Cautious, and after double checking again that I was wearing pants, I padded my way over to the door. “Who is it?” I called through the double dead-bolts.
In Brooklyn, you could never be too careful.
“It’s Stacy.”
Stacy?
To say that Stacy Heathrow was a stylist, was like saying that Michael Phelps liked to play in the pool. The woman was a fashion goddess. A true icon. It was as if all of Manhattan had gotten together and compiled all their beauty standards into this one, bionic woman. A woman who somehow managed to encompass them all.
Tall, gorgeous, and with so little body fat I was amazed she wasn’t seasonally restricted indoors, she stopped the conversation of every room she walked into. Turned every head, unhinged every jaw. It was for this reason that Mitchell Hunter had hired her seven years ago.
That and the fact that she was one of the only women in the world who was impervious to his son’s devilish charms.
“Stacy—hey!” I yanked open the door, terrified to keep her waiting even a second longer than was necessary, “is everything okay? Did you and Lily have a fight?”
She swept inside, drenching me in a cloud of Chanel No. Five. Sure enough, despite the icy sidewalks, she was wearing a miniature cocktail dress paired with eight-inch heels. She had to bend down almost a foot to do her obligatory double-cheek-kiss.
“Lily—gosh no. Everything’s fine. She’s off in France or Spain or something—fighting against corporate interests with the rest of her little friends.”
(Lily’s ‘little friends’ happened to be a United Nations Human Rights Commission.)
“Oh, well that’s—”
“You know, this is actually a cute place.” Her ice blue eyes swept around appraisingly, as she shed her coat on a hook by the door. “Even if it is in Brooklyn...”
Knowing Stacy, that was as much of a compliment as I was ever going to get. At any rate, it was certainly as kind as she was biologically capable of.
“Uh...thanks.”
Now that she mentioned it, it was bizarre seeing her in a place like this. Was this her first time venturing over the bridge? I imagined her circuitry turned off once she left Manhattan. Like a broken robot, leaving her frozen and twitching on the far shore.
Wisely deciding not to ask, I quickly navigated back to my original question. “So, uh, not that it’s not great to see you and everything, but...”
I had hoped that would do it, but she returned my questioning gaze with a blank stare. I’d have to be a little more direct.
“It’s still like six in the morning...”
Still nothing.
“A little early to come calling...”
Silence.
Oh for fuck’s sake.
“What the hell are you doing here?!”
“Oh!” Her face brightened cheerfully, as she set her gigantic bag down in the middle of the living room floor. “Nick sent me. He didn’t tell you?”
Why the hell would he tell me? It’s not like it was my apartment or anything.
I shook my head quickly, trying to catch up.
“I’m sorry...Nick sent you?”
Why the hell would Nick send his stylist to Brooklyn? At six in the fucking morning?
“He called me about twenty minutes ago.” She poured herself a mug of coffee from the kitchen, before ripping open the curtains to let winter daylight spill into the room. “Said that we needed to get an early start if we were going to be ready for the event by tonight.”