My Nora

chapter Two


Nora tightened the nozzle joining a bit more and tried the tap again, hoping she didn’t get another blast of cold water in her face for all the trouble. Hot damn, it worked. There was a small trickle coming from some invisible crack in the spray gun’s plastic, but it was actually now capable of shooting a stream of water in a specified direction. She gave a silent cheer and aimed the nozzle at her collection of soiled plastic paint pallets and went to town on them. The force from the hose was violent enough that the stuck-on acrylic melted right off without the aid of her tired fingers. Nora had grown sloppy since her move and had let the mess in her sunroom studio pile up. She normally cleaned her brushes and paint trays after each use, but so much had been going on that it was just easier to handle it all in batches. Fortunately she wasn’t working with oils at the moment or she would have probably lost a few of her favorite sable brushes as a result of her negligence.

When Nora’s phone bleated from the pocket of her plaid overshirt, she shut off the tap and abandoned her mess for the moment, walking toward the road as she answered. The cellular connectivity in Eastern North Carolina was hit or miss with her carrier, and she discovered while taking out the mail one day that she needed to stand in certain parts of the yard to get a decent signal. As long as she was standing near the road, her calls didn’t drop. It was the only place the pines didn’t get in the way.

“Nora Fredrickson,” she answered.

“Nora! It’s Bennie.”

Nora pulled the phone back from her face and squinted at the display again. She didn’t recognize the number, although she knew the person calling from it very well. “Whose phone are you calling me from, Bennie?”

“I’m in this new gallery in D.C. that invited me to a sneak peek of their upcoming show. They let me use their office phone.”

Nora sat on a dry pine stump at the very end of her driveway and waved at a semi-truck as it barreled by. The driver pulled the air horn in response. “Really? You got invited?”

“Well, no. Actually you got invited and I found the postcard in your P.O. box so I just helped myself. I figured you weren’t going to use it.”

“That’s not the point. By the way, I thought you put in a forwarding request for that box.”

“I did. This invite came two months ago.”

“I was in Baltimore two months ago.”

“I know! You should really check your mail more often. It’s not wise to leave things in the box overnight. Stuff gets stolen.”

“No shit?”

“For real. Anyway, I’m here at the gallery and I overheard a little bird tweeting about the gap they have in their upcoming show and how they are missing approximately five works.”

“That many, huh?” Nora used the nail of her thumb to scrape a spot of gesso off her forearm.

“Yes. Five large works. Like, sofa-sized.”

“Poor dears. What’s that got to do with me?”

“Well, you know me. I butted into the little birdie’s conversation and started talking you up. Gave them one of your fancy business cards and the dude turned out to be the owner. He went straight to his office and pulled up your website. He’s piqued, hon. Like, super-stoked. He’s curating pieces that show scenes from East Coast slices of life and your stuff fits right in there.”

“That’s great and all, but I don’t let my stuff hang just anywhere, Bennie. I’ve lost too many pieces to businesses that closed up shop without warning and took my art without paying me.”

“I totally feel you on that. Hey, you can pull up their website and vet them and stuff, and see if you’re interested. Just thought I’d let you know they wanted to see more of your stuff like ASAP. He wanted to know why your website hadn’t been updated since spring and if you’d stopped painting.”

Nora blew out a frustrated razzing sound through her lips. “I don’t have Internet right now. I’m working on it. I’ve got about a half-gig of images to upload as soon as I get my satellite dish installed. So, who are these people?”

“Hold on.” Nora could hear her friend rustling some paper on her end of the connection and then she brought her mouth back to the receiver. “They told me their names but I couldn’t remember them. Had to look in their brochure. Their names are Ann Magee and Spencer — ”

“Abraham? Spence Abraham?” Now Nora was standing, charged like a pen coil waiting to be sprung.

“That’s the one! Know him?”

“I most certainly do. Or at least I know of him. He was one of the long-time curators at The Met. He’s written a bunch of books on contemporary art. He’s considered to be something of an expert on living artists. He’s even written me up once or twice. Tiny little blurbs, but still.”

“So, you’re interested I take it?”

“Uh, yeah! I don’t have anything ready right now that would fit the show, though.”

“Oh, that’s okay. They’re doing this staggered introduction thing where they’re going to put up a new work every Monday for five weeks. So really, you’d only need to have the first one immediately.”

“Even so, that’s pushing it, Ben. For a work that size I’d have to be moving non-stop and hoping it doesn’t rain and screw up my dry times. We’ve got perfect humidity here now for painting. But, five in a row? I don’t know about that, lady.”

“Well, I kinda already told them you’d do it. They’re sending you the contract via overnight courier.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Cool, right? Say, what kind of a cut does an artist agent get, anyway? Twenty percent? Thirty sounds good.”

“You’re lucky if I don’t pay you with a swift kick up the ass.” Nora tried to grab a handful of her own hair to pull it but was deterred by her tightly knotted scarf. Just as well. It was a habit she was trying to break, anyway.

“Come on, it’s a great gig and you wouldn’t even have to come to the gallery to stand by your work until the fifth week.”

“Which is when?”

“Around Valentine’s Day.”

Nora groaned and started the trek back down her long driveway, eager to get into the house to look at her planner. As she stepped onto the wooden stairs leading up to her porch, she could hear gravel crunching behind her and turned to see a late-model pick-up truck making its way slowly up the driveway. The man behind the wheel, a blond wearing a huge grin, was waving one hand out his open window for her. She ignored him, figuring it was another hunter. “So, the first would be due, when? Second week of January?”

“Yep.”

“Hmm.”

Bennie cackled on her end. “A-ha! I know that ‘hmm.’ You’re thinking about doing it, aren’t you? You could totally get a few done in the next three months. It’s not all that taxing, right?”

Nora rolled her eyes at the implication and made a note in pencil in her planner. “Have you ever painted anything in your life, Bennie?”

“I painted my bathroom last spring.”

“That so doesn’t count. Look, I’ll do it. I’m going to have to put some other projects aside to make it happen and I have no idea what I’m going to paint, but I’ll come up with something.”

“Yes!” Nora imagined her friend doing a fairly classless fist-pump amidst the well-heeled art perusers at the preview. “Now, about my fee … ”

“Bye, Bennie. There’s someone at my door.” Nora ended the call before Bennie could react.

“Can I help you?” she asked the smiling man whose fist was poised, ready to knock on her storm door.

He held up a clipboard and pointed to something circled on the page. “Got an order to install a satellite dish.” He smiled a little broader, showing at least four more teeth. He was going to run out if he kept it up.

“Well, it’s about time. I’m dying to get online,” she said without opening the door. Nora didn’t like the lecherous gaze she was receiving from the tech. She pulled the edges of her shirt together to cover her ribbed tank top. She hadn’t put on a bra that morning. “Uh … where do you want to put it?”

“Roof’s easiest, but I can put it anywhere the line won’t get chewed up.”

“I’m going to be doing some demo work on the house soon, but, uh … ” she pushed the door out just a bit to indicate that he should move, and when he stood there staring dumbly, she cleared her throat. He obviously didn’t understand subtle. Nora was about to tell him to move his idiot self out of the way when a “thump!” at the side of the porch made the tech look over and his eyes go wide. Heavy footsteps clomped across the wood, then one behemoth of a man named Matt Vogel appeared just outside the doorway. Nora sucked her teeth.

“I think she’s trying to get out, Chad,” he said, smirking at the smaller man.

Chad seemed to break free of his hypnotic trance and mouthed “Oh,” before taking a couple of steps back to let Nora out. She gave Matt a wary look as she passed both men and proceeded to the end of the porch to jump off the same edge Matt had obviously snuck up on. When the two men stood frozen by the door she groaned and stabbed a finger in the direction of her roofline.

“Hel-lo, satellite guy!”

Matt gave Chad a nudge and he followed with his clipboard, nearly falling off the porch because he wasn’t aware enough to step down. Matt grabbed him by the back of the shirt just in time. “Hey, man. Watch it!” Chad looked down at his boots and found that his toes were hanging over the edge.

Nora put her hands on her hips and stared at the two men on her porch. “I heard Hollywood was rebooting The Keystone Cops, but you two are on the wrong coast for auditions,” she said, voice sotto.

“Sorry, he’s usually not this hapless,” Matt offered, easily lowering himself the three feet to the ground and joining Nora at the side of the house. Chad followed in his wake, dragging his feet like a shamed toddler.

“Not to sound rude, Mr. Vogel, but what can I do for you? It’s getting crowded in this yard.” Nora knew her voice bore a slight taint o’ bitch, but she was feeling a bit overwhelmed at having to divide her attention between the two goofballs. The blond goofball was staring at her brazenly and chewing his pen cap. The other was mirroring her standoffish posture and stood with his arms crossed over his barrel chest, smirking at her. She glowered at him. She didn’t like feeling like the butt of a joke.

“Just wanted to talk. See if you’d given any more thought to what we talked about on Saturday.” He smiled for real then, showcasing his cavernous dimples again. Oh, boy, but did she have a thing for dimples and sideburns, and his were perfect. He’d shaved since his last visit. As a painter, she noticed those small things, or at least tried to. Nora didn’t have time to itemize the intricacies of the man’s face, especially not how the cleft over his upper lip acted as some sort of arrow drawing attention to his wide mouth and white teeth. She certainly didn’t notice the perfect chiseling of his jaw or the high forehead that so many cultures thought indicated intelligence. Of course she didn’t notice the eyes that were a shade of light green only found in nature in the first intrepid sprouts following the spring thaw.

She cleared her throat and straightened her posture. Focus, Nora. Don’t go there. “What part of ‘no’ did you think merited further discussion?” Her voice was nasty, but as she studied Matt’s friendly face, her own face began to soften. She could tell when she was being messed with. He was poking at her, but why?

“I thought maybe if I could show you how we hunt you might be more open to it. I’d love to take you hunting. The waiting around is actually kind of meditative.”

“Do I look like I need meditation?”

Matt just smiled.

Nora ignored him for the time being and moved on with the matter at hand, pointing to the roofline again. “Do not install it anywhere on this front half because I’m having some construction done.” She pointed a ways back. “Anywhere over the glassed-in porch is fine.”

“Got it,” Chad said, finally finding his voice again. “Let me go get some tools out of the truck.” He turned on his heel and started walking around the porch and then stopped by the stairs. “You want to give me a hand, Matt?”

“Nope.” The big man held his ground and slipped his gaze back toward Nora.

Chad grumbled something under his breath and stalked off.

Nora returned Matt’s intense gaze, feeling somewhat overexposed as if he was seeing right through her. Maybe she was just being paranoid. “I suppose I have you to thank for this installation happening today, Mr. Vogel.”

Matt leaned against one of the porch supports and shrugged, his smile having ebbed from blinding to casual. “I believe in doing good deeds for neighbors.”

“And I suppose you’ll want something in return for that hospitality.”

Chad walked by, still grumbling, and toting an extension ladder.

Nora watched as Matt gave her paint-splotched pants and plaid shirt an assessing look, then allowed his eyes to trail down to her fingers, which were at that moment twirling a rag she’d taken out of her back pocket. He seemed to fixate on the digits, and Nora wondered what could have possibly been running through that mysterious mind of his.

“Is that right, Mr. Vogel?” she nudged.

His eyes finally returned to her face and he responded, “Well, of course there’s always a catch.”

Nora rolled her eyes, but waited to hear it.

“Let me make you dinner.”

She raised a single brow as Chad huffed past with an electric drill and toolbox. “Make me dinner? Sounds to me like you’re building yourself up a huge pile of favors to borrow against.”

Matt let out a throaty chuckle. “Trust me when I say that my cooking doesn’t do anyone any favors. I figured we could get to know each other a bit. I’m curious how you ended up here. I’m sure you’re wondering all about the Chowan County culture. Let me be your introduction to the rural rumor mill. Then later, maybe much later, but hopefully in time for the start of bear season, we can revisit the hunting issue.”

She stared into his bright eyes for a moment, examining him for evidence of guile, and when satisfied he was being mostly truthful she shrugged and said, “Fine. I suppose it couldn’t hurt to meet some people here.” And he wouldn’t be so bad to look at. God, he was big. He had to be twice her weight at the very least. In the past her tastes had been more in line with very lean men like Chad, but standing next to Matt he looked half-grown — unfinished.

Nora felt her core temperature rising and excused herself, reentering her house. Once hidden by a wall she blew out a long exhale, hoping to send her reawakened libido away along with the spent air. If there had been a pill she could take to put her sex drive back to sleep, she would have paid handsomely for it.

“Use your head,” she whispered to herself with eyes closed. “Head. Not heart. Not body. Not now.”

*

Nora drove around Chowan County looking for inspiration to base the first of her paintings on. She hadn’t actually planned on doing any commissioned works for a while. She’d become fascinated with local history and was studying up on one of Edenton’s foremothers: Penelope Barker. She was attracted to the Colonial society leader’s chutzpah and had been sketching out concepts for an original work for a couple of weeks. She figured she could always go back to Penelope, and put the plans aside.

Nora managed to get some decent photographs of a sailor couple tying off their boat at the municipal pier in Edenton and of a group of tourists queued up outside the visitor center, waiting for the trolley. She wasn’t sure if that was what she wanted, though. Nora’s paintings had a reputation for grittiness, and painting delicate vignettes of historical sites and gently bobbing boats in the bay wouldn’t elicit much emotion. Those scenes were a dime a dozen. Where was the angst? Surely even bucolic Edenton had a seedy underbelly. She just had to find it.

She’d been driving around aimlessly so long, the gas gauge claimed she was emptier than empty. She’d gotten off the beaten track about twenty miles back and ended up in Gates County, which seemed to have even fewer gas stations per square mile than rural Chowan. She cruised her wagon into the very first one she could find, cringing at the inflated premium unleaded prices. Why had she let Bennie talk her into buying the hipster import anyway? Even though Nora’s old sedan lacked certain modern amenities and didn’t have a cargo space large enough for the transport of art supplies and finished paintings, its food of choice had been basic unleaded and it thrived on cheap oil.

Nora sighed dejectedly and popped her gas tank cover open. She’d have to actually go inside the store since the pumps didn’t have card swipers built in. Conversations with the locals were hit or miss. Some folks in the area had accents so murky and moved their lips so little that she had resorted to saying things like “Show me what you’re talking about” or just having them point.

When she pulled open the heavy door, a blast of cool air from the bug blower overhead caused her contact lenses to seize up on her eyeballs. Nora paused in the doorway with her eyelids closed, moving her eyes around behind the lids to reseat her lenses. As she worked her contacts back into place she inhaled the tangy pungency emanating from the gas station’s grille. The scent was laced with onion and vinegary barbecue sauce, but underneath those subtle notes was the overpowering thrust of fryer grease. Nora’s mouth flooded at the very thought of salty fried potatoes served so hot her fingers blistered. She shook off the thought. She promised herself that she wouldn’t eat shit just because she’d moved further south. There wasn’t a health club in the entire county.

Nora thought it was safe to open her eyes again, and she tested them one at a time. When her lenses didn’t fall out, she finally turned her head to examine the merchandise in front of her. She was facing an aisle filled with cheap snacks like chewing gum and small bags of chips that wouldn’t depress the store’s bottom line if a shoplifter ran in and did a grab-and-go. To her left were drink coolers. She ignored the chips, but having only so much willpower, Nora helped herself to a sugary peach soda and wound back to the right where the wooden counter that separated customers from the tobacco products was installed. No one was behind it.

She followed the sound of masculine laughter around to the adjacent wall and found the grill counter set back into what looked like an added-on space with a few Formica tables and chairs with foam cushions. A few men, the drivers of the trucks that Nora saw haphazardly parked on the roadsides around the gas station she assumed, leaned onto the counter, amicably chatting with a spatula-wielding woman. A few more people sat at the tables, nursing hot dogs loaded with mustard, relish, and chopped onions and heaping portions of crinkle-cut fries.

Nora stopped just beyond the restaurant’s tables and stared up at the old-fashioned menu board, decorated with white plastic letters and numbers each pressed into the rows one character at a time. The prices looked like they hadn’t changed since the gas station opened. Fifty-cent hot dogs? Where’d they make their money?

“You need some gas, sweetie?” the woman with the spatula asked, leaning sideways a bit to see around the burly trucker who was waiting in front of her with his elbows on the counter. She adjusted her hair net to get the elastic band off her forehead and stared at Nora with dark, intense eyes.

“Yes. Pump one, please,” Nora said, already turning toward the cash register.

“That all you want? You don’t want nothin’ to eat? I can ring it all up on the same ticket.”

Nora turned back around and assessed the menu board again. That fried chicken really did smell heavenly, but it was getting so late and the heaviness would probably have her on her ass for the rest of the evening. Also, Matt was supposed to be at her house at six to concoct some sort of dinner for her. It would be rude if she were too full to eat it. But he didn’t give her any hints about what dinner would be and she was slightly suspicious that it might not be consumable. Maybe she could have just a little something.

She shifted her weight nervously: fully aware of the stares she was getting from the eight people in the little restaurant, and shuffled over to the counter with her head bowed. “I’d like a chicken basket to go,” she said at a volume normally used by people making confession.

“White meat o’ dark meat?” the woman asked loudly, obviously oblivious to Nora’s distress. Up close, Nora could see the clerk was missing several of her front teeth, but she’d obviously been attractive once. She had lovely dark skin that reminded Nora of the color of scuppernongs as her undertones were quite rosy. Although she was thin as a reed, her cheeks were plump and youthful; however the streaks of gray in her black hair marked her as being at least forty — perhaps even fifty.

“White meat, please.”

“Biscuit o’ roll?”

Nora looked at the bread under the lamp. The rolls looked pretty generic, but the biscuits were fluffy and spectacular. “Biscuits.” Nora hoped the woman didn’t notice the plural slip.

The woman behind the counter set about assembling a take-away box, humming to herself as she pressed a piece of wax paper into the bottom to catch all of that delicious grease. “Who your peoples?” she asked, not looking up from her task, so it took Nora a moment to realize the question was directed at her.

“I’m sorry?”

“Your peoples? You live ’round here? Who your ma and them?”

“Oh. No, I live across the county line off thirty-two.”

“Oh, okay. I know some folks out there. Go to church down there sometime. You know all them Riddicks and Whites?” She used a pair of tongs to drop what looked like half a chicken into the box.

“No, I’ve actually only been here for about six weeks. I bought a piece of family property and moved down from Baltimore.”

“What your family name?”

“Greene. The Greenes lived there.”

The clerk stopped piling fries into the box and looked up at Nora quizzically. “Yeah? I used to know some Greenes. Milt,” she angled her head in the direction of one of the tables where an elderly man was carefully distributing hot sauce to each and every one of his French fries. “You remember them Greenes? Just up and left, right? Where they go?”

Milt sucked his lips around his teeth and puckered them as he repositioned his dentures. “Suffolk, I reckon. What that, fitty years ago?”

“Uh huh, think so.”

Nora scoffed. “Come on, you’re not that old.”

“Yeah I is. Just made fifty-eight in April. Good eating keeps you young-lookin’.” She winked at Nora then folded down the top of the paper box and stuffed the flaps into the slits at the sides. “Come on over and I ring you up.”

Nora backtracked to the front counter and paid the woman for her drink, meal, and fifty dollars worth of premium unleaded. “Come on back and see ol’ Hattie,” the clerk said, giving Nora another exaggerated wink. Nora chuckled.

“I will.” She took one last look across the tops of the aisles at the menu board in the restaurant and had a thought. “Say, Hattie? Would you mind if I took a picture of the store?”

“I don’t know about that. You some kind of newspaper lady? Might have to call Bossman and let him talks to you since he knows what’s what.”

“No, I’m not a reporter. I’m a painter.” She ferreted one slick business card out of her sweatpants pocket, one of the ones that had an image of her street busker painting on the back, and handed it over to her. “I wanted to take a picture of the restaurant so I could make a painting.”

“Oh! Well, that’s okay, then,” Hattie said, looking at the picture appreciatively. “Bossman would like that. He so stuck on himself.” She threw her head back and laughed, showing off the constellations of small moles on her brown neck. “You let us see it when it’s done?”

“Of course.”

Nora strapped her chicken box into the front passenger seat of her car, and inserted the gas pump nozzle into the tank to fill as she unzipped her DSLR from its case. She went back into the gas station and found a nice spot near the shelf of windshield wiper fluid bottles and plastic funnels to take a picture. She took several to stitch together into a panoramic image later, being sure to capture the menu boards, the cast of characters at the tables, and of course, Hattie, who stood behind the grill counter with her head cocked to the side, hands on her hips, and wearing a nearly toothless grin.