Page 19 of Below the Shadow of the City

CHAPTER 19

SUNDAY, EARLY OCTOBER

M y apartment is suffocating. Utterly so. Quite frankly, I don’t know how those fairy tale princesses managed. I have a one bedroom apartment to pace, I couldn’t survive locked in a tower.

I need air, or light, or something. I need to run away into the woods and never return. How does one overcome their feelings for someone? How does one allow themselves to feel? Why can’t I decide which outcome I want?

Rather than spend my time knitting together conspiracy theories about how Maddox and my relationship will crash and burn, I do the far more sane thing. I obsessively research this underground world he lives in and every monster I can think of off the top of my head.

Very quickly I find there’s an entire online community of more eccentric folks who believe in the realm’s existence. When reading the paragraphs of crackpot theories it’s hard not to be amused by how inaccurate they are, even from the few times I’d gone down there. Claims of bloodthirsty creatures haunting the streets at night, brazen accusations that they’re running a shadow government, even theories that certain government officials are monsters in plain sight. Which, the latter may be true, just not in the way these conspiracy theorists believe.

I’d asked Maddox an embarrassing number of questions, mostly to help me process the world he lives in piece by piece. I’ve learned every cryptid imaginable is apparently very, very real. Mothmen, Sasquatch, the Loch Ness monster. And so is every creature from practically every culture’s folklore. The facts of the situation are still somewhat unbelievable. His neighborhood feels so much like my own, I often forget that it’s deep below ground and a secret.

The most glaring thing these conspiracy theorists get so incredibly wrong is that all of these monsters, or people, rather, are fully sentient, intelligent beings. Mothman isn’t some imaginary creature of the night that lives under a bridge, he’s one of many mothmen who lives in a different part of town and is one of Maddox’s best friends.

Per Maddox, aliens and ghosts are very much not real. That feels especially hard to believe given the mental whiplash I’ve experienced in recent weeks. Plus, he surely isn’t an expert on UFOs given he’s spent his lifetime underground. It’s only a matter of his own opinion, and given his complete disinterest in my claims of magic in his realm, he’s a skeptic. Which is a hilarious thing for a mythical being to be. I didn’t believe much in the otherworldly until meeting him and being thrust into this world. Now, I fear that maybe I hold a stronger belief in that than I do in my belief that Maddox would actually want to be with me as badly as he says he does.

I click through multiple subreddits dedicated to theorizing and sharing the tiniest hints of proof. A blurry photo here, a strange door there. I think about how I could walk into my basement and down a few hallways and wind up in the exact place these internet sleuths dream of discovering. I swear I see a photo of Maddox, or someone that looks like him, taken in a dark alley. Exactly as I’d seen him all those months ago. I save it, in case I find out one day that it was him in the photos doing his best impression of the Patterson-Gimlin Film.

Despite the time I’ve wasted at my laptop, conventional internet searches come up with nothing. It’s almost a complete wasteland of results. If I Google the restaurant Maddox took me to, the closest result comes up in Chicago for somewhere with the same name. If I search street names or addresses, my screen flickers blank. From the perspective of above ground, none of what, or who, I’ve seen is real.

It would almost be easier to write him off as not existing at all. I could pretend his apartment, the restaurants, the bodega, and the streets themselves were all a mental fabrication. I could buy into the same conspiracies as the internet posters. Only maybe without the blatant absurdity. It would be much simpler than returning to him and making it up to him.

Instead, I Google “fae beast,” a phrase I’d never heard in my twenty-eight years until Maddox said it so casually the night we truly met. There’s more that appears under this search, pages of folklore and medieval art. From an academic standpoint, there’s actually something to research here, once I muddle through the fairytale nonsense.

There are stories of societies of monsters co-existing among humans in the Middle Ages, as well as harrowing tales about Maddox’s distant relatives kidnapping young women from their villages to bring them to their lairs. If only they knew that centuries later I would willingly go with one of these alleged beasts.

I am doing all this, of course, because I want to avoid actually thinking about the very real monster I’d left hanging. I have nagging anxious thoughts beyond curses and Maddox that I need to distract myself from. I was coerced (well, formally invited) into meeting the other bake-stagrammers and foodie influencers who are also supposed to be featured in this cooking anthology at a welcome brunch soirée of sorts.

Thoughts about the inevitability of whatever interactions I’m going to fumble through tonight could be easily thwarted by reading about more monsters. As I read an academic paper from an Ivy League school about an instance in Eighteenth Century Germany where a fae community was all but destroyed, I want to text Maddox and ask him about all of it. Only I don’t exactly think we’re on “casually text every fleeting thought” terms at the moment.

Instead I turn my attention back to the event I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about. I’d spied on the guest list by reading all the names CC'd on the invite. Food bloggers I’ve followed for years would be in attendance alongside aesthetic baking accounts who didn’t vanish from the internet for nine months.

Now I have to make an appearance as someone who fits in perfectly among this crowd. And get dressed for it.

It’s not my first time at such an event, I’d attended my fair share of influencer outings. Something has changed in me at a molecular level since then, something disappeared in me that I don’t know if I can find again. Doubt is telling me to skip, that I could quietly send in eight recipes I’d already posted on my Instagram account and participate with the smallest amount of effort required.

What good would that do me, though? I know what Margo would say if I back out, and I know I’d be mad at myself too. I dig through my closet, looking for something that might convince myself that I’m not the kind of person who backs out of professional opportunities like this one.

“I’m a complete imposter,” I groan when Margo’s face pops up on FaceTime.

“No, you’re not,” she’s chopping something on her kitchen counter with her phone propped up against the backsplash. “You’re just nervous.”

“I think I forgot how to be a person.” I lay my phone beside me and flop onto my back. There’s an unfortunate amount of hand shaking and ass-kissing ahead of me .

Margo turns to the screen, “pick your phone up, show me what you have to wear today. I’m tired of you being mopey. Get your ass in gear.”

I sit up and grab my phone and promptly give her a fake salute, and the middle finger.

We proceed to have an early 2000s movie-style montage where I try on practically every article of clothing in my closet.

Ultimately, ten or so outfits later, we settle on something that we both deem appropriate for the night. Black boots I’d maxed out my credit card for at a sample sale years ago, a black mini dress that I hadn’t worn in so long I forgot I had it, and a tan leather jacket I’d scored at a vintage shop in Park Slope. Looking at myself in the mirror, a bit of the angst eased. I feel comfortable and look pretty good, too.

Margo’s voice comes in over the phone. “This is good. You look cool enough to fit in with the influencers, but professional enough to let them know you know your shit.”

“You sure?” I smoothed my hands over the skirt of the dress.

“They reached out to you for a reason, didn’t they? You’re allowed to let good things happen to you. God knows you deserve it.” I face the camera mid lining my lips, Margo’s face fills the frame, her brown eyes soft and sincere.

“Thank you,” I softly say, “you’ve been good to me, sticking around through the shit show this year has been.”

I fluff my hair in an attempt to revive the deflated curls that skim my jaw, using my phone camera as a mirror.

“You don’t have to suffer alone at sea, I’m here for you, even if I think you’re completely out of your mind sometimes for still thinking you’re cursed and all that,” she laughs.

I make a sound of acknowledgement and don’t say anything further. The secret of Maddox and how things have progressed between us sits like a rock in my gut .

“So, final check,” I don’t acknowledge her statement. “I look ok?”

“Better than ok, I promise. You’ll do fine. You’ll kick ass, take names, all that sappy best friend bullshit I’m supposed to say to hype you up.”

“Love you, dude,” I hold my finger over the end call button.

“Love you,” she says and blips away as the call ends.

My heart thuds at a rate I’d previously believed to be impossible, so quickly I’m tempted to step into urgent care instead. Everything feels too hot, too tight, too incorrect. I’m not Sigrid Larson tonight, I’m @siggyssweets, Brooklyn baking content creator. And surely not an imposter.

The restaurant is fine, standard 2010s Instagrammable chic that’s a few years out of date. The wall is lined with faux boxwood plants that I’ve always referred to as “girlboss grass.” Naturally, there’s a neon sign smack dab in the middle. If I was out with friends I’d make some snide comment about how the more aesthetically-centered a restaurant is the worse the food is, but I let the remark dissolve before it can leave my lips.

Billie stands as small plates of something that looks like a sad salad are dropped in front of us. “I’d like to take a moment to thank you all for coming and for participating in Gingham’s still unnamed baking anthology. Every one of you was hand selected for your talents and unique perspective, and of course, your personal brands…”

She trails off into more kind words about everyone around the table, and more marketing pitch speak about the cookbook. I know I’ll inevitably get a series of posts to share and make to promote it, and I know I’ll have to start actively posting again before then to drive up my engagement. It’s one step of many that I need to take to get my shit back together.

“…And folks, this is Inez Canavar from our legal team, sh e’s the one who drew up the contracts for you all,” Billie gestures to a dark skinned woman sitting beside her. Canavar. It couldn’t be.

Inez stands and waves at all of us around the table, and she immediately looks familiar. Her hair is woven into long black microbraids that are wrapped in two buns atop her head. She’s gorgeous, and the shape of her face feels almost like something I recognize. I hadn’t seen a photo of her except for her tiny contact photo that popped up when she’d texted Maddox. He had mentioned his sister that worked as a lawyer above ground, but the odds of this being her would be nearly impossible. Right?

“Please, eat, enjoy, mingle, share ideas with one another, and most importantly, have fun!” Billie beams and takes her place at the table. I stare at my tiny name placard before me as the others chat around me. I should be networking and making good impressions and all that, instead the thought remains that Maddox’s sister is now woven into all this.

I can’t exactly talk to her while she’s perched next to Billie. What would I say? “Hi, I know what you are, and your brother and I are in a situationship of my own making. So good to meet you!”

I stab at the lettuce and microgreens on the salad plate.

“You’d think for a group of foodies they’d give us more than five measly leaves,” a voice says across from me. I glance up at a blond woman sitting in front of me and silently gesture to myself to determine if she’s actually talking to me.

She nods and continues, “you know, I work in the industry, I’ve heard plenty about this restaurant group and the owner. My guess? They practically bribed Gingham to do the event here.”

“The salad certainly isn’t screaming ‘high end farm-to-table’ by the looks of it,” I agree.

“Half the time farm-to-table is interpreted very, very loosely. Of course produce and meat come from a farm, it always does. I don’t know your day job, but if you work in the restaurant business, stay away from this place.”

“Good to know,” I smile at her. “Sigrid Larson, by the way. Or @siggyssweets, since that’s how Gingham found me.”

“Greta Laurens, or @gretasgreatbites,” she chuckles at the silliness of identifying herself by her handle. It’s completely ridiculous, but the second she makes the connection I recognize the username.

“You do the NYC food guides, right?”

“Yup, for the last seven years, I also manage RoqueLox over in Chelsea, if you’ve heard of it.”

Heard of it, for sure. I certainly couldn’t afford to go there. It was rated one of the best new restaurants in New York last year, and a celebrity hotspot.

“I can only afford to eat there with my employee discount,” she continues when she sees my blank stare. “Do you know anyone here?”

“Not a soul, I hadn’t exactly been active online before Billie reached out.”

“I don’t know anyone here either, feels like being in my middle school cafeteria all over again. And I hate influencer networking, the organizers of these things tend to forget that most of us are introverted, that’s why we live on our phones all day.”

The salad plates are cleared and soup with a piece of focaccia is the next course. I can immediately tell the dough wasn’t proofed long enough, and it pales in comparison to the bread at the Italian restaurant in Maddox’s neighborhood. Unfortunately, it’s still better than the stodgy one I’d made at my parents’ house.

“If you can’t manage bread in-house, at least get a reputable supplier,” I remark while tearing a piece off and dunking it into the vaguely orange soup set down before me.

“In-house, my ass, honestly. This is from Whole Foods, I guarantee it,” I bite my lip at her comment to stifle a laugh .

The soup is microwaved, we both agree, the bread is confirmed to be from Whole Foods after Greta does a quick Google search, and we think the wine is relabeled. While the rest of the table is cheerfully talking about upcoming collaborations or travel, Greta and I have managed to find a way to poke fun at everything here. It’s refreshing to turn off the professional filter and have a laugh about the ridiculousness of the blogging industry as a whole.

“I thought this was a recipe anthology, isn’t your content exclusively reviews and guides?” I ask her as I sop up the last bits of the ambiguous squash bisque.

“The book is a ‘celebration of New York food culture and content,’ at least that’s what Billie told me. Half of the people here are tasked with recipes, half of them are tasked with neighborhood specific guides. Your whole thing is seasonal baking with ingredients from the farmer’s market, right? So the Williamsburg Farmers Market will be one of the ‘featured spots’ in the guide.”

“What neighborhood are you doing?”

“Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen, I signed on pretty early so I got to take my pick. Might as well use the opportunity to plug my place of work,” she shrugs like this is just another day for her. And maybe it is when your entire job is centered around catering to A-list clients, she must be used to being at events like these, only on the hosting end.

I shift in my seat, imposter syndrome setting in. I don’t ask how early she was asked to join the book, and I don’t think about how I was only contacted a month and a half ago. My timeline might be heightened solely because of being a late addition to the game. Someone more qualified could have dropped out and I was chosen in their place.

This only motivates me more to do a better job at getting my shit together. I need to prove I belong among these other influencers and be memorialized in print. I have to have something to show for all of the work I’d done .

Every time I look at the date I’m horribly reminded of how little time I have to do a massive amount of work. And the pressure alone should be enough to get my ass in gear, but I keep freezing or distracting myself.

This afternoon is the first time I feel actually connected to this project. It could have something to do with the cheap wine and commiserating with Greta, but I feel like things could actually go right with this. The optimism feels unfamiliar and uncomfortable. My chest is hot and itchy under my dress. I’m trying to lean into this discomfort, at least a little bit.

The event winds down and the crowd disperses. Greta and I exchange numbers and I’m grateful I have a sounding board for this project. I linger at the table and watch Billie and Inez converse. I should say something to her, what I’m not sure.

I shrink myself a bit and cower when I approach Inez. It’s absolutely ridiculous that I, as a full blown adult, feel the need to duck and weave and pitch my voice to be the teeniest bit higher. Such habits are ingrained in most women I know, even those of us with the most progressive feminist beliefs. The closer I step the more I can sense the familial resemblance, not that she shares any monstrous features with Maddox. Under those perfectly woven buns I know two small horns sit on top of her head.

“Hi? Inez?” My voice is weird and creaky and not at all a good impression for the sibling of someone who I might be dating. She whips around and holds a perfectly professional gaze and a tight, white smile. “Sigrid Larson,” I point to myself unassumingly.

She’s nothing short of intimidating, nearly as tall as Maddox. With her few strategic physical adaptations, she’s fully passable for human.

I knew she has these attributes, but it’s an entirely different thing to see them in person. She dwarves me, and even with my taller stature and heels I feel small. Must be a fae thing. “Hi,” she says, clipped and professional. She’s still chipper, though, and gives me her full attention.

“This is going to be so weird, and probably unprofessional,” I start, she folds her arms in front of her. “Could we, uh, talk somewhere more private?” I ask timidly.

She goes into lawyer mode, sweeping up her phone and bag from the table and leading me to the restaurant’s patio, completely empty except for tables and folded umbrellas. Car horns honk on the street below, and I shudder in the October chill.

“If this is regarding your contract, your lawyer will have to reach out directly to Gingham Books,” she says in a flat voice with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Oh no, nothing to do with my contract, it’s actually a personal matter.” I take her silence and fading grin as an invitation to continue. “I know your brother, we’re…talking.”

“You’re talking…to my brother,” she huffs, and her eyes flare amber. “I think you might have mistaken me for someone else.” She turns on a heel and begins walking back inside. Of course it’s utterly unbelievable, she has the privilege of straddling the two worlds. She’s one of the rare few. In all logical cases, no one above ground should know who her brother is.

“No, I’m serious, Maddox is your brother, right?” I raise my hand above my head and draw a rough outline of him in the air. Her eyes widen and sparkle with curiosity.

“Oh my god,” she mutters, “how…”

“A long, weird, story, he’d mentioned you worked above ground as a lawyer and when Billie introduced you tonight I made the connection. Small world, I guess?”

“I’m gonna kill him,” she snorts.

“Oh, oh I don’t think that’s?—”

“He’s seeing someone and didn’t tell me? That fucker.”

“Well, to be fair, we’re not really?— ”

“Not really what?”

“I don’t know, dating, seeing each other, whatever. Things are weird right now. N-not because of him. He’s great, amazing, actually. I’m the weird one.”

She huffs, and I can’t get a read on her. She’s far less expressive than her brother, and the lack of tail makes it tougher to gauge how she’s feeling. Never in my life did I envision myself secretly wanting someone to have a tail to wag.

“Look, he’s a good guy, a really, really good guy. And him not telling me about you means he’s probably taking whatever’s going on between you both pretty seriously. I’m not going to play the meddling older sister and make you promise not to hurt him, but you should know, he’s genuine.”

I nod at everything she says. “I know he is, honestly I might not deserve him.”

“No, you might not. I don’t know you, so for all I know you’re a bitch. Don’t break his heart, ok? He doesn’t deserve that.” A breeze blows on the patio and goosebumps prick at my skin.

I’d been so protective of my own heart I selfishly never considered his.