Chapter 5: She Only Bought One Interview
Nora’s POV
“Send me the address.”
The words were out before I had decided to go.
Celeste gave it to me and hung up before I could change my mind. Behind me, the application was still open on Vivienne’s laptop.
I closed it and reached for my coat.
The studio was above a rink in Hackensack. I climbed one flight of stairs and found Celeste at a monitor, with the Zamboni grinding away on the other side of the wall.
She didn’t get up. Her hair was pulled tight, and her shoulders looked thinner than I remembered.
“You came.”
“You gave me an address.”
“Sit.”
“I’ll stand.”
“Of course you will.”
She pressed the space bar.
Ivy Morgan. Sixteen. Gray practice dress, sponsor’s patch on one sleeve. She came toward the near boards, crossed over twice, set her arms.
Three strides before the jump, she stopped.
Celeste played the second clip. Same jump, three weeks later.
This time Ivy took off.
She landed on her hip.
I watched her stay down for a moment before reaching for the ice.
“Five coaches,” Celeste said. “Two worked with Olympic teams. Every one of them said it was in her head.”
“And you disagree.”
“Yes.”
She went back to the frame where Ivy’s blade had stalled.
“You were better at this than anyone I competed against. I don’t mean jumping. I mean knowing what went wrong before your feet left the ice.”
I kept my eyes on the screen.
“Play the first minute.”
“You just watched it.”
“The first minute of the program.”
She turned toward me.
“I have the choreography rights. I bought the licensed program footage in September. Her mother has it too. These are the sections everyone keeps arguing about.”
“I need to see what happens before them.”
For a moment, she didn’t move. Then she opened the full recording.
I watched the first forty-eight seconds.
At fifty-two, Ivy came out of the far corner and straightened a curve in her entry. She added a stroke before the three-turn, almost too small to notice at that camera angle.
“Again.”
Celeste dragged the cursor back.
There. The same adjustment.
“By the time she stops, her blade is already in the wrong place,” I said. “Go back another forty feet.”
Celeste did.
“Her shoulder’s dropping here, too. Before she even starts the entry.”
“You think she’s hurt.”
“I think she’s protecting something. I can’t tell you what from a recording.”
Her hand stopped on the mouse.
“When was she last cleared?”
“For what?”
“By sports medicine. A physical therapist. Someone who’s actually examined her.”
“I’d have to ask.”
“Then ask. Before anyone tells her to try it again.”
Celeste looked back at the frozen image.
“And find out who’s been telling her to push through it.”
“Her mother. Her agent, twice in September.”
I waited.
“Me,” she said. “On camera in Greensboro.”
She ran her thumbnail along the edge of the desk.
“I wrote ‘push once more’ on a whiteboard in August. I’ve been saying it ever since.”
Eleven weeks, she’d told me. I looked at Ivy’s bent shoulder on the screen.
“And now you’re telling me.”
“Yes, Nora. Now I’m telling you.” She looked up. “Because you watched a minute and saw something I’ve spent four hundred hours missing.”
I hadn’t meant it as an accusation. Hearing her answer, I wasn’t sure that mattered.
She switched off the monitor.
“How fast can you put this in writing?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Tonight.”
“Tomorrow morning. I need to sleep.”
She picked up her phone, turned it over, then turned it back.
“Two pages. Something I can take to Julian Cross.” Her eyes stayed on mine. “I’ll be spending four years of goodwill to get your name in front of him.”
“How much?”
She frowned.
“What are you paying me?”
“The introduction is worth more than two pages.”
“Then we’re talking about two different things.”
I took off my coat and hung it over the chair. I still didn’t sit.
“A thousand. Two pages, one revision. You’ll have it by nine.”
“Four hundred. Revisions included for as long as we’re working on this.”
“No.”
“Nora, she could change her short program three times before December. We’ll be on the phone at midnight twice a week until spring. I’m not approving a new invoice every time she changes an entry.”
“One revision,” I said. “If you need more, we agree on the price before I start.”
“Then I’ll keep the introduction.”
My hand tightened on the back of the chair.
I needed that meeting. She knew it. Yesterday I had called Emily because there was no one else left to call.
“Keep it.”
Celeste’s expression changed.
“I’ll find another way in.”
I had no idea how. I made myself leave the words alone.
For years, I would have agreed to the work and worried about the hours afterward. It would have been easier now, too. Four hundred dollars was money. An interview was more than I’d had when the phone rang.
Celeste watched me.
“You’re terrible at this,” she said at last. “You always were. You never knew how to ask for anything.”
“I gave you a price.”
“Yes.” She unlocked her phone. “You did.”
A moment later, she looked up.
“A thousand. One revision.”
At 11:04, the first five hundred arrived. The payment reference was one word.
CONSULT.
I checked it before I left.
Back at Vivienne’s kitchen table, I worked until 1:20.
I watched Ivy’s entry again. Then again, slower. I took out anything I couldn’t support with what was on the screen.
At 1:31, I opened the rink app.
Fifty minutes of freestyle at Yonkers. Twenty-nine dollars. The first ice time I had bought for myself in six years.
I had booked it because I wanted to skate.
I cancelled it so I could finish the report and get back to Celeste by nine. When the app offered another session, I closed it.
At 8:47, I put two pages beside her monitor.
The last paragraph had taken the longest. I had rewritten it until it said exactly what I knew, and nothing more: Ivy needed an assessment of her left side before anyone asked her to repeat the jump.
Celeste read standing up.
“You’re recommending we pull it from the short.”
“I’m recommending someone examine her before you make that decision.”
“She loses eleven points.”
I looked at the page in her hand.
“And if there’s a labral injury, she could lose the season.”
“You think that’s what this is?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I want her examined.”
Celeste turned to the second page. She read the footnote, went back to it, then reached for her phone.
The remaining five hundred arrived while I was putting my copy away.
She typed for a while. I waited without trying to read over her shoulder.
At 9:12, she sent the referral.
“One meeting,” she said. “That’s what I asked for.”
“I understand.”
“I didn’t tell him to hire you. I didn’t mention Ethan, or Sophie, or Vivienne’s spare room.”
I stopped fastening my bag.
“Was the spare room ever going in the email?”
“No, Nora. Nothing personal went in.”
She put down the phone.
“I told him what you found. I said I’d stake a project on your judgment.”
I looked at her.
She had argued over every dollar. She had made me say no twice.
Then she had put her name beside mine.
I slid the footage license behind my copy of the report. The purchase date was there, along with the authorization. I wanted to keep those pages with the payment record. Whatever happened next, this was work I had done and been paid for.
“He’ll read it,” Celeste said.
“And then?”
“Then he decides whether you’re worth his time.”
I nodded, though I’d wanted more.
She picked up her coffee, found the cup empty, and set it down again.
“I can get you in front of him. I can’t make him forget.”
“Forget what?”
“You walking out of that rink six years ago.”
I pulled my coat from the chair.
“He was there, Nora.”
“I remember.”
It came out more sharply than I intended. Celeste let it pass.
She checked her phone.
“Thursday. Nine.”
For a moment, I stayed where I was.
An address. A day. A time.
I had spent so long trying to find someone willing to speak to me that I hadn’t let myself think about what I would say when they did.
“Don’t wear black,” she added. “He’ll think you’re grieving.”
I put on my coat and went to the door.
“Nora.”
I turned with my hand on the handle.
She was still beside the desk. She wasn’t smiling now.
“I never thought you’d gone soft. Not once in six years.”
I waited.
“That was the part I couldn’t forgive.”
