know her name, Leo?” Stephanie watched him carefully. His cheeks were pink from the shower, his hair slicked back. His eyes were guarded, flinty — ugly within his otherwise lovely face.

“Matilda.” He bit the word hard, as if there were something illegal about lingering too long on each syllable. His unwillingness to hold her name in his mouth made Stephanie mad.

“What was that?” she said.

Leo straightened and spoke more clearly. “Her name is Matilda Rodriguez.”

“And she was nineteen? She was a teenager?”

“Yeah, well.” Leo pictured Matilda’s fingers and remembered how she’d nervously licked her palm before taking him in her hand. He shook his head, trying to block the image, which had already caused a regrettable hardening in his pants. “She was old enough,” he said.

That was the thing he would take back, the words that evoked the tiny but perceptible flinch from Stephanie. She walked over to the table and picked up Bea’s story.

“What are you doing with those?” Leo said.

“What are you going to do with them?” Stephanie gripped the pages in her hands.

“You see why it can’t be published. Forget about me,” Leo said. The heat radiating from Stephanie alarmed him. “What if Matilda reads it?”

“Matilda’s a big reader of literary fiction?” Stephanie said. “You were able to figure that out during your brief car ride?”

“Okay, forget about Matilda,” Leo said. “I’m trying to re-create a life here. Rebuild some kind of business. Bea publishes a new Archie story? Come on. That’s news. She publishes this story — it’s even bigger news and everyone finds out what happened and that’s it. I’m fucked. Who’s going to work with me?”

Stephanie felt dizzy and nauseated. She had to eat. She was afraid she was going to vomit.

“You know I’m right,” Leo said, pacing the kitchen now. “You know if this story is published, people are going to know it’s really about me. She can call the guy Archie or Marcus or Barack Obama, it’s about ME.”

“Even if it is about you, Leo,” Stephanie said, shoving a cracker in her mouth, trying to steady the room, soothe her gullet, quell her anger, and ignore her fear. “Even if it is about you, and even if Bea gets the thing published, and even if someone reads it and connects it to you—” Stephanie took a long sip of water. Exhaled. “Even if all those things happen, who is going to care?”